Look beyond the West, and the information war feels a lot different. “We’ve seen many suspicious TikTok accounts parroting Russian ideology or valorizing Russian aggression in Southeast Asian languages such as Malay and Indonesian,” Ng Wei Kai, a journalist for Singapore’s The Straits Times newspaper, told me. “Comments sections on news accounts [are] flooded with pro-Russian views. Much of the content made in non-English languages also takes a mocking or warning tone about Singapore’s decision [to sanction Russia], as if to say, Don’t be like them; there will be consequences for the sanctions.” In India, as the journalist Tushar Dhara notes, the level of genuine sympathy for Russia can be striking. “There is genuine warmth for Russia and the Soviet Union, for its diplomatic and military support to India going back decades,” Dhara told me.
Zelensky’s great success in the information war has undeniably been to couch the conflict as one of Russia against not just Ukraine, but the West. That has helped him win an array of fans across Europe and North America, among both politicians and ordinary voters. But that success, the very reason that we in the West think Ukraine is winning the information war, is also the very reason it isn’t.
Disinformation campaigns are far more effective when they have a powerful truth at their core and use that truth to guide discussion. The blunt reality is that in many parts of the world, antipathy for the West is deep and sympathy for Russia is real. It is in these contexts where I’d expect influence operations to be targeted—and to work.
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