Senior Fellow, Agora Institute Johns Hopkins Uni Author: How to Win an Information War; This is Not Propaganda ; Nothing is True and Everything is Possible
Message from Kharkiv, from a great friend and colleague who I work with all the time on University research. He's now manning barricades: "situation is hard. City terrorised with artillery fire. People being killed in the streets, on their way home or to shelters...(1/4)
If Germany doesn’t sanction Russia why don’t we sanction Germany. Not sure I want cars made with the help of Uighur concentration camps or German products powered by Russian gas that fund an atrocity machine
A Ukrainian family spent three weeks in a cellar with Russian soldiers. When I interviewed them I found their strange relationship has lessons for how to win the war….With thanks to my colleague Andrii Bashtovyi who first told me about this story
They have no hope basically. There's no medicine or treatment or way to leave. First responders are at the limit: they don't have enough people, resources. There are so many artillery hits that they can't keep up. It's outright terror campaign against civilians. Civilians."
Musk pushing Putin propaganda is not historically new: British aristos did the same in WWII with Hitler 'peace offers'. What's new is that an oligarch can switch off critical internet infrastructure at whim, and undermine crucial military operations against a genocidal regime.
I feel ashamed. Ashamed that Ukrainians are fighting the return of imperialism and fascism in Europe, fighting for the ‘values’ that Europe is meant to stand for but has forgotten the meaning of. And we safe Europeans do nothing. When we can. First: Take Russia out of SWIFT now.
West is doing an AMAZING job... of responding to 2014. That's when we needed sanctions and arming Ukrainians. We're 'winning' the last war. Not sure we've quite caught up with this new one yet
There's no way to leave as air raids don't stop. The hits are on places unrelated to military or infrastructure: sports centres; homes; cafes. There's about 25 pharmacies working for a city of 1.5 million. It's hardest for people with bed-ridden relatives, the old, disabled.
Grad fire just hit the Петихадка (sorry if wrong spelling), where people were queuing. It's a blood bath. Many deaths. The Northern Saltivka, a densely populated places in town, is subject to air raids all times of day and night. People haven't left shelters five days...
We are choosing Russian oligarchs over Ukrainian kids. They are dying and we are betraying them with weak sanctions. Go hit the essence of the Putin system. It's a kleptocracy. Go after the kleptocrats.
Putin’s constant calling us all ‘Nazis’ is a way to drain the term of meaning and resonance and thus clear the mental space for Putin’s own essence of fascism. Destroy the meaning of words which acted as taboos to check behaviour, to make the worst behaviour possible again
‘Russia is a culture where you have crime without punishment and punishment without crime’. The Ukrainian scholars Tetiana Ogarkova and
@yermolenko_v
helps me understand what lies behind Russia’s acts of extreme violence
they hit residential areas. then they wait for journalists and locals to turn up. then they hit them again. today they killed oksana, whose series on the gulag is vital to understand the people who killed her. just despair and anger. century over century. this empire must die
And now it's someone I've known for 16 years and worked with at several independent outlets. Oksana Baulina, a Russian journalist with phenomenal sense of moral clarity, killed by Russian rocket fire on a reporting mission in Kyiv today. I'm yet to process this.
If you say, as Lavrov and Putin do continuously, that a people don't exist, and those that do are 'Nazis' (therefore, in a perverse logic, Untermenschen): it's a conscious way to pave the path towards casual mass murder.
Russia hits hospitals. Over and over. Country to country. "Putin sent warplanes to systematically target hospitals During the siege of Alepp, more than 440 civilians died, including 90 children. The attacks killed newborn babies, doctors, and students."
Russia needs to stop being a threat: to its neighbours, to the world. That has to be the starting point of any policy framing. We can’t be held hostage by a chronically abusive state.
