The victory gives Ukraine some on-the-ground advantages, like stronger support from countries sympathetic to its cause.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks straight into the camera with the quality of an amateur vlogger. Wearing a T-shirt and sweater, he names the official titles of those standing with him: high-ranking Ukrainian officials who are similarly casually dressed. “All of us are here protecting our independence of our country,” Zelenskyy said calmly in the first days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to a translation. This is just one example of how the country under attack has been fighting the information war against Russia, as many inexperienced Ukrainian fighters, including civilians, challenge the foreign troops on the ground. While an underdog in the ground battle, Ukraine is so far winning the fight for hearts and minds, including in pockets of Russia where protests have broken out, and within many countries that have gone farther than expected in providing support. “Zelenskyy was not seen as a very effective leader two weeks ago. Now he is a Churchill-like figure,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired Central Intelligence Agency official who worked as head of clandestine operations in Europe and Eurasia. “And that’s because of [the Ukrainians’] use of information operations, social media, to put forth the kind the notion of these brave defenders fighting not only for their Ukrainian freedom, but for Europe.” The early-stage victory in the information domain has had tangible benefits for Ukraine, which has seen harsh sanctions on Russia imposed by the U.S. and the European Union and grassroots financial support. How long Ukraine can continue to capture the world’s attention is still to be determined. But while several experts who spoke with CNBC agreed Russia had underestimated Ukraine’s resilience, including in the information sphere, its disinformation and propaganda tactics will likely continue to target people in both countries should the war drag on. How winning the social media narrative fuels ground advantages Ukraine’s ability to win the narrative has significant implications for three important constituencies: its own citizens it needs to help fight back, outside nations that can provide financial and diplomatic support and people within Russia who sympathize with their cause. For the first, humbling images of Ukraine’s leader staying put amid the warfare and heroic stories of citizens picking up arms to defend their independence can have a snowball effect. “It’s important to know that both courage and fear are all infectious,” said Raphael Cohen, director of the strategy and doctrine program of Project AIR FORCE of the nonprofit RAND Corporation. Heroic images of grandmothers getting involved in the battles can mobilize others to get involved, just as evidence of defeat can deter such actions. “Morale is critical in this war,” said Scott Radnitz, an associate professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the University of Washington. “It looks like the Kremlin was hoping that Russia would be able to destroy Ukraine’s morale by making a Russian victory seem like a foregone conclusion. And it appears the Kremlin believes that the Ukrainian government is not very popular and people will give up on it.” Instead, he said, “the effect has been to strengthen the national unity of Ukrainians, and seeing social media images of Russian military vehicles that break down and a lot of what look like ham-handed military tactics that make the Russian army looking incompetent only serves to strengthen the will of Ukrainians who are resisting.” Word spread rapidly through both traditional and social networks and bolstered Ukraine’s cause in the Western world. An AP-NORC poll released last Wednesday that found just 26% of Americans think the U.
