Telegram Becomes a Digital Battlefield in Russia-Ukraine War

Before the Russian army invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Nataliia Nezhynska had by no means used Telegram. Now she will be able to’t go a day with out the messaging app. It feeds her an limitless stream of updates from her native metropolis of Kharkiv, in japanese Ukraine, to her house in Lorton, Va.

“What the Military is doing, what number of helicopters they destroyed, some information on provides, shared jokes, native heroes, fallen and nonetheless lively,” she rattles off. Nezhynska, who earned American citizenship by serving as a fight medic within the U.S. Military for 5 years, says the posts on the favored app will at some point double as proof. “I feel it’s a really useful gizmo to doc warfare crimes,” she says, “because it has quite a lot of dwell footage of bombings from the telephones of residents [and] safety cameras too.”

It’s troublesome to think about how Russia’s warfare in Ukraine can be taking part in out with out Telegram. The messaging app, which final yr reached a billion downloads, has was the battle’s digital battle area. It’s an instrumental software for each governments and a hub of data for residents on either side. Ukrainian authorities officers, together with President Volodymyr Zelensky, depend on the app for the whole lot from rallying world assist to disseminating air raid warnings and maps of native bomb shelters. So do each the Russian authorities and Russian opposition channels, who now discover themselves minimize off from most mainstream social media. Beginner sleuths and senior army officers alike comb Ukrainian channels 24/7 for contemporary particulars concerning the newest strikes or army developments.

Learn Extra: How Volodymyr Zelensky Defended Ukraine and United the World.

Wars have unfolded on social media earlier than, however not often have they been so meticulously documented as in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And Telegram has emerged as its most necessary social-media platform, providing the world an unfiltered view of the warfare. The app has been important within the exodus of greater than three million Ukrainian refugees, connecting them to secure routes and help. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians outdoors the nation use it to seek out information from house, desperately scanning limitless feeds of pictures and movies for acquainted landmarks or faces. So do relations of Russian troopers.

“It’s the final social media bridge from the Western world into the Russian world…the place you possibly can sort of see what’s going and the way the battle is taking part in out,” says Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and fellow on the International Coverage Analysis Institute who focuses on international disinformation. “Whoever can maintain their info campaigns on Telegram has the perfect probability of shaping world views round what’s occurring inside Ukraine.”

The facility and peril of Telegram is the product of its lack of oversight. Based in 2013 by now-exiled Russian brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, the messaging app quickly turned infamous as a haven for extremists just like the Islamic State. As social media platforms like Fb, Twitter and YouTube cracked down on content material from jihadist and extremist teams, the then-obscure messaging service provided them pace, safety, and privateness—with little to no moderation. Telegram has been utilized by fringe teams like Covid-19 and QAnon conspiracy theorists and white nationalists, but in addition Black Lives Matter organizers, pro-democracy teams from South Korea to Cuba and Iran, and Russia’s personal opposition teams. (Telegram didn’t return a request for remark.)

There isn’t any algorithm that decides what to indicate customers or what to limit, and its structure permits limitless teams. Feedback are simply turned off, turning channels right into a megaphone blasting info to a captive viewers of hundreds of thousands of followers. With only one click on, a built-in button can translate messages from Russian to English or different languages, turning it right into a software of mass communication.

This has turned Telegram into the center of the propaganda battle, permitting tales of Ukrainian resistance or heroism to go viral side-by-side with Russian disinformation. Now, amid more and more brutal assaults on Ukrainian civilians and a determined crackdown on “false info” in Russia, either side are racing to dominate the Telegram warfare.

“Telegram has develop into this actually key battleground within the info warfare,” says Dr. Ian Garner, a historian and translator of Russian warfare propaganda. “And it’s attention-grabbing that this info warfare has been outsourced to a non-public firm.”

Zelenksy’s group isn’t any stranger to Telegram. His advisers had been early adopters throughout his 2019 presidential marketing campaign. They used the app to recruit and manage volunteers, typically posting unique information. Once they instantly discovered themselves main a wartime digital effort, officers had been capable of depend on their earlier infrastructure to coordinate information updates, fundraise, and recruit cyber-volunteers and international fighters.

“I might even say it’s our house turf,” Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, informed TIME in a March 12 interview. “When the warfare erupted, we went again to Telegram and remembered the whole lot that we knew, so we’re working fairly efficiently.”