"All our hope is in the famine", says lead Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan. She openly admits that Russia doesn't want to resolve the food crisis. On the contrary, Russia is interested in it, deliberately starving people in Africa and Asia to achieve its political goals.
beneath the veneer of military 'tactics' you see the stupid leer of destruction for the sake of it. They can't create, so all that's left is to destroy. Not in some pseudo-glorious self-immolation, they are petty cowards, but a loser shitting and smearing their faeces over life
this is the Ru strategy now: terrorise civilians with random strikes so they can never live freely, so the sky is always a menace, so that Ukraine can never rest easy. It's the most cowardly, dirty, nasty strategy. The strategy of the humiliated bitter twisted miserable sadistic
Vinnytsya being hit. Residential area. Casualties, including a dead child.
Many Ukrainians feverishly dialing Vinnytsya now to check on their relatives. Myself included.
Fuck Putin. Fuck Russia.
#fuckputin
#StandWithUkraine
#ArmUkraineNow
Crossing border from Ukraine to Poland is wrenching. Paradoxically it's from the sense you are crossing into safety. A few metres, a few steps, and you are in a different zone. The trees, fields, light are all the same. But here you're secure- and Ukraine is still an open wound
They couldn’t take Kharkiv so now they try to terrorise and break it psychologically. But people are so tough now they rush to help, console the victims- but show not a jot of panic or jolt of fear. Just sigh with sadness and mutter anger and resolve
Am v worried about what Kremlin will use as an excuse for martial law in Russia: so many reports of Putin planning an atrocity inside Russia and blaming Ukraine
US weakness on Syrian atrocities saw destruction of humanitarian norms, emboldened dictators, helped cause a refugee tsunami that played a huge role in bringing nationalist populists like Trump to power. Many of same team now in White House. I pray they learnt lessons
Kramatorsk. This time the Russians destroyed a pizza parlour. Last year they hit a train station full of refugees.
@TRPukraine
collects evidence, tells stories, builds cases: let's close the gap between truth to justice
in the social media groups in DNR one hears fear, cynicism, humor, tiredness. Some people worried about getting on buses as Russians might bomb them as casus belli. A sense of being extras dragged into someone else's mad, bad movie.
@WayneJordash
is prob the top intl lawyer looking at war crimes in Ukraine. V professional, cool, savage scathing dissection of amnesty research on Ukr army
I keep on getting seeing discussions about 'who is winning the information war' between Putin and Ze. I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate way to frame things Here's why... (1/3)
Collaborative communication is when you engage people, treat them as equals. Sure the Ukrainian army do all sort of psy-ops to survive. But Ze is treating people as equals, trying to engage and inspire them - that's not 'information war'. It's the opposite.
This amazing scoop is just a taster of how the russian war crimes machine survives on western tech. Stop arming our enemies who want to destroy democracies - and the US especially. Democracies should arm each other instead
The sanctions, such as they are, are not being communicated to Ukrainians. Many tell me they feel abandoned. Need explainers in Ukr and Russian, US and UK officials to go on Ukrainian TV. Russia has its info-war machine, where is our democratic communications response?
I know it’s a cliché, but this really feels like a turning point for Europe. The way people talk, the anger of the usual cynics or sober minds. The conversations I’ve heard about defense spending, NATO, energy independence these last few days feel like something truly different.
Another devastating Russian strike on Kharkiv. This one hit the Karazin National University’s School of Sociology which sits across the street from the regional Interior Ministry office. Video via Anton Gerashenko, aide to Interior Minister.
'Information war' is the essence and practice of Putinism. It's an approach to communication that treats people as fools- not citizens. It's deeply cynical, and implies all words are weapons, that talk of 'values' and 'rights' are just manipulation...
this research by
@TRPUkraine
and
@dpatrikarakos
shows Russian torture in Ukraine as an almost casual cultural policy. Russia's aim is to normalise atrocity. They have many allies in this. It will be one hell of a fight to stop that.
Phenomenal piece about the murder of a writer, a buried book, life under occupation, Russia’s brutal repression of Ukrainians’ and Ukraine’s right to exist. Make sure to read to end: The postscript.
