Serhii Bykov, political consultant

 

We eagerly await Victory Day over the Russian aggressors and approach it with all our strength. According to Oleksiy Reznikov, millions of Ukrainians have taken up arms and joined the ranks of Ukraine's defense forces. Others work in the rear, transport goods, donate, and volunteer—all for the sake of victory over the aggressor. But we rarely consider what will happen after the war ends.

Now is the time to plan for our future after the long-awaited victory and anticipate the possible challenges we will face. In this column, I want to share my view on five potential threats to national security in the information sphere that our country may face after the war. I believe that we should start working on measures to safeguard against these threats right now.

Public devaluation of soldiers.

Currently, the military enjoys the highest level of trust among state institutions. According to the January survey conducted by NDI and KMIS, 98% of Ukrainians trust the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, after the war, the level of trust to the Armed Forces may decrease, and veterans may face hostility if the state does not engrain respectful attitudes towards our defenders in society.

Just to remind you of the numbers, according to a KMIS survey, at the end of 2014, the army became the most trusted institution, with 76% of Ukrainians trusting it. The President, the church, Ukrainian media, and the government followed it. However, by the end of 2018, according to the same KMIS survey, trust to the Armed Forces of Ukraine had decreased to 53%, skips ahead the church and volunteer organizations.

Veterans are already facing employment problems, which pushes them to antisocial behavior. Nearly one-third, 28% of veterans, are unemployed, according to a survey conducted by the Ukrainian Veterans Foundation in February 2023.

Gaps in the rehabilitation and reintegration of military personnel into civilian life increase the risk of devaluation of soldiers. This can be exacerbated by the manipulative focus of the media and social networks on cases of crimes or inappropriate behavior by former military personnel.
I am very pleased that the office of Vice-Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk and Minister Yulia Laputina have taken up the task of updating the state policy strategy for veterans and internally displaced persons. This is a necessary and very important direction of work that should make the lives of veterans and displaced persons much easier. However, in this column, I draw attention to the threats to information security, which unfortunately will not disappear even if the government solves all the problems of veterans.

Information war of all against all.

The year of Russia's full-scale invasion changed the information habits of Ukrainians. Our compatriots watch TV less and social networks, groups, and chats in messengers become more popular.

The February survey by "Rating" Group shows that national TV channels and messengers are almost equal in popularity as a source of news - 43% and 41%, respectively. Although just a year ago, 55% of Ukrainians watched national TV and only 11% of our fellow citizens received news from messengers.

Unlike television and official media, new media often spread fakes, manipulations, and blatant disinformation. Anonymous channels with "insiders" are particularly dangerous. It is impossible to verify their information, and it is extremely difficult to punish these channels for disinformation. Despite the emotional coloring, it is necessary to avoid sharing and reacting to fake news.

Despite an active media literacy campaign, at the end of 2022, 63% of Ukrainians published disinformation on Facebook. These are the results of the fourth wave survey of the fact-checking initiative of Oksana Moroz #HowNotToBecomeAVegetable.

After winning battles on different fronts, there may be a temptation to use new media to discredit individuals or entire institutions. Both internal actors and external enemies can use new media to exert hostile informational influence on Ukrainians.

Reincarnation of pro-Russian media figures

After the full-scale invasion, the civic movement "Chesno" launched a register of traitors, in which it singled out media figures as a separate category. As of mid-March 2023, there are 89 propagandists, bloggers, and journalists in the register, including Nazar Diorditsa (Max Nazarov), Diana Panchenko, and dozens of others.

Some of the media figures in the "Chesno" registry have changed their image after the full-scale invasion and pretend to love Ukraine even more than Serhiy Sternenko, but continue to covertly spread hostile narratives.

As long as the war continues, law enforcement agencies do not have enough time to devote sufficient attention to propagandists, especially since they are ready to promote Ukrainian narratives today, hoping to avoid responsibility for their previous anti-Ukrainian activities.

The big question remains: what will they do after a victory, if they manage to avoid punishment? Will they again promote anti-state narratives, divide society, and return to television screens? The question is open.

