Many of the ads are run by the news and media website, while others are run by a social media agency. Videos of captured Russian soldiers crying to their parents back home to reveal what war is like, and text exhorting Russians to speak out against the war are included. The project is run by a woman who refused to give her name.

The Ukrainian arm of the Internet Advertising Bureau organizes another grassroots campaign.

For the first week of the war, the Ukrainian advertising industry's campaign has mostly been on the internet, though it recently hit the buffers after being asked by the Russian state media regulator to stop spreading. The company said in a statement that the situation is evolving quickly and that it temporarily halted the ability to book ads in Russia.

Some of the IAB-backed group's plans have been disrupted by that action. Baydachenko claims that the IAB campaign's effectiveness is demonstrated by the decision of the Russian government to crack down on ads.

The campaign, in which a large number of different accounts had each spent small amounts of money with Google to target demographic likely to include the mothers of Russian soldiers, will now port to Yandex.

She says there are around four or five other Ukrainian initiatives that were set up in the first days of the war.

The IAB's campaign is funded by private companies as well as by donations and sponsors, who are willing to plow large sums into trying to get across the horrors of what is going on in Ukraine at the hands of Vladimir Putin.

Baydachenko estimates that 10 million hryvnia has been spent on ad campaigns trying to get more honest information into Russia. A national security and intelligence academic at the University of Malta says that people have found out that they can beat Putin at their own.