Consider This from NPR - From Selfies To Satellites, The War In Ukraine Is History's Most Documented

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

In past wars, updates have trickled out slowly — often tightly controlled by the militaries involved. In the war in Ukraine, every day is a firehose of nearly real-time information, in the form of cell phone footage captured by civilians, updates from satellite intelligence companies and embedded military bloggers.NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre explains how that's shaping perceptions of the war in Russia, in Ukraine and around the world.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. From the very first days of Russia's war in Ukraine, some of the most memorable scenes haven't been the ones captured by news cameras. They were selfies, like President Volodymyr Zelensky's defiant video from Kiev as Russian troops pushed towards the capital. We're all here, he said. Or they were civilian cell phone videos, like the Ukrainian woman telling an invading Russian soldier to put sunflower seeds into his pockets so flowers would grow when he died. Or they were radio chatter, like the Ukrainian troops who told a Russian warship in profane and unequivocal terms that they would not be surrendering.

In other wars, updates have trickled out, tiny updates often tightly controlled by the militaries involved. In this conflict, every day is a fire hose of nearly real-time information on airstrikes, military advances, even an attempted mutiny. A video posted to Telegram by local residents showed flashes in the night. Satellite imagery released by Maxar Technology now shows that that convoy appears to have dispersed. In the latest audio message posted to his social media account, Yevgeny Progolshin noted that his mercenaries were closing in on the capital. Consider this. The conflict in Ukraine may be the most documented in history.

And it's shaping how people in Russia, in Ukraine, and all around the world understand this war. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. T's and C's apply. This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University drives discovery, innovation, and creative endeavors to solve some of society's greatest challenges. Groundbreaking investments in neuroscience, climate change, Alzheimer's research, and cybersecurity mean IU sets new standards to move the world forward, unlocking cures and solutions that lead to a better future for all. More at iu.edu forward. It's Consider This from NPR. So how unprecedented is the stream of information coming out of this war in Ukraine? Well, to understand that, you have to know how it worked in previous wars. And NPR national security correspondent Greg Myrie has covered a lot of them.

More than a dozen, in fact, dating back to the 1980s in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and now in Ukraine. He picks it up from here. When I started covering wars, a typical day was often like this. You woke up in a place with no electricity, no phone service, no television or newspapers. The internet didn't exist. In this news vacuum, every day was a blind treasure hunt. You'd swing by a government office, track down a military officer, visit a hospital, hang out at the marketplace. If you were lucky, by day's end, you'd found a story. Ukraine is different. Very different. There's

more information from this war than probably any war in history. Immediately available. Rob Lee is a Marine veteran who's now a military analyst with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. This firehose of information was evident from the first day of Russia's full-scale invasion in February of last year. There was this kind of overload of information. It was kind of difficult to keep track of a lot of it. And you kind of have to focus on one thing at a time because the whole kind of picture was really, there's just too much information. Andrei Sepulenko is a leading Ukrainian TV journalist who's reported on many conflicts.

He says he's fundamentally changed the way he works. I felt it from the first hour of this war, when I got a call from my friend and he told me, so the invasion has started. And I decided to share this news as soon as possible. He posted on Telegram, the social media app of choice among Ukrainians and Russians. Sepulenko had fewer than 10,000 followers at that point. Today, he has more than 300,000 on his Telegram channel, which he updates constantly with battlefield reports, videos, and nuggets of news. You have to do it quicker, much more quicker than before. And traditional media, like television or papers or even websites, they are too slow. They are too slow. They are,

you know, several steps behind the situation. The conflict in Ukraine is the most documented war for at least three reasons. The first is simply the march of technology, which offers a real-time look at the fighting as never before. Private satellite companies provide daily images of destruction inflicted on both sides of the front line. A drone films itself dropping a grenade on troops in trenches. Dmitry Alperovitch, a prominent commentator on the war, says all this information is hugely helpful, but he adds a caveat. In some ways it's really addictive to wake up in the morning, open up Telegram and see this flood of videos, text messages, pictures showing you what's been occurring while you were asleep. Alperovic lives in Washington where he runs a think tank,

the Silverado Policy Accelerator, but I caught up with him in Ukraine because he says there's only so much you can learn from afar on social media or other sources. It's really, really important to understand that this is a very selective view that's being presented by each of the sides fighting this war. It can give you a lull into thinking that you know more than you actually do about the way the war is going. Rob Lee puts it this way. If there is a missile strike on a tank and a tank blows up, and if it goes on Twitter, right, a big fireball will get retweeted. So a lot of people will see that. Lee understands Twitter, now known as X. His following has grown from around

50,000 before the full-scale war to 670,000 today. But he stresses the war that's on social media can be very different from the actual war. There are a lot of videos also of missiles hitting tanks, right, tanks surviving the strike. It's not going to retweet it that much because it's not a very kind of interesting video. I think a lot of people early on came to this very wrong conclusion that tanks were more obsolete than they were. The second big reason this war is so well chronicled is that much of Ukraine still functions despite the heavy fighting in the east and south of the country. Foreign journalists, aid workers, and diplomats all come and go freely to the capital Kiev and elsewhere. Schools, shops, and businesses are still operating, displaying Ukraine's resilience.

This greatly benefits Ukraine, says Anton Geraschenko, a former government official, who now heads a team that tweets constantly on the war and has nearly a half million followers. Ukraine has won the information war. Hundreds of millions of people all over the world saw our suffering and put pressure on their governments to provide us with support. This international attention focused on Ukraine is far greater than in other wars in less connected, less accessible countries such as Syria, Yemen, or Libya. A third crucial factor dates to Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine back in 2014. At that time, Ukraine felt it was struggling to get its message out

to the world. International news organizations often had a permanent presence in Moscow, but not in Kyiv. In response, Ukraine made a major effort to accommodate media coverage. Again, Ukrainian reporter Andrei Saplienko. In Ukraine, the access to first-line positions is comparatively easy thing. In contrast, he says. So I used to work with the American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. It doesn't work like this. It's process. You know, you have to be embedded through the many procedures. On a frontline visit last year, Saplienko suffered shrapnel wounds. He now has an artificial hip, walks with a limp, and spends less time at the front. But with so much information available, he says, he can do more analytical work from a safer distance.

Of course, the Ukrainian and Russian governments still want to keep parts of the war hidden. Yet even this comes with a twist. Russian military bloggers, often embedded with Russian troops, provide daily coverage from the battlefield. They're highly partisan, yet they're often the first to report Russian setbacks. Again, Dmitry Alperovitch. You have this unique dynamic where the Russian bloggers and these ultra-patriots are very disappointed with the way the war has been going on. They've been increasingly more truthful about the failures of the Russian military. Just one of the many ways this war is being covered like no other.

That was NPR's Greg Myrie. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.