Death and the Dictator: Putin is an old man scared of death trying to turn back time. Ukraine and Ukrainians are as his blood sacrifice. His invasion of their country is his attempt to forestall his personal, inevitable demise
Putin's domestic propaganda enables the mass murder of Ukrainians, claiming they are 'not a real nation' and 'nazis' that have to be destroyed...but here's the thing...WE fund and enable it...(1/2)
Putin will go as far as possible. Ukraine is the start. Other parts of Central Europe next. The US is the 'great enemy' that needs to be humiliated. Yet our sanctions let many Russian banks off hook. We're not touching his real power: oil. We're just not getting what's at stake
“This is Moscow’s way of war. Mr. Putin’s forces will continue to terrorize the country to induce surrender. If they don’t succeed, they will burn it all down. It’s either bow or vanish; no third option is allowed.”
Coverage on Western rolling media can help Putin. On the ground amazing (Clarissa Ward remarkable). But doom talking in studios is putting down Ukrainian efforts with the 'countdown to fall of Kyiv' framing. Apocalyptical framing temtping, but an editorial choice that helps Putin
Taking meetings in Kyiv underground today. This lady making coffees for all and smiling smiling through the booms. Coffee especially lovely this morning
As she lay dying in a North London hospital, my grandmother started to hallucinate scenes from her Ukrainian childhood. All around the ward she saw starving children, skeletal, collapsing in the long, white, strip-light corridors…
It's a mistake to think that NATO support to Ukraine would be a provocation for Putin. He is provoked by the weakness, not by strength. There was no objective reason for Russia to invade Ukraine. Putin did it because he knew he would get away with it. Next move: attack on NATO
For many Russians truth is a subset of power. If Putin is powerful he is “believed”. Defeat him on the battlefield, undermine his system in courts, his power to define reality slips. It’s not truth that leads to justice, it’s justice that leads to truth
Stop the killing machines that make the missiles that murder civilians. This way you disrupt Russia’s war machine. Ukrainian civilians are saved. The Kremlin’s self confidence gets shaken. Their perception of impunity crumbles. The evil eats itself faster.
Ukraine informed the German government that a so-called CNC machine manufactured by
@spinnergmbh
is en route to an ammunition plant in Russia from Turkey. It is a tool that will help Russia produce tank projectiles to kill Ukrainians.
After they beat Azat Azatyan so bad blood came out of his ears the Russians began to interrogate him about his faith. “When did you become a Baptist? When did you become an American spy?”…on how Russia’s war against evangelicals is a war against America
My new essay for
@guardian
about summer full of losses and pain. My brothers in arms. Missile attacks. Funerals of our friends and teachers. And unbearable waiting for the Autumn attacks on infrastructure and blackouts.
Your weekend read: incredible insight on the tough but deeply inspiring reality of how a society survives a long hard war. From my colleague
@ngumenyuk
Putin's aim is simple: show all the Western rhetoric about 'values' is empty, and that democracy a charade. If we aren't ready for at least some costs around sanctions, he's right (also what's the point of EU stabilisation funds if they can't be used for moments like these?)
On the road from Bucha to Kyiv it’s not the rusting wrecks of Putin’s tanks that bring it all home, not the burnt out hulks of houses and shopping centres, but the crowds of pine trees leaning permanently at an angle in the same direction, deformed by the trajectory of artillery
Germany needed an 'energy freedom' policy that massively diversified supply. Instead it got energy 'security' that makes it dependent on an authoritarian power...why that choice? if Germany 'fears' Russia, why make oneself dependent? What gives? Genuine question...
this war is not just a problem you can 'localise' to Russia-Ukraine. There's an increasingly coordinated network of dictatorships and soft authoritarians who think the 21st century belongs to them. Orban is a tiny footsoldier in this network, but symbolic as he's inside EU
"Even allowing for election night euphoria, Orban’s taunting of Zelensky — on the day that brutal apparent war crimes committed against Ukrainian civilians were uncovered — was grotesque."
