(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Ukraine's information warfare [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2023-01-04
I am writing this story primarily to make a meta comment on some recent stuff on Ukraine. I see a lot of people ascribe some value or meaning to the recent statements by one Ukrainian official in particular: Kyrylo Budanov. And lordy, there has been a lot of his messaging lately.
Reznikov has made an address telling Russians there were going to be mobilized soon. So far so good. Then Budanov specifically said this would start January 5.
www.pravda.com.ua/…
The mobilization itself is easy to believe — any accounting of losses since last mobilization suggests that Russia will be running low on human meat by end of February which is not that far off. But January 5? That is hard to believe. Russia is a country where everyone drinks non-stop between Western Christmas (Dec 25), through New Year’s Day (Dec 31), through Orthodox Christmas (January 7th), and up until the “Old New Year”, i.e. New Year’s day on Julian calendar (January 14th). Mobilization announced on January 5th would be extra extra unpopular. You would be combining the threat of sending people to death with the jolt of interrupting their drinking. Russians might be sort of OK with the former but not the latter. Russian authorities have shown a knack for being stupid and so I may eat my words tomorrow but it is hard to fathom anyone would be quite this stupid.
Budanov has made another more recent seemingly crazy statement: that Ukrainian offensive would take shape in March.
kyivindependent.com/…
In other words he is predicting a major offensive during mud season. Of course this now makes Ukrainian command look incompetent if that is really their idea.
In the same interview, Budanov said that Russia is no longer a threat to the world.
finance.yahoo.com/…
This is obviously not true, and this is a statement that will come back to bite Ukraine. If Russia is not a threat anymore then why should anyone help them? Yes, the free world should help a free nation to shrug off a barbarian invasion and a threat to democracy. But if there is no threat to the West then the most Ukraine will realistically get is thoughts and prayers.
My guess is that this flurry of information dumps from Ukraine’s top spook is messaging addressed to specific audiences and does not at all represent reality or what they are thinking. None of it adds up if one takes a holistic view.
Ukraine so far has had one guy whose job was mixing information and disinformation so well that the mix was both convincing and entertaining — Arestovich. Now we seemingly have a duplicate effort from a guy with neither the talent nor charisma for public engagement, the guy whose job should be to work in the shadows. I am not sure what they are thinking. Maybe they figure Budanov has fewer letters in his last name and so is easier to quote? Anyways, I personally think it is safe to ignore whatever Budanov says in public.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/4/2145368/-Ukraine-s-information-warfare
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
