The Decibel - As missiles fall around her, this Kharkiv citizen continues to fight disinformation

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

As part of our picks of the top stories of 2022, we are re-airing this episode about a woman documenting the destruction of the war in Ukraine. This episode originally aired on March 2.Maria Avdeeva is the research director of the European Expert Association, which analyzes Russian disinformation. With the sound of Russia’s attack in the background, Maria explains what’s happening in her hometown of Kharkiv, and why the decision to stay is her way of fighting the “Information War,” where disinformation is weaponized to change how the world understands the horrors unfolding in Ukraine.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

Tonight, Odessa is pitch dark again after yesterday's massive missile attack on energy infrastructure in Ukraine. Most people don't have electricity, heating, water supply in their homes. In November, Maria Avdeeva was in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. Maria has been traveling to different parts of the country, documenting the destruction of the Russian war. This week, we're looking back at the biggest stories of the year, and the invasion of Ukraine is one of them. The war has been going on for more than 300 days now.

Maria's hometown is Kharkiv, the second biggest city in Ukraine. She was there when the war began and when it was being heavily shelled. In early September, Ukrainian troops recaptured most of the region around the city. It was considered a major victory for Ukraine. But today, Kharkiv, Odessa, and other cities in the country are facing aerial attacks on critical energy infrastructure, which means rolling blackouts that come with no warning and last for hours. Still, though, Maria says that Ukrainians remain hopeful. Ukrainians are smiling, and they say that Russia won't be able to steal our Christmas

because Ukrainians are resilient and they fight. Slava Ukraina! We originally spoke to Maria Avdieva in March. Here's that episode. Hi, I'm Meneka Raman-Wilms, and you're listening to The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Very early on Tuesday morning, our producer, Madeline White, called an expert to talk about Russian disinformation being used in the current war. So, Maria, can I get you to start off? I just, If you don't mind just saying your full name for me,

because I'm going to give this recording to the host so that she can say your name correctly. Yes, my name is Maria Avdeeva. Maria is the research director for the European Expert Association, which is a Ukrainian-based think tank that looks into national security issues facing the country. She's based in Kharkiv. So Kharkiv is on the eastern part of Ukraine. It is very close to the border with Russia. Actually, it is 40 kilometers from the center of the city to the border.

So it is really close. And on the other hand, it is bordering with Donbass, so with the areas where some of the parts of Donbass were previously occupied by Russia. Usually, we don't publish the interview that producers do in advance of each episode. But today, we wanted to play it because Maria's in a war zone, and you can hear it. And we think it's important to share that reality with you. But before we get started, this may be hard to hear, so please take care. Today on The Decibel, we take you to Kharkiv, where Maria Avdieva is fighting the information war in the midst of a city under siege.

I want to ask you about your experiences so far since the invasion has begun. Why don't we start with last night? How did last night go? Well, last night, the shelling was most heavy for the previous days. So since the war started, so the shellings went on throughout the night and then during the day. And I had a group of international journalists here with whom I am in contact, and they were going to see the scene where the Ukrainian military destroyed the Russian military vehicles. And I asked them to take me there because there is no transportation right now in the city. And if you even got the car, there is no gas. So there is no way you can go around the city. So you're glued to the district where you live. So I asked them to take me there.

And when we were there, actually, the shelling began that it was about 1 to 2 p.m. The shellings started that we knew later hit the residential areas. Oh my gosh. Have you heard that? Yes, I heard that. That was very loud. Wow. Was that close?

Yes. Are you okay? Do you want to stop? No, we can go on. I just will ask by... I will just close the window. Gosh, that's really close. Yeah.

Do you need to move rooms? No, I can stay here uh you can go on yeah okay ah yeah sorry i i just that's okay don't worry about it don't worry about it yeah um oh boy my heart is racing i'm not sure how you're so composed. Okay, let's keep going then. So what has the mood been like in Kharkiv since all of this started? Well, at first people like they didn't know what to do. It was unexpected for everyone. I mean that we knew that something might happen soon, but then nobody was thinking that actually they will start shelling the residential areas so that was like people were you know frozen and nobody knew what to do like

some were panicking someone was trying to leave the city you know that kind of situation during the first day so I myself was coping with that because I started to get requests from international media early in the morning right when the attack started so I somehow got myself together you know spending all the day till the late night on the news and like myself looking through the news and then commenting and you know I'd like had no time for panicking or anything because I was on that but actually people around me were whom I know after my neighbors some of them did left some you know stayed but actually it was the first day was the most you know difficult probably in terms of terms of people not knowing what to do, and the situation was unexpected.

