Psychological warfare spares no media weapon in the face of the enemy, as it harnesses news, rumors, ridicule and even lies in order to break his morale and raise the morale of soldiers and residents.
However, psychological warfare experts warn against relying on direct lies, in application of the proverb “a lie has a short rope”, as the discovery of these lies leads to devastating results, especially on the morale of soldiers and people.
“Welcome to Hell”
Before the outbreak of the war, Ukrainian propaganda focused on warning the Russians not to go to war and promising them massive losses.
In this context, the Ukrainian Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Valery Zaluzhny, sent a message 11 days before the outbreak of hostilities to the Russian forces deployed on his country’s borders.
“Welcome to hell,” Zalogni said.
He added that 420,000 Ukrainian soldiers, including commanders, are ready to die.
He added, “We have established combat formations, and were able to deploy the regional defense forces in a short time and arm them with anti-tank wave missiles and a mobile air defense system.”
“We have strengthened the defense of Kyiv,” he added.
“Propaganda Weapon”
During the war, casualty figures were one of the main tools of the Ukrainian war against the Russians. In preliminary statistics, it said that it had managed to kill 3,500 Russian soldiers, as well as destroy about 100 tanks and 500 armored vehicles.
And 14 warplanes and 8 helicopters.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that his forces had managed to kill 6,000 Russian soldiers, since the war began, which is equivalent to nearly 1,000 soldiers per day.
On the other hand, Russia confirmed that it had suffered losses in the raging war, but indicated that it was “much less than the losses of the enemy.”
The Russian Defense Ministry did not specify the size of the losses suffered.
And only a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, said: “Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded among our comrades.”
The Ministry of Defense of Russia is the only body responsible for declaring the dead of the army, and any other party that publishes this information faces legal prosecution.
It is difficult until now to ascertain the real losses suffered by each party.
Evidence and questions
Evidence on the ground raises many questions about the statements of Ukrainian officials. If there were heavy losses in the ranks of the Russian forces, how did they manage to approach Kyiv.
Several videos showed Russian helicopters flying at a very low altitude over some Ukrainian regions, which raises questions about the courage that pushes the Russians to this adventure without fear of shooting down their planes with shoulder-fired missiles.
Most suspicious, however, is the huge Russian convoy that continues 64 kilometers north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, much longer than the 27 kilometers announced earlier on Monday.
According to Maxar Technologies’ images, additional deployments of ground forces and ground attack helicopter units were also seen in southern Belarus, less than 32 km from the northern Ukrainian border.
This raises questions about the comfort with which the Russian forces are moving, without fear of attacks by “baby hunter” missiles, “Bayraktar” drones, or surprise attacks.
The American magazine “Forbes” highlighted the Ukrainian propaganda team that is fighting the media war, and it consists in part of advertising technology executives and an army of “hackers”.
Russian expert on cyber warfare, Dmitry Alperovich, told the American magazine that although Moscow was losing in the information war, Kyiv’s propaganda included exaggerations and lies.
He said many of her allegations were “doubtful or proven false”.
“For example, an allegation that the Moscow Stock Exchange, which was offline on Monday, was still idled thanks to a cyber attack by a Ukrainian cyber army, was disproven,” he added.