Russia-Ukraine Flash Report 26 NOV 2022 14:45 PST - Profile in a Psyop

Some background information first. Our heater has been broken for almost two weeks, and thanks to supply chain issues and worker shortages, that was as fast as we could get a technician here. They were supposed to be here between 10 AM and 2 PM local time; as you know, I was up past 6 AM. So I planned to wait for the technician and then take a long nap. Get a text at 10:50 AM that the appointment was moved to 1 PM to 5 PM.

This video summarizes the state of mind of your Chief Content Officer.

So forgive the somewhat random stream of consciousness.

During the open weeks of the War in Ukraine, our readers and followers flooded our inboxes asking for our opinion and assessment of the war I made a lot of contacts, including some I now call friends. A lifetime ago in corporate America, I once stood on a stage and said, "Do what you do best and partner the rest." My superpowers are pattern recognition, being a data nerd, and being a master storyteller. I'm lousy at a lot of other things. So while I have the talent to look at a large dataset and can predict, "this is what will happen," I did not have the institutional military knowledge or a deep understanding of Ukrainian politics. If you followed us on TikTok in February 2022, I predicted that Russia couldn't possibly be stupid enough to invade Ukraine because they are a regional power, and Europe would declare, "not on our watch." I figured it was a bluff, or they would strengthen their positions in the already occupied areas of the Donbas and call it good. That aged like milk on a kitchen counter.

There were a few people in that circle I was friends with from Russia before the war (what a weird way to look at the world now), and I even considered bringing one person onto a live broadcast.

Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, and some things didn't quite add up as time went by. They would record near protests, march on the edges, and even film, admittedly at a distance, OMON forces in their city. They would film the equipment used for facial recognition but do nothing to conceal their identity. As a conflict reporter (I refuse to say former, but my wife would disagree), I chalked it up to the bravery of a citizen journalist. I also knew that this person had an ace in the deck, so to speak, because of Russian law. Oh, they could get arrested and fined, but they wouldn't go to jail because of their personal situation. Yes, I'm being vague on purpose because the Internet is a nasty place.

As more time went by, there were more troubling signs that something was off. A comfortable life with no clear indication of what they do for work or if they work. The production value of their content was becoming studio-grade, even if it was shot on the phone. I got pushback when I tried to point out that the conditions in western Russia are very different from central and eastern. This is pretty well known that St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Volgograd make a triangle (sort of) where wealth and more western living conditions exist. Leave that area, and you don't have to travel too far, where you'll be told to shut up and drink your wolf milk. I was surprised, especially because this person had an interaction with my wife and knows she is from Russia.

As more time went by, people were clearly being arrested and fined for lesser commentary, and this person has a very public footprint on multiple social media platforms. My radar started to go off that they weren't who they said they were. Then I got a warning through a back channel. Accusations were starting to fly this person was an FSB agent, and some pushback was, "well, The Malcontent follows them." Keen-eyed followers of our Twitter account may have noticed the language change of retweets aren't endorsements. I follow a lot of Russian propaganda and troll accounts because there is value in seeing patterns and what they say. Sometimes you can find the truth hidden in the lies, and that is valuable intelligence because the best disinformation is always rooted in truth.

About two weeks ago, I was starting to be convinced I had been duped, and in the information space, that isn't easy to do. I'm a skeptic by nature. I have a wonderful friend, a former CIA agent, and I have consulted with them on "what do you think about this account/person/content" because that was their specialty area. I started to prepare a dossier to ask them to take a look, but it wasn't needed.

This is the part where some of you may have an "ah-ha" moment, and I will say again, the Internet is a nasty place, and my intent is not to have someone be harassed or worse.

They started a fundraiser to provide electric heaters for people in Mariupol because it is documented and true that Russian Federation and the Donetsk People's Republic are doing almost nothing for the people of Mariupol. The fundraiser was through PayPal, which is a giant red flag.

The second red flag was that they announced they would deliver the heaters themselves and document the trip to Mariupol and the distribution. To show the real city. This was unbelievable to me. Instagram is considered an "extremist organization," for starters. Filtration at the border is well documented, just as Igor "Girkin" Strelkov which still has the FSB on speed dial. Oh. Ohhhhhh.

It seemed impossible to believe that Russian border security at the border to Donetsk wasn't going to do more than a cursory glance at the phone - but it remains a possibility. Get a bored guard or have a little help from your friends. The whole story just was not adding up. Further access to the Internet once into the Donbas is through Russian-filtered services, which are being monitored far more intensely than back in Russia itself.

About an hour ago, all the pieces fell into place with two "patterns" discovered in the open source space.

First, Russian milbloggers are in a meltdown because there has been a customs ban on any "dual-use goods" from Russia into the occupied territories. Drones, thermal sites, two-way radios, cell phones, sleeping bags, and heaters aren't being allowed over the border (among many other items). It is causing huge supply chain issues for Russian mobiks, and it is unclear why Russia suddenly locked the border down (cough, corruption, cough, someone didn't get paid, excuse me, tickle in my throat).

But the second bigger puzzle piece dropped in, I could see the picture. The day after they arrived in Mariupol, a massive grassroots public relations campaign started to show how good life in Russian-occupied Mariupol is. Modern buses run through the city, grocery stores with stocked shells, and street lights illuminate the streets with new buildings and shops open. It is quite the campaign. Not from Russian state media, mind you, wink, wink, just a flood of pictures and posts from influencers in the Russian information space. Isn't that something?

That's simply too much coincidence, and more information has come out that this individual likely has ties to a large Russian marketing organization. While many efforts by the Kremlin to spread disinformation are laughably bad, such as the accusation today that COVID-19 was invented in a lab by Boston University and released in China as a weapon (I kid you not, I read this stuff as do the other analysts, so you don't have to suffer the brain damage), others are quite good.

A key pillar of messaging out of the Kremlin is the superiority of Russian Mir, the Russian world is good and unaffected by the actions of the west - and that has been an increasing core pillar of their content. Drive 90 minutes out of Moscow, and there are apartment buildings without running water or central heat - they were built that way during the Soviet era and are still used.

The best disinformation is rooted in the truth - and the low-level propaganda wrapped in a slick social media package pulls people into the ecosystem toward an eventual path. My life experience has taught me that most people wouldn't catch the sudden "all is great in Mariupol" PR campaign and connect the dots - patterns. Also, you need to know where to look to see the PR campaign in play in the Russian Mir.

So how do you spot disinformation? If your gut says, "something isn't quite right," it is a good place to start.