March 4, 2014 | 0 Comments

There’s just one problem with Russia’s playbook for Ukraine — it is 2014, not 1980

Russia has taken a page from it’s playbook (the only page, perhaps?) in justifying it’s invasion of the Crimean Peninsula and threatening even more intervention. That playbook was the plan for Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and even Georgia. In each of those situations, Russia could tell their citizens and the world a story that while false, was “cover” for their actions. Putin, however, seems to have forgotten the role of social media and citizen journalism in the year 2014.

Rather than letting Russian media do the only reporting, Ukrainians have been posting scores of pictures and video that show the exact opposite situation on the ground. They’ve posted images of men waving Russian flags beating protestors and peaceful demonstrations in the Eastern Ukraine, where Russian speakers are supposedly being threatened. Even more significantly, a deadline that was given to the Ukrainian military to vacate ships and bases was very quickly denied by the Russian government after it went viral on social media.

Propaganda war

What we’re left with, rather than shooting (thank goodness), is a propaganda war that pits a state and it’s not-very-independent news apparatus against a very connected, very savvy population of another country that can offer instantaneous evidence to counter the state’s reports. That’s a first for social media and for international diplomacy.

The cameras are everywhere…and they’re connected to the world. Ukrainians are posting, tweeting, retweeting and sharing images that completely counter the Russian side of the story. While countries can and will practice naked aggression, Russia and Putin just spent $50 billion on a massive PR campaign called the 2014 Winter Olympics. The Ukrainian people’s use of social media is the cheapest and most effective way to counter all of that money and effort.

What’s with the masks, anyway?

In the video below, Ukrainian officers prevent a Russian (what’s with the weird masks and no insignia, anyway?) unit from taking away their weapons. What makes Putin, a seemingly very intelligent man, so unaware of the ubiquity of social media?