Good morning, this is the Smoke Eater for June 10, 2022, and it sure ain't glamorous.
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Known knowns, and known unknowns
One of the most interesting threads of the war in Ukraine has been the fight for information. Where Russia has concocted false narratives and attempted to build support through a heavily restricted state-media apparatus, Ukraine has made every attempt to show the world the war’s front lines.
Ukrainians I've spoken with have championed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's efforts to rally the country and the global community, and some have quipped that his background as an actor has helped. Ukraine's political and military members regularly use social media to address their countrymen and international media outlets. When they're not addressing other parliaments and the world's movers and shakers, Ukraine's leaders are hosting other foreign dignitaries and showing them first-hand the horrors of Russia's invasion.
Conversely, Russian President Vladimir Putin's background as a KGB intelligence officer has meant a gradual return of cloak and dagger bullshit. News is controlled by the state, independent media has been largely chased out. A digital iron curtain has been erected to keep people misinformed, blocking popular social media apps and access to anonymity software in an effort to restrict the public from reading and talking about the war.
FUN FACT: Historically speaking, Russian political culture has been steeped in collecting and denying information for centuries. Ivan IV (the Terrible) created the Oprichnik, Russia's first state police/spy service. Peter the Great doubled down on this domestic espionage system, and Catherine the Great used spy services to make Russia an industrial power. The Bolsheviks similarly used whisper networks and spies during the bloody chaos of the first World War to seize power.
MORE: Yesterday Putin compared himself to Peter the Great on the 350th anniversary of the Russian tsar. Speaking from his hometown of St. Petersburg, often called Russia's "window to Europe," Putin hailed the conquering of what was once Swedish territory during the Russo-Swedish war of 1700-1721.
The information void left by Russia is being filled by western media outlets, independent journalists, activists. The Washington Post and BBC publish stories on Telegram, an open-source social media platform. An informal collective of military and conflict-focused sectors of Twitter and reddit source and verify combat footage, shitposts, and government reports alongside think-tanks. An "IT Army" attempts to identify dead Russian soldiers and contact their families. Radio Free Europe/Liberty, the independent news outlet funded by the U.S., is expanding operations in the Caucasus, Balkans, and Central Asia regions to counter growing dissatisfaction with Russian state-media.
BONUS: Love him/it or hate him/it, Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service is one of the main ways Ukraine is able to connect to the world, Politico's Christopher Miller, Mark Scott and Bryan Bender report. USAID seems to have funded a good chunk of the dishes (that start at $500 each) with SpaceX donating another large chunk, while the French and Polish governments, respectively, facilitated delivery. It's a good PR move for Starlink which has been plagued by setbacks, though the service only launched in October. It's received mediocre reviews from techies, with The Verge's Nilay Patel saying the service is expensive and promising, but, "...right now it is also very much a beta product that is unreliable, inconsistent, and foiled by even the merest suggestion of trees. Reality, it must be emphasized, is very irritating."
BELOW THE FOLD
Aside from simply lying to audiences through state-run media, Russia has been trying to use psy-ops, like social media shitposting, to further their war effort. One new tactic is encouraging dissent among Ukrainian troops via social media as the bitter fighting in the east continues. Another is disabling national borders from Yandex, Russia's equivalent to Google Maps that's used widely for taxi services in Eastern Europe, Israel, Cameroon and Senegal.
Locally, the Kremlin is renaming an area around the German embassy in Moscow after Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. Internationally, the thuggish seizure of Ukrainian grain, and Russia’s attempt to sell it off despite sanctions, is only exacerbating a looming food crisis. So it goes.
One story likely to get a lot of play in Russian media is the death sentences of two Britons and a Moroccan by Russian-occupied Donetsk region. The three claim to be Ukrainian and members of the Ukrainian military, but they were still charged as mercenaries during a show-trial. What evidence is available is only coming through Russian state-media. Complicating matters, the U.K. can't necessarily demand the release of the two Britons without lending credibility to the story, so it's likely Russia is simply angling for prisoner swaps in order to get back an imprisoned oligarch.
The Russian narratives might seem confusing for western audiences, but they’re not intended western audiences. Russia needs to keep people from calling the invasion a "war," from feeling the entire Russian economy teetering on the edge of a fiscal cliff, from taking to the streets to protest the regime. It needs to stop the firebombings of military recruitment centers, figure out how to resupply their front lines with new soldiers and equipment that's not 40-50 years-old, and protect them with something other than bags full of copium.
One More Thing...
Michael Kofman and Rob Lee have an interesting preliminary analysis of Russia's early failures during the invasion. One of the things they've found is that Russia's force structure and manpower were dramatically overstated.
"There are clear problems with competence, scaled-up employment, and integration. But conventional wars often come down to attrition, where manpower and material matters more over time than many other elements. A force with enough hedge in its structure can try to compensate for a terrible plan, recover from initial failure, and try to adjust. The Russian military has no such option and is further constrained by the political framing of this war."
- Michael Kofman and Rob Lee, “Not Built for Purpose: The Russian Military’s Ill-Fated Force Design.” War on the Rocks. June 2, 2022.
Alina Polyakova and Daniel Fried argue in Foreign Affairs that, at this point, Ukraine shouldn't surrender. They criticize recent remarks by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger where he argued Ukraine should accept Italy's peace proposal as it cedes territory to Russia and leaves eastern Ukraine in a state of frozen conflict, effectively rewarding Putin’s invasion.
Putin is counting on the West to lose patience in a long war and capitulate as energy and food prices rise. And although the Russian people are famed for their ability to endure hardship, they were promised a quick “special military operation”—not years of conflict that make it difficult to live normal lives. Their patience will wear thinner if Russia loses on the battlefield. The United States, Europe, and Ukraine’s other friends have a responsibility to help Ukraine prevail commensurate with that possibility. The goal now for the West is to thwart an adversary—not to convince or pressure Ukraine to give up. That means sending more arms to Ukraine and putting more economic pressure on Russia...
- Alina Polyakova and Daniel Fried, “No Peace at Any Price in Ukraine.” Foreign Affairs. June 8, 2022
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