Yurii Kochevenko, “Ukraine wins in the media landscape”

There were fierce battles on the battlefield and in the information space from the first days of the full-scale invasion. Ukrainians felt the daily pressure of thousands of news, expert opinions, memes, and outright fakes. The director of the International Center for Countering russian Aggression and officer of the Armed Forces Yurii Kochevenko talked about the special role of military experts, the importance of information and psychological operations, careful work with communications, and the information battle with the russian federation on its territory.

Not all experts believed that the russian federation would dare a full-scale invasion of Ukraine from several directions at once. What were the main reputational challenges of the Ukrainian expert environment in 2022?

The war posed a great challenge to the entire Ukrainian society. And those specialists, whom we call the expert environment, were no exception. A full-scale invasion is not another political or economic crisis. It is a mortal danger for the state. If Ukraine disappears, the Ukrainian expert environment will disappear as well. Some of these people as well as experts, analysts, and specialists in various fields, joined the defense forces of Ukraine (Armed Forces of Ukraine, Security Service of Ukraine, Defence Intelligence). Someone took the arms. And for the experts who remained in the public informational space, the main question became how to stay relevant and competent when most information is classified.

How have security issues affected communications with citizens?

Of course, challenges associated with war affect the way we communicate. As a result of the war, a large amount of information is classified. However, the demand for such information has increased in society. On the one hand, this creates ample space for various manipulations. On the other hand, it sets the task of active communication to the state and is only partially performed by military experts.

What is the special role of military experts in such a situation?

They became a kind of translators from the official military-state language to human language. Experts explained what the representatives of the authorities actually wanted to say and what they did not say. They showed people what was behind the dry facts and figures of enemy losses and the reports of the General Staff. I repeat they had to be interesting and competent to keep the audience under these conditions but very careful at the same time.

Can we say that Ukraine is confidently defeating the enemy on the informational front? Why?

Ukraine is defeating the enemy in the informational space since the russian federation was dropping back throughout 2022. The entire directions of informational influence, which russia had cultivated in Ukraine for years, were failed from the first day of the full-scale invasion. Also, russia’s informational influence in the countries of the Western world was destroyed. As a result, currently, the primary informational battle for public opinion is taking place on the territory of the russian federation itself and the countries of Asia and Africa, which still have certain fluctuations.