One Year of War Part 1: The Strife between Russia's Mercenaries, Milbloggers, and Military
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This is Overwatch, a podcast presented by the Institute for the Study of War. ISW is marking the first anniversary of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine with a three-part interview series between ISW Russia team lead Mason Clark and senior members of his team.

In this episode, Mason and Russia analyst Kateryna Stepanenko will discuss the influence of MIL bloggers on the domestic Russian information space, the role of Wagner Private Military Company, and the nature of the Kremlin's nuclear rhetoric. Hi, I'm Mason Clark. Today, I'm speaking with Kateryna Stepanenko, an analyst on the Russia team here at ISW.

Katya has worked with us since fall 2021, covering the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, as well as being one of the key managers of our daily updates since the start of the war.

She's focused on the Russian information space, as well as Russian campaign design, and also contributes to our daily control of terrain maps. Katya, thanks for joining me today. Thank you, Mason. It's a pleasure. So, in this series of podcasts we're doing, I'd like to speak with the three senior members of the Russia team here at ISW about...

their assessments of key inflections in the war so far, some insight into their methodology, how we produce the analysis we do, and then some forecasts of where the war is heading in 2023. So on that note, Katya, tell us a little bit about what you focused on as part of our coverage of the war in 2022. What have been your specialties so far?

Yeah, I definitely study a lot of things. I focus on Russian military design, you know, operational art. However, the main focus that I've expressed throughout our 300 and something days worth of updates is the study of the front lines and how they translate in the Russian domestic information space. So that's namely a lot of Russian propaganda, as well as the study of the Russian nationalist communities and

how they respond to Russian military failures. Right, because certainly a key part of this war has been how badly Putin misunderstood the scale of resistance he was going to face in Ukraine and his, with mixed success, attempts to frame that to the Russian people as this war has become far more than he originally intended it to.

Now, before we dive into sort of the key players and some of the narratives you've been observing, talk to us about how you've actually monitored this. How did you get into studying the mill bloggers as we describe them? And what's sort of your basic approach to understanding this aspect of the Russian information space? Of course. Yeah. I think I want to give a brief background on how this particular study came to be.

When Russians decided to invade Ukraine, the Kremlin had made several provisions that limited the use of Western social media, so namely Twitter or Instagram in the territory of Russia.

And that actually prompted a significant change in the way that Russians receive their information. So in the past, obviously, Russians have access to Internet. They use a lot of Western-provided social media. But with the restrictions and the censorship laws, a lot of them gravitated towards Russian sites like Telegram and VKontakte.

And so when the war started, there was a question of how do we get information from behind the enemy lines, especially when resources like Twitter and Russian presence on Twitter or Facebook was restricted.

And that is where I've kind of developed the methodology of looking for information on Russian platforms. And I've identified key players of the information space and who were generating the most insights and who Russians trusted themselves to inform about the situation on the front lines.

So, essentially, our methodology relies on the study of prominent social media platforms and also the several actors that exist on it, namely the mill bloggers.

The millblogger community is very fascinating. It is a combination of some couch potatoes and then some frontline correspondents. This is not a new thing for Russia. In the past, there were military correspondents, which Russians also call военкоры, who were embedded in proxy battalions. And they've led telegram channels or contacted pages where they

informed their very niche audience of pro-Russian nationalists of what was going on, and especially for the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics.

When the war started, a lot of these nationalists realized that there was not enough information coming from official sources, namely the Russian Ministry of Defense. Russian Ministry of Defense has been releasing a lot of very flat situational reports that are exaggerated. And when the offensive slowed down,

It led to kind of a vacuum of information and caused many people to go to the Vaimkor communities who are independent. Some of them have affiliations, of course, and get some sponsorship, but they don't have traditional press provisions that, say, U.S. journalists would have in a regular U.S. battalion, for example, embedded journalists. And so it's

Essentially, what happened was the military failures and the lack of information that Russians were trying to stage on purpose, deliberately, to misinform their audiences, had led to the rise of the new resource of information on Telegram and VKontakte, and that was the millblogger community. And the more Russia has been losing on the front lines,

the more of them emerged. So I can definitely talk a little bit more to this. So essentially, we needed to find a way where we could get more information from Russia from the already limited sources that we had, which were the traditional TASS or RIA Novosti, all of these state publications. And that is something that we did. We really dug into other platforms of information.

Certainly, and that's been a key element of our coverage of the war is how we use multi-sourcing and go straight to primary sources. There's a lot of folks on Twitter, for example, that will also repost text and images and videos from these Telegram channels, but it's very important to go directly to the source and do our own evaluations.

So you've talked a little bit about how the Millbloggers and these Telegram channels are different from the very stilted briefings that the Russian Ministry of Defense is putting out. Before we dive into some specifics of the Millblogger community and what sort of information we get from them, can you tell us a little bit about how does that contrast with the information that we collect from Ukrainian sources, both the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian independent outlets and journalists?

Yeah, of course. I mean, Ukrainian sources really largely rely on the information that they get from the Ukrainian general staff, which is a standard and good practice for operational security purposes. Ukrainians did a very smart thing at the beginning of the war, which was they tasked all of their regional governors and administrators individually.

to create telegram channels. That was an effort to kind of stop information of Russian embattling in the Ukrainian information space. And it also allows each regional governor essentially to provide up-to-date information via accessible means of social media to their constituencies and kind of eliminates that ambiguity for Ukrainian residents, you know, especially those residing in combat territories.

So Ukrainian sources are valuable in a sense that they obviously provide us with on the ground situation that we otherwise wouldn't get, as well as the impact that Russians are having on civilian population, which is invaluable. And other members of our team study specifically occupation and how that affects Ukrainians.

