Week-ending 3 January 2025
Halyna Petrenko, director of Detector Media, the Ukrainian watchdog “naming and shaming” Russian propagandists, in an interview with RSF
“Russia tries to create nowadays a feeling of fatigue because of the war, a sort of defeatism. The feeling that it’s going to be impossible to win the war for Ukraine. At the very beginning, 2015, Russian disinformation was really, really straightforward. They invested great efforts in Telegram activity. Before the full-scale invasion only 12, maybe 15 percent of Ukrainians used Telegram for consumption of news. More and more people started using it. It was quite understandable because the platform allows you to consume information when there is a lack of electricity or poor internet connection. But Russians started to invest in this platform way before the full-scale invasion. They launched about 100 Telegram channels. It’s the most popular source of information, unfortunately, now for Ukrainians. We did several cartographies of Russian propagandists in order to name and shame them.”
– Halyna Petrenko, director of Detector Media
“Deciphering the inner workings of Russian propaganda and identifying the actors spreading it is vital to combating the Kremlin’s false narratives aimed at justifying its war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian watchdog Detector Media is doing essential work by tracking these narratives and their reach in real-time. Through The Propaganda Monitor project, RSF highlights the valuable expertise of independent organisations like this one, which are committed to the fight against Russian disinformation and the defence of reliable information.
– RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia Desk
RSF explains: Detector Media, a Ukrainian civil society organisation that specialises in media analysis, tracks and examines Kremlin propaganda designed to justify the invasion of Ukraine. As part of The Propaganda Monitor, a project launched in September 2024, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) filmed an interview with Halyna Petrenko, Director of Detector Media, who explains Russia’s strategies to spread disinformation on social media and identifies the people behind the scenes.
Source: ‘Exclusive interview with Halyna Petrenko, director of Detector Media, the Ukrainian watchdog “naming and shaming” Russian propagandists,’ RSF, 2 January 2025
