Activists are reaching Russians behind Putin’s propaganda wall

Ren has nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine. He lives in Nuremberg, Germany. He has never been to the country. He wanted to help when Russia invaded. He changed his location on the dating app to Moscow and started talking to women about the war.

Ren says he got into an argument with a girl who said the invasion was only a military operation and the Ukrainians were killing their own people.

Since the Kremlin invaded Ukraine, Russians have existed behind a wall of propaganda that protects them from the details of what is happening on the ground. Russia's state media calls the invasion a “special military operation,” never a war. Troops are pictured handing out aid, not blowing up buildings. According to official pollsters, the Kremlin’s narrative is sticking. Support for sending troops into Ukraine is high, lingering at around 70 percent. Although it’s unclear how reliable those numbers are, The New York Times reported anecdotal evidence that even Russians with Ukrainian relatives believe only military infrastructure is being targeted in “precision” strikes and that images showing violence against civilians are fake. Advertisement

If Russians learn the truth about the war in Ukraine, they might rise up and oust Putin. In the past week, people have been testing that theory by sending messages to ordinary Russians through reviews on dating sites and state-sponsored posts on Facebook before the platform was blocked in Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reached out to Russians on the night of February 23, when he posted a selfie video in Russian. The volunteer army of hackers was drafted early in the invasion. Ordinary Internet users are using the social media platforms that the Kremlin has not yet blocked.

Laura Edelson, a computer scientist studying misinformation at New York University, says reaching Russians within Russia is hard because of the tight control the Russian state has over their media environment. She says that the Russian state has created a shared set of beliefs that the Ukrainian government is full of Nazis.

One of the few social media platforms that the West still shares with Russia is on the site. He asked a Russian friend to translate a text that urged people in the country to speak out against the war so he could use it in his profile picture on the app. He noticed that other people were adopting the idea after he shared the text.