There is no politburo any more to eject a Russian leader destroying the country. But there must be a concept among elites that there is a greater Russian project that needs to be preserved beyond one man. 'Vladimir Vladimorovich, thank you for your services, the car is waiting.'
from Kharkiv to Tbilisi to Budapest and right to the heart of the GOP…all fronts in the relentless rise of networked, kleptocratic authoritarians. Join the effort on how to beat them
Georgia is now a front line in the global battle against rising authoritarianism. On Sunday, join
@anneapplebaum
,
@peterpomeranzev
,
@antelava
and journalists and activists from the region for a conversation exploring why Georgia's fight is so significant.
Fascinating to tag along with
@anneapplebaum
and
@JeffreyGoldberg
to interview Pres Zelensky. I used to wonder how he would deal with politics. I underestimated him and his profession: actors understand people and truth. Satirists get politics. It’s good training for the top job
"In a part of the world where leadership implies stiff posture and a pompous manner—and where signaling military authority requires, at a minimum, highly visible epaulets—he instead evokes feelings of trust"
@JeffreyGoldberg
and I on Zelensky, from Kyiv
As Zelensky visits DC, I put Russia's invasion in context of the larger clash between networked authoritarians and democratic solidarity. This war is the front line in the great global struggle of the 21st century. It's not the Cold War redux, it's new...
That time of day when I log in to check if Serhii Zhadan, my favourite poet and volunteer from Kharkiv, is still alive. He is and kicking ass as per usual.
(A fragment translated from the Ukrainian by John Hennessy and Ostap Kin; a photo of Zhadan delivering goods to his city).
so glad Guardian did the serialisation of my new book. It all started with an essay I did for the Long Read years ago, and now has grown into a whole book!
@TimothyDSnyder
@jasonintrator
@anneapplebaum
it's like the Ruscists quote the Nazis on purpose- signaling their own fascist heritage as a trick of intimidation. 'You think we're fascist- damn right we are- so be very afraid'
A useful Russian verb: кошмарить. То nightmare someone. Or more prosaically 'to give them nightmares'. Or perhaps 'to make their lives into a nightmare'. But I sort of like 'to nightmare'. People. Whole countries...
Last Sunday with
@vamelina
. Now she’s been murdered by another Russian attack on a civilian object. Another Ukrainian writer killed by Russia- she always saw herself part of that centuries old story. This time Ukraine will win. The Empire will die. But oh oh oh how she is missed
Passover for me this year could only be in Kyiv. A nation fighting from extermination by a Putin Pharoah, trying to keep its humanity while yearning for revenge. The rabbis thought about this: how to repel your oppressor without becoming like them
And yet the Ru refugees I talk to do advocate for a shift in visa policies: no visas for all employees of state media, United Russia and all others who are part of genocidal war. Scholz is just using language of rights to dress up lack of policy innovation. Not for the first time
Not for the first time in recent history, Germany puts itself on the right side of the migration debate. This means there will be no EU ban on Russian travel to Europe. A legal route for dissidents seeking refugee protection will continue to exist.
the biggest 'escalation' in this war is to make it last forever and then the calculations get riskier and riskier. give ukraine air power. this will get to a less risky place much faster. also- just so blatantly the right thing to do.
⚡The Ukrainian Air Force would like to address misinformation published in multiple Western media outlets regarding the situation in the 🇺🇦 sky and support from our
@NATO
allies.
More in 🧵(1/16)
#ProtectU
АSky
#StopRussia
#UkraineUnderAtta
сk
Language defines reality. Language defines who is a “real” person, and who isn’t. He who controls language controls life and death....what Putin's Nazi talk really means...
In his ugly little mind Putin thinks he’s winning. Yes the invasion was a cockup. But the West is even scared to give Ukraine a few old planes. His point has always been: we’re feeble. In a world where might is right he, Xi and every abuser and predator will win.
