MAGAZINE
FALL 2020
INFORMATION WARFARE
: THE BATTLE
FOR
UKRAINE
By : Oleksandr Gain and Iryna Moroz , Strategic Communications Directorate , Office of the Commander-in-Chief , Armed Forces of Ukraine
history of events in Ukraine since August 24 , 1991
THE to present day is gaining new meaning in the eyes of propaganda researchers and strategists . The hybrid aggression of the Russian Federation against the sovereign Ukrainian state began , not in 2013 or 2014 , but in 1991 with Russia ’ s domination in the information space and their efforts at winning the hearts and minds of the people of an independent country . Today , the Russian government is only reaping the rewards of its aggressive information operations , having turned Eastern Ukraine into a flash point of war and illegally occupied territories . But , are the fruits of their labor an indication of success ? Has their ongoing information aggression in the military arena been successful enough ? We will try to answer these questions in this article .
Kremlin ’ s Scenarios The first large-scale actions against Ukraine date back to 1992 during the division of the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea . During that time , as military units and military authorities began taking an oath of allegiance to the Ukrainian people en masse , the Russian military began to use aggressive physical actions using military equipment and personnel against Ukraine . As with many of Russia ’ s actions in response , they started small and gradually grew in scale and intensity . In one early example , a Russian car equipped with an electronic jamming package to interrupt communication and intercept radio traffic was observed repeatedly parking near and circulating around Ukraine ’ s school for Naval warrant officers , a military educational institution designed to professionalize the Ukrainian Navy ’ s senior enlisted members . This was during a time when military units and military authorities were pledging their oath of allegiance to the Ukrainian people en masse . On July 9 , 1992 , personnel assigned to the military commandant ’ s office of Sevastopol garrison , the command post of the Main Base , took this Ukrainian oath , striking a blow to the very heart of pro-Russian forces . Fortunately , there was no blood shed at that point , but it only served to increase Russia ’ s arrogance .
In 1993 , Russia ’ s information operations and malign influence activities grew more complex . According to the Transnistria scenario , Russian military intelligence began preparing operations in Crimea to separate the peninsula from Ukraine . This involved the issuance of Russian passports , transformation of the Black Sea Fleet Press Service into a means of information warfare against Ukraine , equipping the military telecentre with modern equipment specifically to broadcast to the entire peninsula , and coordination of pro-Russian forces by Russian Naval Intelligence . Soon after this groundwork was laid , Ukraine began to see the formation of illegally armed groups . Russian Cossacks and ethno-political organizations began to appear , such as the Russian Movement of Crimea . This created many difficulties for Ukrainian military service members because the presence of these new groups made it increasingly dangerous for them to be visible around Sevastopol . In fact , it got so bad that officers of the Ukrainian Navy disguised themselves with the emblems of the Soviet Navy only to change them back to Ukrainian after arriving to base . Pro-Russian and Russian media even began to intimidate the local population of Sevastopol by mischaracterizing the Ukrainian military as dangerous , warning they would soon see “ combat hardened groups of Ukrainians in their midst , ones who have experience in the war with Yugoslavia .”
Crimea and Eastern Ukraine were increasingly saturated with Russian information products for the first several years , but until 2003 there were no physical actions committed against the Ukrainian military by Russia . That changed , however , when in September of that year the Russian Federation began testing
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