ladimir Putin’s navy is escalating its psychological warfare in opposition to Ukrainian troops by sending them messages on Whatsapp and different media platforms threatening to hurt their households, defence consultants stated on Thursday.
The Institute for The Research of Warfare pressured that the Kremlin was in search of to undermine the morale of Ukrainian troopers which up to now has been far stronger than in lots of Russian navy models.
In its newest replace on the battle, the ISW stated: “Russian forces are escalating the usage of psychological and data operations to break the morale of Ukrainian troopers. The Ukrainian Major Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on June 8 that Russian forces are sending threatening messages to the non-public gadgets of Ukrainian servicemen calling on them to betray their service oaths, lay down their arms, give up, or defect to Russia.
“The GUR reported that Russian forces are sending messages on a wide range of platforms together with SMS, Telegram, Viber, Sign, and WhatsApp and that the messages use location data to threaten to hurt Ukrainian troopers or their relations.”
Ukrainian navy professional Dmytro Snegirov has additionally highlighted that Russian propagandists are conducting informational and psychological campaigns to undermine the morale of Ukrainian troops by disseminating data that the battle for Severodonetsk within the Luhansk province will turn out to be the “subsequent Mariupol,” the ISW added.
It pressured: “These data and psychological assaults doubtless search to decrease the morale of Ukrainian servicemen as operations on a number of axes of advance proceed to generate excessive causalities on each the Ukrainian and Russian sides.”
Russia is engaged in an data battle with Ukraine and its allies together with Britain and America over how the battle is unfolding.
Mr Putin’s military has been dogged by low morale in some models, partly as some troopers have been advised they have been happening a navy train reasonably than a deliberate lightning invasion, which began on February 24, however failed spectacularly, forcing the Russian president to withdraw troops from round Kyiv and swathes of northern Ukraine to refocus his marketing campaign on the jap Donbas area.
