Anything can and may happen. But having dominated the dark arts of disinformation for the last eight years, the Kremlin’s invincible mastery of the information space has been exposed as a sham, a fiction, another lie. Putin has put on the equivalent of a pair of bell-bottoms and is dad-dancing across the internet. Meanwhile Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy isn’t just commanding his armed forces: he’s commanding TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram. He’s simultaneously available across all social media platforms – hybrid warfare’s first hybrid leader.

If this sounds like wishful thinking, it is. Russia’s war on journalism and journalists, like its war on Ukraine, is unspeakably chilling. But it’s also like watching Stalin take on the TikTok kids. Meanwhile, Zelenskiy has not just put out a call for foreign fighters – anyone prepared to get on a train and pick up a gun – he’s also being assisted by a crack squad of armchair intelligence officers. Because one of the most remarkable aspects of the war so far is how anyone with a smartphone can play a role in the extraordinary Ukrainian resistance. “Osint” researchers – open source intelligence gatherers – are methodically scouring the internet for the latest photos and videos coming out of Ukraine and verifying and geolocating them in real time.

Every tank is being logged. Every truck and every troop movement is tracked, registered and added to open source maps and databases. This is a country of 44 million people recording every twitch their Russian invaders make. It’s a firehose of real-time information that, with the help of this volunteer army, is being turned into real-time military strategy.