What Ukraine Needs Next
How To Win the Next Stage of the Information War
We are almost two years into this brutal and unnecessary war, and it is sometimes difficult to think back to the dark days of February last year. Our immediate priority was to help Ukrainians flee and find safe accommodation in Europe. Their Government had urgent military requirements.
Our informational response was also defensive. The UK Government, which had been preparing for the attack in February 2022, also had a largely reactive posture in its informational work (with some exceptions).
Almost two years on, any resolution seems further than ever. The risk of a military ‘stalemate’ (for want of a better, and fiercely contested, term) – or even Russian supremacy – brings with it the risk of an informational stalemate. Although we accept that Moscow relies heavily on informational warfare as a key armament, what is less understood is how Russian information operations work in wartime. Russia’s approach to information warfare has evolved rapidly since February 2022, and its operatives continue to develop strategies and techniques. There is a complex relationship between individual Russian military operations and the informational component of that attack which needs to be better understood.
Governments around the world have asked consistently since last February how to win the information war. The rapidly-changing relationship between military and informational activity, and the complexities about measuring the impact of information operations, makes this extremely complex to answer. But it is crucial that Ukraine does not lose, and we must help Kyiv regain the upper hand in an informational war that, as President Zelenskyy himself has acknowledged, has been made much tougher by the crisis in the Middle East.
The informational war of manoeuvres
We need to change tack from a positional informational war to a manoeuvrable one. This mirrors the call by Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi to transition to a military war of manoeuvres. A change in thinking will help Ukraine’s allies to seize the initiative in messaging. It will also help anticipate and mitigate future Russian informational attacks which are likely to intensify.
This shift to an informational war of manoeuvres should maximise four new factors: speed, flexibility, coordination, and pre-emption.
Our governments must be much more rapid and agile in how they counter Russian information manipulation. We would do well to emulate the examples practiced by the Government of Ukraine, which has developed a beehive approach to its messaging, enabling devolved teams to respond at pace to new threats without having to wait on lengthy clearance processes.
The Government of Ukraine has proven its ability programmatically to move fast in responding to Russian information operations. We also need a capability that is equipped at responding at speed – in some cases in near-real time – to Russian attacks, both informational and kinetic. We must coordinate responses better across teams. The UK Government’s counter-disinformation capabilities are divided across different departments with varying policies, objectives and remits. Even within departments, teams focused on analysing Russian information operations are separate from those responsible for designing potential responses. Structural changes could resolve the disconnect in thinking and approaches, and permit a much quicker and flexible responsiveness. This could help answer unforeseen events, such as the brutal attack on Israel in October.
The UK Government has dedicated significant resources over the past few years into understanding and mitigating informational attacks, the most egregious of which emanate from state actors and their proxies. It continues to invest in both its cognitive and technical capabilities, yet much of this work has been reactive. It has focused on leveraging technical methods to detect and analyse existing informational threats. Many attacks are left unanswered, under the belief that responding to an information operation can enhance its impact. Any responses are often complex, and can be lengthy to design and approve.
In some cases, allowing Russia to dominate the argument around military events is not the best approach. Much of the pre-bunking that the UK did in advance of the assault in February 2022 appeared effective in undermining Russia’s case for its invasion. Governments must develop better working processes with Russia specialists to anticipate better the types of information operations that Moscow is likely to plan and pre-empt them.
What will Russia do next?
The desire among authorities in the UK, Europe, and northern America to develop all-actor technical capabilities should be tempered; instead, we should hone a better understanding specifically of Russian information operations as a threat in its own right.
We need to continue pressing the point now that Ukraine’s counteroffensive has brought success. Otherwise Moscow will argue that any further assistance to Kyiv will be in vain. Governments should argue now that future supplies to Ukraine will bring benefits.
The risk of war fatigue among Ukraine’s allies will increase, in new and complex ways. Tiredness changes over time, and burnout can manifest in unexpected ways. (War fatigue inside Ukraine is also very real). The risk that populations around the world could turn against further support for Kyiv is real. We should steal ourselves for a very long war, but continue to explain the reasons why victory for Moscow would be a disaster.
Government teams around the world should prepare for likely attacks against major upcoming elections, especially in the UK, the United States, and implement appropriate safeguards. Conversely, the Russian 2024 presidential election campaign has already started, and we cannot allow the Kremlin to claim that Putin’s likely triumph gives him a mandate to continue the war. The most dangerous risk to our societies is to allow Moscow to normalise its behaviours.
Rethinking Russian information operations
This demands a strategic and programmatic rethink in our approach to informational threats, and better cognitive connection between government, its diverse internal departments, and external specialists in industry and academia working on Russia.
Crucially, we need to invest in research into the developing methodologies in Russian information operations, and disseminate conclusions among policy-makers and the public.
Much knowledge of Russian information manipulation was built before February 2022. Specialists analysed information operations in peacetime, abstractly, and as an alternative to military warfare. This instilled a false sense of security: a dominant line of thought was that Moscow conducted information operations because it did not want to – or could not – use military force to achieve its objectives. Some analysts saw the build-up of Russian forces in late 2021 around Ukraine as a purely Russian informational gambit, failing to contextualise that within Moscow’s wider intent.
We must rethink Russian information operations as an intrinsic component of Russian military aggression, understanding better how these informational attacks intertwine with real attacks. This reconsideration will also have significant implications for how we analyse Moscow’s informational attacks against other countries.
We require much better insight into the impact of information operations. Governments must be prepared to support this research, given the costs and time required to conduct proper behavioural science studies. We should fund more studies into different strands of Russian society and their responses to various media, and use this knowledge as the basis for our own messaging at Russians.
Time is running out
We cannot underestimate the continued and changing impact of Russian information operations. Russian propaganda can often look ridiculous, but its protagonists are becoming more skilled at reacting to events quickly and locating vulnerabilities.
We should be bolder and consider aggressive messaging campaigns against Russia, exposing and undermining the falsehoods that their government tell them. This will be complex, given that Moscow is introducing tighter technical and legal controls over domestic information flows, but we must be creative, braver, and more agile in our thinking.
Most important is not to underestimate Moscow. Russian information operations are still relatively cheap and easy, and they can have significant impact, especially over time. This time is running out, and we cannot become complacent.