The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab invites you to join us virtually for the launch of a pair of reports, Narrative Warfare: How Russian News Outlets and the Kremlin Justified a War of Aggression against Ukraine and Undermining Ukraine: How the Kremlin Employs Information Operations to Erode Global Confidence in Ukraine, on Wednesday, February 22, 2022 9:00-10:00am ET. 

In the early pre-dawn hours of February 24, 2022, residents of Ukraine awoke to the sounds of terror and destruction as explosions filled the night sky. For years leading up to that point, the Kremlin deployed disinformation and propaganda through its media proxies, spinning yarns ranging from the misleading to the ludicrous, to weave together Putin’s false case for war. Once the invasion was under way, the Kremlin expanded its efforts to undermine Ukraine’s morale and standing around the world to force Ukraine to give up the fight. 

Narrative Warfare and Undermining Ukraine are a culmination of seven years of daily monitoring, documentation, and analysis to identify how the Kremlin and pro-Kremlin media weaponized narratives before and after Russia’s February 2022 invasion.  

Join the DFRLab’s global research team on February 22 as they present their investigations, creating a timeline of key pre-invasion events and Kremlin rhetoric, and exploring the patterns of pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation tools and narratives. Researchers will also detail how Kremlin informational tactics have evolved over the course of the post-invasion period, presenting case studies from Russia and Ukraine, across Europe, and from Africa and Latin America. Their presentations will be followed by a conversation considering what the future holds in terms of holding Russia accountable for its weaponization of information to engage in a war of aggression against Ukraine.

Panelists

Nika Aleksejeva

Nika Aleksejeva
Resident Fellow
DFRLab, Atlantic Council

Roman Osadchuk
Research Associate
DFRLab, Atlantic Council

Terrell Jermaine Starr
Nonresident Senior Fellow
Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council
Senior Reporter
The Root

Ksenia Iliuk

Ksenia Iliuk
Co-founder
LetsData

Liubov Tsybulska

Liubov Tsybulska
Founder
The Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security

Moderator

Amy Mackinnon

Amy Mackinnon
Staff Writer
Foreign Policy

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) has operationalized the study of disinformation by exposing falsehoods and fake news, documenting human rights abuses, and building digital resilience worldwide.