Six months of war in Ukraine and a decade of disinformation

ISD Senior Analyst Ciarán O’Connor has written for the Irish Examiner, sharing his observations from the past six months investigating the war in Ukraine and the way disinformation campaigns have become a key pillar in Russia’s war efforts.

“To sustain its war effort, the Kremlin has had to rely on an ever-shifting assortment of misleading and false claims and narratives to justify its actions, state-backed media and online accounts to push those narratives, and wider efforts to deny, dispute and deflect its role in numerous atrocities”, Ciarán wrote.

Ciarán’s piece maps the evolution of Russian-state backed information operations since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, following the Kremlin’s efforts to paint Ukraine as an aggressor and extremist state.

He also touches on previous ISD research looking at the strategies used by Russian state media outlets, like Russia Today, to circumvent platform bans, such as using mirror websites, copycat YouTube accounts or through encouraging users to use VPNs or other tools.