Ukraine is stepping up its fight against fake news (photo: Getty Images)
Ukraine is creating special bodies to combat disinformation. During the seven-year war with Russia, the flow of distorted and often simply fictitious news has not diminished, but rather increased. How this will be combated is discussed below. RBK-Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first announced his desire to create a dedicated body to combat fake news in the fall of 2020 at the UN General Assembly in New York. He then proposed establishing the headquarters of an international center in Kyiv to focus on information security.
This idea died down for a while, but unexpectedly gained momentum in March of this year. The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy (MCIP) announced that it would soon launch a Center for Countering Disinformation.
However, on March 11, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov announced that he would be working within the NSDC. At the same time, a similar structure—the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security—will be created within the Ministry of Culture.
However, by the scheduled date of March 16, neither structure had been operational. Zelenskyy's decree establishing the Center under the National Security and Defense Council was published only on March 19, but the head of the unit has still not been appointed. The Information Security Center under the Ministry of Culture, in turn, has been headed by media manager Lyubov Tsybulska. However, the body itself will not begin operations until late March.
Safety issue
Details regarding the differences in functions between the National Security and Defense Council and the Ministry of Culture have not yet been officially disclosed. The Security Council also failed to answer RBC-Ukraine's question about when the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation will be appointed and its operations fully operational.
"We're waiting for the decree to be signed (appointing the head of the Center, ed.)," a source in the National Security and Defense Council told the agency on Monday, March 22, when asked whether the center had already begun its work.
According to the Council's decision of March 11, this body will be tasked with countering current and projected threats to Ukraine's national security in the information sphere. Its responsibilities also include effectively combating propaganda and "preventing the manipulation of public opinion."
In a comment to RBC-Ukraine, Minister of Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko outlined the responsibilities of the unit under his control, the Center for Information Security and Strategic Communications. According to the minister, this structure will focus its efforts not only on combating disinformation and propaganda related to the current agenda, but also on information defense in the hybrid war with Russia.
"First and foremost, this is neutralizing the influence of disinformation and manipulative information spread by the aggressor state on Ukrainian society," Tkachenko explained.
Secondly, the structure will be required to quickly respond to key topics where fake news and propaganda are spread. It will also focus on education and communications projects.
In turn, Danilov, speaking about the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council, noted that this structure will rely on information from intelligence services. It will be staffed by NSDC staff. He explained the urgency of creating such a center now, given the "transition to an active phase" of the information war with Russia.
Head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak announced that the head of state will oversee the work of the National Security and Defense Council center and monitor its activities. "This body will not be political," the head of the presidential office assured.
Yermak also expressed confidence that Ukrainians will see the results of the center’s work “very soon.”
Similar centers for countering enemy propaganda exist in many European Union countries. For example, Riga, Latvia, is home to NATO's Strategic Communications Center. It was opened in 2015 in response to Russia's increased activity in the information space.
This same threat became the basis for the opening of the European Centre for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki, Finland, in 2017.
Analysis Center
It's worth noting that the issue of information warfare with Russia has been a long-standing issue in Ukraine. As early as the spring of 2014, government agencies began focusing on debunking the enemy's numerous fakes. To centralize this work, the Information and Analytical Center of the National Security and Defense Council and the Ministry of Information Policy were created.
Media expert Tatyana Popova worked in both agencies. In a comment to RBC-Ukraine, she noted that the idea to create a unified center to combat disinformation arose under the previous government, but for unknown reasons, it was never implemented.
"Of course, the need for such a center has been long overdue. I personally first wrote a proposal for it in 2016, even before I left (the Ministry of Information Policy – ed.). I showed it to the Americans, and they said, 'Yes, yes, this is what you need,' but the center never opened," she says.
Her former colleague at the Ministry of Information Policy, Dmitry Zolotukhin, says initiatives to create the center emerged even earlier, in June 2014. He believes such a structure shouldn't have a large staff, but rather should work actively with the relevant departments' press services.
"In an ideal world, the Center for Countering Disinformation would be created to supply ammunition and shells. And key communications would be handled by the press services of the relevant agencies. In that case, the center's staff would be no larger than that of an average advertising or PR agency," he told RBC-Ukraine.
The expert noted that such structures operate on two principles. In the first, a "threat matrix" is created, and fake news from topics not included in it is simply ignored.
In the second option, the Center could operate without predetermined goals and priorities. In this case, the only priority would be a daily list of specific news stories (4 to 9), compiled in real time. For example, this could be used to formulate a unified government position on all issues that might be raised in the evening newscasts or talk shows.
Tatyana Popova says that in any case, the Ukrainian Center will be obliged to assemble a strong team of analysts, including those knowledgeable in social media algorithms, and establish cooperation with Western partners. Such an institution must operate 24/7. The media expert recalls that in 2014-2015, during the escalation on the front, her mornings began with reviewing and analyzing Russian fake news about Ukrainian troops that the enemy had managed to "produce" overnight.
