We translated an interesting material from the BBC, which tells about the victory of Ukraine in social networks, about our “nation of memes” and the difficult but interesting struggle of Ukrainians against Russians on the Internet.

Ukraine asks for more French Caesar howitzers in joking romantic video

The war has been going on for many months, and it seems that the forces have evened out. The counter-offensive continues, but the Russian army is still strong and causing significant harm to the Ukrainians. But on the Internet, the distribution of forces is completely different, and it is definitely not in favor of the Russians.

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“This is a nation of memes,” says Elena, an entrepreneur from Kyiv who leads teams of social media volunteers. “If this was a meme war, we would have already won.”

Elena is not the real name of the girl. The interview is anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the work she and her teams do around the clock on behalf of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. The task of these people is to quickly respond to news and create spectacular videos designed for the Ukrainian and foreign audience of the Ministry.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is preparing an appeal to foreign parliaments, taking into account local history, culture and other nuances. Elena’s international team, which now has five people, works in the same way.

In June, they created a video where Ukraine thanks the UK for military assistance. To the music of Gustav Holst and The Clash, shots with portraits of Shakespeare and David Bowie, a video with Lewis Hamilton flickered on the screen. And finally, the audience was shown anti-tank weapons provided by Britain.

After the decision of French President Emmanuel Macron to supply Caesar self-propelled guns, a video appeared stating that “romantic gestures can be different.” First we see red roses, chocolate and Paris, and then Ukrainians using French weapons. All this happens to the sound of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’aime Moi Non Plus.

Elena says that one of her favorite videos is thanks to Sweden for donating Carl Gustav grenade launchers to Ukraine. They cost $20,000, but are capable of destroying a Russian T-90 tank worth $4.5 million. For this video, the song ABBA Money, Money, Money was used.

Thanks to the efforts of the team, the Department of Defense now has 1.5 million followers worldwide on Twitter. Some of the videos have been viewed over a million times.

The most successful video received 2.2 million views. He was released in August after several attacks on Russian facilities took place in the annexed Crimea. To the sound of the song Bananarama Cruel Summer ridiculed the Russians who went to the island on vacation.

“We need to speak to an international audience and show that Ukraine is really capable of winning,” Elena says. “No one wants to invest in losers.”

Her other team is working to highlight Russia’s losses and demoralize the invaders .

Orientation to the Russian audience

There are a lot of videos on the net depicting Russian military failures, so the team had enough material. But it was important for them to understand what exactly works and what does not.

“We started posting videos with Russian troupes,” Elena says. “And then we realized that it doesn’t really work: it only unites them against us.”

Then the team tried to appeal to the conscience of Russian soldiers by showing images of dead civilians. Again failure. “They are really proud of it. Nobody condemns the murders,” she continues. “We realized we needed something different.”

Ukrainian videos warn Russians they are suffering heavy losses

Volunteers are now carefully scouring Russian social media, trying to find what might work. “If your audience is Saratov, then you need to know what is happening in Saratov,” says Elena.

It is extremely difficult to assess the impact of this work. But Vladimir Putin’s recent partial mobilization has made the task easier for the volunteers. The team was really looking forward to it, because they knew that it would demoralize many. Most valuable information is found in Telegram. Elena calls it “Wild Wild West”.

Volunteers working for the Department of Defense are just a small part of the larger patriotic community that is responding to events online.

Ukrainians quickly used the attack on the Russian Kerch bridge in the information war

Dozens of Telegram channels attract a lot of people. For example, the Ukrainian Offensive has 96,485 subscribers. Its slogan is “fighting at the forefront of the civil meme information war since 2014”. There is news about the course of the war, trolling of Moscow, and sometimes information about how the Western media react. Photos of dead or dying Russian soldiers are also posted here. The recent explosion on the Russian Kerch Bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea has sparked a wave of videos, jokes and memes .

But Ukraine did not turn into a nation of digital ninjas overnight. Eight years of war in the east of Donbass gave people a lot of time to improve their skills. Ukrainians have learned to recognize disinformation and create humorous content to help them survive in difficult times.

Igor Solovey, head of the Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security, claims that a very rare phenomenon is now observed. “We are perhaps the first witnesses in history when civil society trusts the state and helps it,” he says. “The armed forces go about their business, and the society independently creates content, memes, creativity. Because everyone feels responsible for their future.”

What is Russia’s response? Oddly enough, not very powerful. For example, two prominent Russian pranksters managed to trick Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba into thinking he was talking to former US Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul.

Russian state media aired clips in which Mr. Kuleba allegedly acknowledged that Ukraine was responsible for the recent attacks in Crimea and Russia, even though the conversation took place before the October 8 Kerch Bridge bombing.

But in general, there is little creativity from the Russian Internet army. Elena says that she did not see worthwhile examples. “The Russians never came up with anything interesting,” she says. “No humor, no beauty, no pain, no compassion.”

A mural depicting a hacker appeared on the streets of Kyiv