A popular joke in Moscow pro Putin circles:
Two Russian soldiers are drinking champagne in Russian-occupied Paris, the whole of Europe conquered. “Did you hear?” one smiles to the other. “We lost the information war.”
Western advertising funds the TV spewing war propaganda. Western entertainment products reel viewers in so they stay for the politics. The calls for murder are made on western editing systems, video tech and mixing boards. All this can stop. Stop advertising on Kremlin media..
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the flash point in the great struggle of the 21st century: between one version of an interconnected world that gives justice and rights a chance, and a much darker prospect of weaponized interdependence where networked autocrats coerce democracies
Reportedly, Colonel-General Mikhail
#Mizintsev
is commanding the siege of
#Mariupol
. He also led the operation in
#Syria
. Mizintsev is the Head of the National Defense Management Center of
#Russia
since Dec. 2014. He destroys Mariupol, as he used to reduce Syrian cities to rubble
Many of us thought this this was a skit at first. Even the camera technique is out of In The Loop. Though in this case it's a farce being repeated as tragedy.
If sanctions are to mean anything this has to be halted - culture of impunity still reigns for western companies helping Russian war crime machine. The whole chain of production needs investigating. The machines that make the machines that make the weapons etc
Russia is still able to produce 67 missiles per month, according to estimates of Ukraine defence intelligence (HUR). It used missiles made in 2023 for recent attacks on Kyiv. This also means Russia still receives foreign-made components, despite sanctions
“Our greatest ally in this war is
#Russia
corruption & the nature of its army. The soldier in the field briefs his officer: ‘it’s not good but we’re holding’; next guy reports up: ‘we’re holding’; the next guy: ‘it’s going well! This is why Putin doesn’t know how bad things are.”
I know it's not clever to talk about the world in terms of 'good versus evil'. Fine. But can we at least agree that evil definitely exists. And we must do everything possible to stop it?
I grew up in a generation where relativism was considered sophisticated and thinking in categories like ‘evil’ deemed naive. We were running away from the question of how to challenge real evil as it bears down relentlessly on everything you love
Look I know this piece is long, but on the other hand it's still a precis version of my multi-year plod through working out why propaganda and political discourse has gone nuts, and what to do about it if we want to save deliberative democracy....
Governments are being slow. But my sense people in the West finally get it. What Putin represents is so obvious. It not even the words: watch him with the sound off and all is clear. The mean little angry eyes. The sadistic stubby stabby fingers. We all know what this is.
Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought clarity about many things- that doesn’t make them easier, but at least we can see our challenges clearly. See superb thread below. Dictatorships like Saudi are not our true partners. Time to unite security, economy and values in alliances
Putin wanted to reset the world order and tilt it harder towards dictatorships and big states bullying small. Instead he's given us a glimpse of a way to counter not just Russia, but also China. Time to realise this is not just a 'local' conflict...
“Musk’s decision, [..], was driven by an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons, a fear driven home by Musk’s conversations with senior Russian officials”
How awful that a selfish, uninformed rando affected the course of the war
as the great
@fromTGA
touches on here there is imperial chauvinism built into so much of 'great' Russian culture. Moreover Moscow's recurrent use of culture as a front for atrocities also helps to explain the disgust with all facets of the 'Russian World'.
Peace activists are usually the best of us. Often they were right (Vietnam, Iraq). But there are some 'peace' activists who love dictators, back their wars. Is this desire for peace really the desire for security, for a 'protector' figure. Authoritarian urges dressed as anti-war?
Look closely and the horror in Ukraine offers us the chance to remake the world for the better. Ukraine has always played this role: the crucible of evil and its antidotes
“We won’t be able to control content in a user-generated era.”
Peter Pomerantsev, author of 'This is Not Propaganda’, says “we have to reveal and be much more transparent about how information is created” in order to combat disinformation
#newsnight
|
@peterpomeranzev