In countering the reincarnation of propagandists, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, and the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine play an important role.

Threat to Identity

The Strategy of Information Security of Ukraine until 2025 identifies the establishment of Ukrainian civic identity as a separate goal of state policy. Much has already been done to achieve this, such as measures for the Ukrainization of the cultural space, service sector, decommunization of toponyms, and so on.

Following a year of Russia's full-scale invasion, the percentage of Ukrainians who communicate in the state language has increased. According to a survey by the Democratic Initiatives Fund and the Razumkov Center, 71% of our compatriots now use Ukrainian in everyday life, compared to 64% a year ago. The number of those who consider Ukrainian their native language has also increased by ten percentage points to 87%.

The Ukrainian language and self-identification as Ukrainian have been key unifying factors throughout history. However, to achieve the goal of establishing civic identity, one language and self-identification are not enough. The Strategy of Information Security also highlights stimulating the development of Ukrainian cinema, publishing, and other cultural products as separate tasks. There are still certain gaps in this regard. Let's start with language.

So far, 35% of Ukrainians believe that cultural products can be created in Russian. It's good that the percentage of Ukrainians who support the ban on Russian artists and cultural products has increased. Now, 63% of us do, which is more than 20% higher than a year ago. At the same time, nearly 14% of the population still consider the ban on Russian cultural products a mistake, according to the aforementioned study by the Democratic Initiatives Fund and the Razumkov Center.

Now let's talk about the meanings. If the plot of a movie promotes hostile narratives, it cannot be saved by either the Ukrainian language or Ukrainian production. Is the problem with making a Ukrainian-language film about the events of 2014, where the main character lives in a Kostiantynivka city on the East of Ukraine, he advocates for neutral status, Ukraine's multi-vector policy, and sees the possibility of self-realization at anti-Maidan rallies? Will such a film be ours, even if all the characters speak Ukrainian and the film is produced by a company from Vinnytsia? - it's absurd, because it's a hostile film with hostile narratives. It will be even more absurd if the state will fund such a product. Because meanings matter.

The state must construct a matrix of meanings that will promote civic identity, correspond to national values and national interests. We must clearly understand what common glory of the past unites us, what we are doing together now, and for the achievement of which common dream we are doing it. If we do not do this at the state level, then a foreign identity will occupy the void and we will advance a foreign goal. Whose? The range is wide: from Turkey to India and South Korea. There will always be enough people who want to occupy our cultural space, so the cultural space must be protected.

The model of the ideal Ukrainian

Another potential threat that logically follows from the description of the previous one is the model of the ideal Ukrainian. In other words, an attempt to package the multifaceted nature of Ukrainian identity into a certain box with a set of characteristics. It's an attempt to portray Ukrainians as lard-eaters in pants. This is the degrading image that Russian propagandists have been trying to paint for hundreds of years.

Reviving this idea could threaten to redirect the process of building a Ukrainian political nation predominantly along ethnic lines, with a subsequent division into the right and wrong kinds of Ukrainians.

At the state level, it is necessary to develop the widest possible matrix of Ukrainian civic identity that will stimulate diversity, variety, and build a powerful semantic immune system.

How to counter the aforementioned and other threats in the field of information security in Ukraine? The answer is both simple and complex. We need to start with legal and regulatory measures. It's time to finally adopt the government's Order "On Approval of the Action Plan for the Implementation of the Information Security Strategy for the Period up to 2025." This document was developed by the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy and, as far as I know, has been approved by all stakeholders. I would like to remind you that the period for public proposals to the plan ended last August. I think six months is certainly enough time to agree and approve the plan of action. It's strange that the Strategy was developed until 2025, but as of mid-March 2023, there is still no plan on how to implement this Strategy. The second step is to implement the action plan. The third step is to develop an updated Information Security Strategy for the next period of time.

I would like to emphasize that even in the absence of an approved action plan, ministries, agencies, and state structures are working on the implementation of the Information Security Strategy. They have strengthened strategic communications, introduced a policy of a single voice, support artistic initiatives, and so on. However, without a specific action plan, this work appears mostly chaotic and may not be as effective as it could be.