So those who wanted to leave, they left the city already, mostly. So now the people who are staying here, they probably do not have a place where to go, or they do not want to leave at all uh like myself for example and uh that is why we are here and so people with small gosh what's going on there so people with small children they they people with small children they just stay here and you know hiding in basements i have a family of which is living in my apartment house and they have two small kids i have seen them yesterday so they you know go to the basement every day i don't know every two hours or spend the night there. And others who are ready to fight.

So I have a lot of colleagues and friends, you know, who are in territorial defense units or in military who are really angry because, you know, Russian rockets are now killing our children. Are you okay to keep going? Hey, Madeleine, this is like something really loud right now. I would prefer that we probably

so I already understand everything, so. Yeah. You want to stop here? Yes. Because. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We'll stay in touch, okay? And please stay safe, Maria. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, bye-bye, bye-bye.

Bye. With Maria and Madeline's interview ending like that, we weren't sure we'd be able to speak to Maria again. But we did. Nine hours later, I reached her at home. And in that time, we learned that the very loud blast you heard was from what officials said was a cruise missile and rocket attack striking a municipal government building in Kharkiv. It erupted into a massive fireball in the city's core. Maria, the last time we had you on the line, the last time our producer Maddy had you on the line, we heard a big explosion. How close was that to you? And are you doing okay after that?

Well, it was very close, probably up to two kilometers. So on actually the walking distance from where I live. And what it was, it was not as the usual shelling that Russia is now doing for the six days already. So that one was one big explosion. And it is reported that it was a missile rocket

that hit the building of the main Kharkiv regional administration, so the main administrative building in the city, and now it's completely destroyed. I've seen the footages and the videos and photos from there. So the emergency services are still working on getting the bodies from the building, so from what was left from the building from inside and i think we have already eight confirmed deaths and but they do not know how many people were actually in the moment when the rocket hit

have you had a chance to to i don't know, go outside or see what it looks like or anything? No, I haven't been outside today because today it was heavy shelling all the day and near in my area. So Russia is now deliberately targeting residential areas and having people there as hostages because when you cannot go outside it means you cannot get anything to eat and you know some people probably need some medicines or some some kind of emergency supplies but it's not possible at the moment because no one is outside and right now when it's already night here the streets are completely dark because people try to hide all the lights so that they will not uh be the the target for the uh rockets or for the air flights which were used

so which russia also used today because i have heard it really uh close to where i live like the bombarder you know flying uh in the area but I'm not sure because I have friends here actually the group of journalists with whom I went outside the day before and now they leave left the city because they now say said that and they worked in really different hot spots all over the world but today they said they are leaving because they no longer can stay in the city because it is too dangerous. So I don't know what will happen tomorrow. And my fear is that they will be targeting critical infrastructure objects so that the

city will end up without the water and electricity and heating, what is most important, because it is really cold outside right now. And without heating, it will very soon become a disaster. heating what is most important because it is really cold outside right now and you know without heating it will be very soon become a disaster. It sounds like it's a it's a very dangerous situation there frankly are you staying and why have you decided to stay in Kharkiv? Well as for for me personally it's my home I don't want i have my friends have offered me numerous times to go uh to go somewhere in europe and they were prepared saying that they i might live with them you know so there's a place is prepared and i can go there any moment but then i do not want to become a refugee and it's like

you know living it's like the robber is you in your house and you just go out and leave so that's probably for some of the people it would be the decision especially if it is family with small children or with elderly and who are who could not take care of themselves then it's the only option for you to leave. But I feel like I will stay and fight for where I live because that is everything I have. This is my home here. I have been here for all my life and I feel committed to document them as much as I can and to be a witness of that because I'm sure that sooner or later all these people who gave these orders to do that, they will become war criminals and there will be the case and they will sit

there like the Nazis did during the Nuremberg process when they were sentenced to different kind of punishment. I mean, it sounds like so one of the reasons why you're staying, Maria, is that you can provide accurate information. You can have a sense exactly of what is going on. And I know you've done a lot of work with disinformation as well. I want to ask you about what you're seeing in this war about with Russian disinformation in particular.

Can you give us an example of a really bad piece of disinformation that has been widely shared here that you've seen? Well, this is the major disinformation campaign I've ever seen. So I have never seen anything like that before, even in 2014, when also Russia used disinformation to create the ground to occupy Crimea and occupy part of the Donbass. It was not the same as we see now. At first, the Russian narrative, the main narrative was that they were trying to show Ukraine as an aggressor who, with the support of our partners in the West is preparing an attack

on Donbass. So all kinds of that stories that allowed Putin then to claim that Ukraine was preparing a genocide against the population in Donbass and now Russia has to protect that population. So after that, actually the invasion happened, the war started, but it doesn't stop Russian wave of disinformation. So when I describe disinformation, I say that it has aim to harm something, to undermine something, because it always has some aim. So it is not just spreading some false news without anything particular having in mind. So no particular aim. It is always targeting something.

