Many residents of Luhansk oblast receive information from Telegram channels. The messenger became especially popular after the beginning of the full-scale invasion, when the Russians blocked access to Ukrainian sites. Almost all Telegram channels covering life in the territories occupied since 2014 are pro-Russian. However, with the beginning of the new phase of the war, anti-Ukrainian channels and chat rooms began to operate in the newly occupied settlements: Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk, Rubizhne and others. But who manages these resources?
On June 8, during regular flights to occupied Luhansk, confusion started among administrators of pro-Russian channels, which once again showed that they are managed by people who have no relation to the city at all.
Andrii Dekhtiarenko, a Luhansk journalist and editor-in-chief of Realna Gazeta, paid attention to this:
"I suspected for a long time that many separatist channels in Luhansk are run remotely, from Russian troll factories. Here is another marker of the fact that all these "Luhansk residents" do not understand the life of the city at all: for the administrator, "Plant OR" and "Luhanskteplovoz" are two different plants. No comments," he wrote.
At the same time, as the editor-in-chief of "TRIBUN" Oleksii Artiukh notes, the situation with pro-Russian channels in the newly occupied territories is similar. According to him, before the start of the new phase, the Russians created a network of chat rooms in the cities of the oblast:
"They were quickly filled with people, because at that time users subscribed to everything where they could find at least some information about the current situation. First of all, chats were used to find informants on the ground. And it generally worked. Someone deliberately worked for the enemy, and someone just stupidly wrote there about what was happening in populated areas, the places of arrivals and movements of the Ukrainian military. Adequate users were simply banned, and particularly active commentators were worked on. At the same time, the chats were campaigning for "Russian peace" and the "advantages of liberation." We managed to identify the people who moderate these resources, and it turned out that most of them are located on the territory of the Russian Federation. Moreover, a significant part of the characters has nothing to do with Luhansk Oblast. By all indications, they are stupidly sitting on the payroll. Today, these groups continue to function, but are mostly focused on propaganda. People are told that they must be patient and that Rubizhne will flourish, that Sievierodonetsk is being restored "at a Stakhanov pace," that "the Armed Forces of Ukraine are purposefully bombing the residents of Donbas" and so on.
It is worth to note that despite the large costs and systematic approach, the Russians were unable to achieve significant results and audience loyalty. Practically all pro-Russian channels in the newly occupied cities are inferior to pro-Ukrainian channels in reach and subscribers. And even almost a year and a half after the beginning of the invasion, they did not manage to catch up with them, which indirectly proves the real mood of the inhabitants of these territories.
* Telegram channels are presented in the collage, which audience consists mainly of residents of the territories of Luhansk oblast captured after February 2022.
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