"Every day I'd call at 7 a.m. and ask the staff: 'So, who did we (referring to the Ukrainian military – ed.) eat, rape, or kill today?' So, fakes, concocted in Moscow or Donetsk, pop up overnight, and we need to respond to them," Popova said.
She cites an example of such a response from her own experience. She refers to the shelling of a public transport stop in Donetsk on the morning of January 22, 2015. About two dozen civilians were killed. "DPR" militants immediately blamed the Ukrainian side for the attack.
Popova, who was then working for the Ministry of Defense, recalls that the press release from Ukrainian security forces denying their guilt was "dry" and poorly written. She then contacted local Donetsk journalists, who were able to clearly demonstrate on the ground that the shelling had not come from the ATO forces.
After these arguments were presented in the media, the "DPR" militants were forced to urgently amend their initial story and invent a new myth about "Ukrainian mortarmen wandering around Donetsk." But the credibility of their claims had already been significantly undermined.
Mythbusters
The inertia and bureaucracy of state communications in Ukraine led to civil society organizations taking up active counteraction to Russian disinformation. For example, in March 2014, the journalistic project StopFake was launched, focusing on fact-checking, that is, refuting false media reports and enemy claims using reliable evidence.
Since 2020, this organization has been actively collaborating with Facebook, verifying the veracity of various reports from both Ukrainian and Russian government agencies and media outlets.
This cooperation is already yielding tangible results. For example, in March of this year, Facebook marked as "false" and demoted publications from major Russian media outlets about the arrest of three "Ukrainian neo-Nazis" from the radical group MKU in Voronezh.
Ukrainian fact-checkers verified this news and informed the social network's administration that it was fake. StopFake Executive Director Ruslan Deynichenko says the investigation was relatively straightforward. First, the fact-checkers analyzed the news released by the FSB and found questionable points and inconsistencies.
"We called the Russian Investigative Committee, spoke with the investigator, spoke with those involved in the arrest, their friends and relatives, and we concluded that they have no connection to Ukraine," he told RBC-Ukraine.
The head of the fact-checkers assures that when communicating with Russian investigators, they made no secret of their affiliation with the Ukrainian NGO. "We never hide who we are or why we're calling," the head of StopFake emphasizes.
At the same time, StopFake is reluctant to share its work debunking Russian myths with the newly created Ukrainian structures. Deynichenko believes that government agencies shouldn't focus solely on fact-checking. He believes they should be working on broader issues that require significant financial resources and approval from government agencies.
"I don't think any government agency needs to deal with this (fact-checking, – ed.) or create a center for it. There are more global challenges that the public sector can't address on its own," he noted in a comment to the publication.
The organization's head emphasizes that fact-checkers provided analytical assistance to previous Ukrainian authorities and are ready to cooperate with the current ones.
The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy promises to seek assistance from non-governmental organizations in this area. Minister Tkachenko shared with RBC-Ukraine a list of such organizations with which contact has already been established. These include StopFake, VoxCheck, the Institute for Regional Press Development, the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center, Open Information Partnership, Internews Ukraine, NDI, DFRLab, and the EU Delegation to Ukraine.
The information received from them, according to the minister's plan, will be assessed by the Center for Strategic Communications under the Ministry of Culture, where priority topics for response will be determined.
“In the future, the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security is expected to have its own content analysis system,” the minister noted.
At the same time, former Deputy Minister of Information Policy Dmitry Zolotukhin is confident that Ukrainian fact-checkers should not simply collaborate with state information security centers, but act as "arbitrators" to resolve disputes.
Another issue that, in his opinion, deserves special attention is the introduction of penalties for fake news. The expert questions why criminal liability has been introduced for false bomb threats in Ukraine, but not, for example, for false claims about the harmfulness of the Indian coronavirus vaccine. In his opinion, damage to public interests is present in both cases. At the same time, Zolotukhin emphasizes that government agencies cannot a priori impose penalties for fake news.
"I think such a sanction should exist in some form. However, since the state is the subject of a conflict of interest in such matters, sanctioning for lying in the media cannot be its function," he noted.
Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko avoided a direct answer to the question of whether penalties should be introduced for disinformation in the media.
"The public must be informed about the dissemination of fake news by various media outlets. In the context of punishment, each individual case within the context of sanctions must be considered individually," he told RBC-Ukraine.
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Over the years of military conflict in Donbas, Ukrainian society has become accustomed to Russian media propaganda. Their latest claims about "crucified boys," "eating bullfinches," and "gay battalions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces" become objects of ridicule rather than information for serious analysis. Nevertheless, Ukrainian fact-checkers urge continued vigilance. They are documenting dangerous trends and an intensification of disinformation attacks, comparable to those seen in 2014-2015.
"We conclude that Russia is currently preparing for more serious steps, including the active use of military force," notes StopFake head Ruslan Deynichenko.
The government's move to create several counter-disinformation centers confirms these concerns. It remains to be seen how effective these Ukrainian "mythbusters" are.
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