So in this case, the target is the perception of the international community of the Russian war. So they always, you know, go, it starts with the naming. So they now say everyone to use in Russia, that is a special military operation. You cannot use the word war. So it even goes stronger. And what is it now about? Well, there is a military censorship in Russian media. They claim that, for example, that video footage that I made myself, that you probably have seen on Twitter. And this is the place where yesterday Ukrainian military destroyed a column of Russian light vehicles that tried to enter our city. And you now see what happened to them. They are destroyed completely.

So fully destroyed. And you see this. So for that and for others, that kind of video, they say that it is staged by Ukraine. So it's not real that Ukraine put that vehicles deliberately and tries to show that it was russian troops and russian troops do not attack any civilian objects in ukraine while you know i hear the shell and going on every 15 minutes near where i live so you've had an actual video that you yourself have posted and recorded and posted and you've had people saying that that's disinformation yes

they are underneath they are posting uh on Twitter that that is disinformation, that that is not real. And they have a huge campaign on social media with bots and trolls who go and search by the keywords for these topics, go to the publics or discussions, tweets, and post their different kinds of narratives claiming that Russia has nothing to do with what is happening now in Ukraine. For those of us seeing this kind of content online, Maria, when we see lots of people sharing all kinds of different content, what should we look out for to make sure that what we are seeing is real? Well, I would believe the official sources. I always go and check with the official sources of information.

When you see Russian accounts, there will be always a mark, and Twitter is now marking them and Facebook as well, that this is a state-sponsored Russian media. And if you see that it is a state-sponsored media, it means that is part of the network of Russian information influence. And Russia sees media not like media in the sense of, you know, it is seen in democracies, in democratic countries. It sees media as a tool in the information war.

So they are now using that to manipulate and try to influence the opinion in the West. And I think what I see now from what is being posted, a very worrying perspective, because they might go for any kind of provocation to prove their position, because they need now to prove somehow that they actually hear peacekeeping and protecting civilian population, because now everyone is blaming Russia for the crimes. So they might stage some kind of provocation to accuse after that Ukraine. And that's really threatening. What exactly would you be worried about here within this sphere? I don't know if your listeners know that before Russia started the Chechen war, it is known that Russian FSB, Russian special services, blowed up residential

buildings in Moscow. So they brought their explosive and blowed up that buildings. And it allowed Putin to accuse Chechen, Chechen, like military in that and start war against Chechnya, which is the region inside Russia, which wanted to be independent from Russia. This is the kind of like false flag operation that we've been hearing a lot about. Exactly. Yes. And so that that kind of false flag operation can happen here in Ukraine, because we have had no numerous warnings from our intelligence about that that could happen.

So what they might go for is they might try to create some kind of provocation, some kind of attack, for example, on the occupied Donbass with many casualties among civilians and then accuse Ukraine in that. And that will allow Russians to dehumanize Ukrainians. We don't know exactly what that might be. There could be many such things staged up and made as a false flag operation. And then their war correspondents, their war correspondents, Russian war correspondents will be there immediately filming everything and taking pictures and then creating a story out of it. Maria, just very lastly here,

I want to ask you about Kharkiv because you know this city well. What was it like before the war started? So we can understand, I guess, what's being lost in this city now as it takes really heavy shelling from Russian artillery. Yes, it is so sad to see it because it's my hometown. I went to school here and to the university,

and that's the second largest city in Ukraine. That's a very big industrial scientific and university center we have here lots of universities with many international students who are actually now stuck here because they cannot they didn't manage to get out of Ukraine because the airports are now are not functioning after the shelling and there is no way for for you know how you can get out of here and that was like blooming and very young city because we had coffee shops on every corner and people were outside lots of parks and amusements and so right now when it is completely deserted with no people at all, with the buildings on fire and this main square bombarded by the Russian rockets.

It just, you know, it like breaks my heart. Today I was looking at the pictures that were made during the Nazi occupation because Kharkiv was occupied by Nazis. And it reminds me of that time, like Charlotte. Maria, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. And please stay as safe as possible there. Thank you. Thank you. It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

I really appreciate that. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White and Cheryl Sutherland. David Crosby edits the show. Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. I'll talk to you tomorrow.