Learn Extra: The Man on Ukraine’s Digital Frontline

The Ukrainian authorities repurposed its official COVID-19 Telegram channel, which for the earlier two years had been used to share pandemic-related information, to supply 24/7 updates concerning the warfare. Renamed “UkraineNow,” the trouble now has greater than three million followers throughout its Ukrainian, Russian and English-language channels. Fedorov’s group has additionally used the app to recruit an “IT Military” of 300,000 cybersecurity volunteers, it informed TIME.

Zelensky makes use of it to share casual, private movies, typically filmed on a smartphone, to the broader world. In three weeks, his channel—which had 65,000 followers on Feb. 23—has grown explosively. A global viewers of greater than 1.5 million folks now subscribes to his updates.

However Ukrainian officers have additionally discovered a spread of latest sensible makes use of for the app. Most cities and cities, in addition to their native officers, have their very own channels. Authorities share air-raid warnings, maps of bomb shelters, security recommendation, and suggestions for recognizing alleged Russian saboteurs.

Learn Extra: The Moms Returning to Ukraine to Rescue Their Youngsters

It’s not solely a method for Ukrainian officers to get info out, but in addition for civilians to supply info again to them. Folks can report particulars concerning the actions of Russian troops and armored automobiles by Telegram bots, which channel the data again to Ukrainian nationwide and regional authorities. On March 8, Ukraine’s Safety Service mentioned one such tip allowed them to efficiently assault Russian automobiles outdoors Kyiv. “Your messages concerning the motion of the enemy by the official chatbot…deliver new trophies each day,” the company tweeted.

The Ukrainians have additionally used Telegram to attempt to outpace the Russian propaganda machine by warning folks about false narratives—that Ukrainian forces had been surrendering, or that Zelensky had fled Kyiv—earlier than they take root. Ukraine’s Middle for Countering Disinformation, which is a part of its nationwide safety and protection council, has been calling on extraordinary residents to “be part of the data entrance!”

“Whereas our defenders repel the onslaught of the occupiers, Russian info terrorists broadcast an image of an alternate actuality,” it posted on Telegram on Feb. 27. “As we speak Ukrainians should unite. Contact your kinfolk, acquaintances and mates in Russia and ship them a hyperlink to the Telegram channel.”

The app has been no much less necessary for the Russians. Whereas Telegram has lengthy been widespread in Russia, the invasion and the next media crackdown has pushed hundreds of thousands of news-starved customers to the service. An evaluation of 187 Russian-language information channels offered to TIME by Logically, a U.Okay.-based expertise firm that counters misinformation, exhibits that their subscribers have grown 48% since Feb. 24, leaping by 8 million.

It’s troublesome to inform what number of Russians are looking for out impartial information concerning the warfare on Telegram, and what number of are following pro-Russian propaganda after migrating to the app following the ban of Fb and Twitter. The app is utilized by many Russian opposition teams, and was essential to the group of the Belarus protests in opposition to Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko in 2020, but it appears unlikely the Russian authorities will transfer once more to ban it. (It tried and failed earlier than.)

“The Russian authorities wants Telegram,” says Garner. “Their information web sites preserve getting hacked, they preserve getting taken down, they usually preserve having outages…in order that they’ve been telling folks to make use of and comply with them on Telegram to get the information.”

Learn Extra: A Ukrainian Photographer Paperwork the Invasion of His Nation.

In the course of the warfare in Ukraine, pro-Russian accounts have adopted a well-known playbook of flooding Telegram with disinformation and bots. Recently, they’ve employed faux personas posing as “warfare correspondents” by an arsenal of Kremlin-friendly channels masquerading as goal reporting. A Russian channel known as “The Warfare on Fakes,” which pretends to be a fact-checking service concerning the battle in Ukraine, has been spreading disinformation and propaganda to its rising viewers of greater than 630,000 followers. When Telegram banned official Russian state media accounts for customers within the European Union to adjust to new restrictions, the Russians merely used “mirror” channels which can be tougher to trace, says Jordan Wildon, a senior analyst for Logically.

On the identical time, Telegram can be the conduit by which genuine particulars that contradict the Kremlin’s intently managed narrative trickle again into Russia. “These narratives that aren’t coming from any state media supply are seeping by even to the extra conventional media viewers,” says Garner. “Which suggests they should be getting in by Telegram.”

Write to Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@time.com.