Ukraine’s media war: Battle of the memes | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21646280-russia-has-shown-its-mastery-propaganda-war-ukraine-struggling-c
Information warfare, like the shooting kind, is a new art for Ukraine, and the learning curve is steep. Faced with a finely-tuned and well-funded Russian propaganda machine, truth and openness ought to be Ukraine’s most powerful weapons. But truth-telling is slow and painful work, and Kiev often opts for misinformation of its own instead. The Ukrainian authorities gloss over military losses, so much so that domestic observers now interpret the government’s daily situation briefings as a euphemistic code: “14 [killed] means there was lots of fighting, two means it was a relatively quiet day,” says Vitaly Sych, editor of Novoe Vremya, a weekly.
Ukraine’s leaders consistently and implausibly deny any responsibility for civilian deaths, further undermining trust, especially among the population in separatist-held territory. Criticism of the government is dismissed as mudslinging by Kremlin agents. Last month authorities jailed Ruslan Kotsaba, a western Ukrainian blogger who had spoken out against mobilisation. Ukrainian authorities accused him of working in Russia’s interests; Amnesty International labeled him a prisoner of conscience. “We’re becoming just like them,” one senior Ukrainian official laments.
Tasked with bringing order to the information front is the newly-created Ministry of Information Politics, led by Yuriy Stets, a former producer at Channel 5 and a close personal friend of Mr Poroshenko. Journalists and civil-society activists derided the ministry’s creation, dubbing it the “Ministry of Truth”. Mr Stets says his critics “read Orwell but not Churchill,” and compares his information ministry to the one Britain operated during the second world war.