Hackers, nurses and Arnold: Inside the struggle to get information on the Ukraine war to Russians
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The State Department created an account on Telegram, a messaging app popular with Russians, four days into the war in Ukraine as it became clear that Washington was missing an opportunity to interact with Russians, a senior department official told CNN.
A series of posts on the account in Russian have amplified President Joe Biden’s denunciations of the war and cautioned Russians about Moscow’s propaganda machine.
“Long before the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it had stepped up its campaign of disinformation and censorship of independent media and continues to do so even during the war of aggression,” the department said from its Telegram account Thursday.
Russian engagement with the State Department Telegram account to date appears to be very modest — the account had 1,911 subscribers as of Friday afternoon Moscow time and the country’s total population is around 142 million.
Analysts say it is unlikely that any single platform or messaging campaign is going to break through with the Russian public in a significant way. But the goal shared by a range of actors trying to pierce the digital iron curtain is to chip away, cumulatively, at Russian public support for the war and the morale of Russian soldiers.
The State Department also has an account on Russian messaging platform VK, has set up a website to rebut Russian disinformation in recent weeks and has worked to get US officials on Russian-language broadcast platforms, the official said.
Not a ‘silver bullet’
But some critics have suggested the US government needs to do more and aim to emulate the huge propaganda effort of the Cold War when significant resources were dedicated to pushing messaging toward the Soviet population.
Russian authorities have detained thousands of people protesting the war in Ukraine. A…
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Source : cnn
