The West And Ukraine’s Pro-Active Information Warfare
Westerners Have Been Texting Russians About the Ukraine War Using a New Cyber Tool.
Individuals from across the globe are using a new website to bypass the Kremlin's propaganda machine by delivering personal messages on the Ukraine war to random Russians.
The website was created by a group of Polish programmers who collected over 20 million cellphone numbers and close to 140 million email addresses belonging to Russian citizens and businesses.
The site creates random phone numbers and addresses from those records and enables anybody in the globe to contact them, with the option of sending a pre-written message in Russian urging people to circumvent President Vladimir Putin's media restrictions.
Since its March 6 launch, the site has been used by thousands of people worldwide, including many in the United States, to send millions of messages in Russian, war footage, and images of Western media coverage documenting Russia's assault on civilians, according to Squad303, the group that created the tool.
The endeavor is one of many attempts, mostly by Western media organizations and governments, to circumvent Mr.
Putin's government's strict limitations on reporting about the conflict, which Russian media are prohibited from referring to as a war.
The website 1920.in, which was created by a group of Polish programmers known as Squad303, enables anyone from all over the globe to message the cellphone numbers and email addresses of random Russian persons and businesses.
Jan Zumbach, left, with fellow Royal Air Force fighter pilot Eugeniusz Horbaczewski, in 1942.
Squad303 was named after a squad of pilots who were renowned for their commitment to the struggle against Nazi Germany.
Since Russian armies invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the Kremlin has shut down or restricted all independent media outlets in Russia.
Access to Western social media platforms such as Twitter has been restricted as well.
Authorities threatened this week to shut down Facebook and Instagram, owned by Meta Platforms Inc., and a new legislation mandates that anybody who publishes "false news" regarding Russia's war in Ukraine faces up to 15 years in jail.
"Our goal was to breach Putin's digital censorship wall and ensure that the Russian people are not completely blocked off from the rest of the world and the truth of Russia's actions in Ukraine," a Squad303 spokeswoman stated.
The representative, a programmer who requested anonymity, compared the endeavor to Cold War-era initiatives such as the US-funded Radio Free Europe, which broadcast radio programs in many languages over the Iron Curtain.
Since the website's launch a week ago, about seven million text messages and two million emails had been exchanged, he claimed.
The group's name is derived from a British air force unit comprised of Polish pilots renowned for their commitment to the fight against Nazi Germany during World War II.
Their website, 1920.in, is a reference to the 1920 Soviet-Polish conflict, in which outnumbered Polish troops fended off an attack by the Soviet Union.
The Journal analyzed the authors' disclosed code for the websites and attempted various numbers provided by the database, which were found to be operational.
It was not possible to verify if the full database is comprised of existing phone numbers and email addresses.
Titan Crawford, a Portland, Oregon, truck dealer, is one of hundreds of individuals who have used the app to contact with Russians and published their discussions on social media.
Mr. Crawford, 38, said that he messaged 2,000 Russian cell phone numbers.
The majority of individuals remained silent, while some replied with expletives, he claimed.
However, 15 people participated in discourse.
Mr. Crawford said that in order to demonstrate that he is a regular American, he emailed a Russian engineer images from his Hawaii trip.
The guy answered with photographs of his family vacation in Estonia, which is located on the Baltic Sea.
Mr. Crawford then shared photographs of big American news organizations such as CNN covering Ukraine.
His stated goal was to earn the confidence of the Russian people with whom he talks in order for them to come to him for unvarnished information regarding Mr.
Putin's actions in Ukraine.
"The whole purpose is to educate the Russian people about what is happening in order for them to rise up and prevent their government from invading other nations," Mr. Crawford said.
"Having lived in the United States my whole life, I am just now beginning to grasp the notion of lack of freedom of expression.
My heart goes out to the Ukrainians, but I've developed some pity for the Russians as well, due to their brainwashing." Dey Correa, a 33-year-old Panamanian mother, said she wrote 100 emails to random Russians in response to the bombing of a maternity facility in Mariupol, Ukraine.
"This scenario is appalling; I'm heartbroken and wishing I could do something." … "I have a seven-month-old kid and couldn't stop sobbing when I watched so many infants fleeing bombs," Ms. Correa, a civil engineer by training, said.
In Russia, media coverage of Russian forces entering Ukraine unfolds differently than in the United States.
Numerous television shows shape public opinion via the use of maps and deception to support Moscow's choice to invade its neighbor.
Sharon Shi composite photograph According to Ms. Correa, she got twenty responses.
Most were belligerent—one sender, mistaking her for a US citizen, threatened to destroy America with a nuclear bomb—but others were more engaged.
One proprietor of a beauty shop said that she was Russian but was not a Putin fan.
Receiving such mails may pose concerns to certain Russian people.
Following a number of anti-war rallies in recent days, Russian police were caught inspecting people's mobile phones and reading their communications.
A Russian mother of three from the southern city of Saratov who was supplied information on the Ukrainian war by a Dutch guy using the Squad303 technology expressed her anguish at learning about what was happening.
The lady, 36, said that she had received photographs of horrific damage and innocent fatalities.
"Seeing this upsets me, and it's quite difficult to cope with everything that's going...
"I am quite concerned," she replied to a message from The Wall Street Journal.
A law student from Moscow, age 25, who also spoke with a Western individual to express her opposition to Mr.
Putin's attack on Ukraine, told The Wall Street Journal that she was hesitant to speak out publicly against the conflict for fear of retaliation.
"Am I gonna jeopardize my schooling, my future?" she inquired.
"I am aware that Putin is murdering people in Ukraine, but it is not my responsibility; I am not a murderer, and I am not a supporter of war," she said.
Thomas Kent, a former president of Radio Free Europe who now teaches at Columbia University, said the West now has a moral obligation to evade the Kremlin's assault on the free flow of information by using technologies like Squad303.
The application enabled him to communicate with concerned Russians who were eager to hear information, he said.
"If the Russian authorities did not believe that regular citizens might undermine their authority, they would not control the media as heavily as they do," Mr. Kent said.
Karlis Gedrovics, the chief executive of an advertising business called Inspired in Latvia, claimed he used the Polish coders' technology to send 100 messages to phones in Russia.
"This is the moment for everyone to participate; it is not enough to just display the Ukrainian flag on social media," Mr. Gedrovics, 43, who is proficient in Russian, said.
"Putin has hired troll armies and a big propaganda machine, but we should counter with a civic movement in our democracies." Mr. Gedrovics is proficient in Russian and has communicated with a number of Russians, the majority of whom have answered with insults or repetitions of official propaganda.
"It would be naive to expect them to soon alter their opinions or acknowledge to having done so...
The state has meddled so much in their private lives that they are unable to voice views counter to the propaganda," he said.
~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan
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