As well as success on the battlefield, wars are often won or lost through information advantage. In the Russia-Ukraine conflict, we might have expected Russia -– an old hand at propaganda -– to have bested Ukraine early on.
Russia’s deception operations have had a long history of global influence, most recently the troll farms that influenced the 2016 US presidential election in favour of Donald Trump.
In the current conflict, Russia’s propaganda efforts have consisted largely of censorship within Russia to maintain the fiction of the conflict being a “special military operation” rather than an invasion. Russia has created the narrative that this military operation is about ridding Ukraine of Nazis and fascists.