These sources, they differ in the level of granularity that we get. In Ukrainian general staff reports, for example, you get very cut, very pristine, straight to the point reports. Whereas from regional governors, we really can assess which particular village is under occupation, which was super useful during mapping of Kiev, for example, where Ukrainian general staff would just mention a general area of occupation, whereas regional

these regional governors would provide concrete, detailed information of which villages were under occupation. So those are just the examples. Now, when we compare that to Russian Ministry of Defense, there's

several of waves of changes that we've observed. I can definitely go into that more, but they've shifted their style of situational reports quite a bit of times to address either the military failures or to talk about, you know, try to exaggerate Ukrainian losses when they were in a period of any, like, lack of any progress.

Whereas mill bloggers also provide very granular detailing to whatever Russian claims are. And sometimes they even call out Russian Ministry of Defense reporting as being false, which is also particularly interesting. So because a lot of these mill bloggers are on the front lines, we can look at them with like a toothpick and see where they are. But they also lie, so...

That is that, too. Right, which is actually a really key item I wanted to discuss. It's been fascinating breaking down when the different Russian sources disagree with each other, get into very feisty arguments, and sort of talking through the details of the

understanding when they're simply claiming something that isn't true or they actually have a direct line to troops on the ground. Right now in February 2023, for example, they've been a huge resource for us in figuring out what Russian units are operating in Luhansk Oblast with the renewed Russian offensive in that area.

Before we go back into sort of those disagreements with the Russian MOD, could you talk me through how you and the rest of the team on a daily basis unpack disagreements between mail bloggers? And just take as an example, the large back and forth about who was responsible for the capture of Solidar and Daily Progress in that area, for example. Yeah, of course. I mean, working with these sources day to day, you kind of establish an idea of what their bias and what their affiliation is.

Prigozhin, who's the Wagner financier, Evgeny Prigozhin, he actually has a pretty big group of people that are super identifiable because they

promote Wagner successes on the front lines, whereas other male bloggers that are either completely nihilists, like former officer Igor Girkin, who's also, I believe, a war criminal. So they have a different approach to reporting the situation on the ground.

So as you interact with these sources, you kind of come to understand which factions exist and what kind of source, like what kind of information they're more likely to include. So in recent days, we've seen Wagner-affiliated middle bloggers really amplify any type of successes that Wagner Group had had on the front lines.

or, you know, call out any little thing that, you know, Yevgeny Prigozhin does as well. Whereas more Kremlin-affiliated middle bloggers are the ones that are not as interested in, you know, or don't have an immediate faction. They have been amplifying some of Russian MOD information, but also kind of going back and forth on the legitimacy of Wagner claims.

So there's a dynamic. It's a scale. The way that I like to look at the Russian information space is that they all interact with each other. They all talk about each other. They all kind of what we have on Twitter, you know, when you subtweet someone, they do the same thing. They respond to each other. They disagree. Some will say that all of Russians like captured Marinka, which is in Donetsk Oblast, in

while others will make fun of it and say, "No, this is actually a lie. You've been claiming the same thing several times." And that dialogue really helps us to, A, establish this scale, you know, where we can see, "Oh, okay, this person responded to this event in this particular way," which is synonymous with how the Kremlin would like it to be seen or the Russian Ministry of Defense would like it to be seen.

And then you also see the promotion of Wagner or Kadyrov, Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader. And that really helps us navigate the bias and also sees the critical component of the argument itself as another area that we can assess on.

Right. Beyond those specific responses to individual events, let's zoom back up a level. One of, in my opinion, the greatest contributions you've made to the team in the past year is identifying these, what you've called shocks in the Russian information space related to specific events, say, war.

The failed river crossing early in 2022 that led to a battalion or more of Russian vehicles being lost. The collapse of Russian positions around Kharkiv. Other items like that where there's been this fascinating disparity where the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense

seem unable to respond quickly and flexibly to losses that they didn't prepare for. Whereas, and which leads the mill bloggers to in some ways fill the gap in a way that the Kremlin would not prefer. In terms of actual how the Kremlin is running the war, could you talk a little bit about those key shocks that you've identified and has the Kremlin made any progress in better preparing to deal with them going into 2023? Of course, yeah. So I

I'm so glad you pointed out the failed river crossing. It happened around May. - It was a highlight of Katya's year. - It really was. I mean, it was just an undeniable loss for Russians that no matter what you could do, what kind of propaganda you could spew, it was just so undeniable and it went viral for the sole reason that there was satellite imagery that showed sunken tanks and destroyed tanks in Siversky Donetsk River

in May, and that is because Russians concentrated a battalion worth of tanks in one tiny area to cross on a pontoon bridge, and Ukrainians just struck it. It was just an undeniable loss and mismanagement.

The imagery, the satellite imagery went viral among mill bloggers and gained significant traction because they could just count the tanks that were sunk and they knew that it was a lie. Anything that followed after that, any justification that Russian MOD could do was irrelevant. And Russian MOD actually tried to respond to it the next morning. And they released like a picture of a destroyed Ukrainian pontoon bridge and tried to frame

frame it as, you know, here's a victory, we did something good. And it only generated more adversity. And as we went, we saw more of those issues. I mean, the lack of Russian progress, you know, leading up to Severodonetsk and after was really hurtful, kind of

space for meal bloggers. They started to criticize the Russian Ministry of Defense almost on the daily about every single tiny thing. And that started to seep through to the Kremlin. But nothing was as big as of an inflection as Ukrainian ability to have a striking breakthrough in Kharkiv. That is when we saw meal bloggers

completely seep into the confused and just shocked Russian information space on the state media. We saw Russian TV channels that were previously cookie-cutter clean, very positive, Russia is doing really well on the front lines.

invite prominent mill bloggers on their TV shows. And those mill bloggers would say, yes, we lost in Kharkiv. We have suffered this many losses. You know, everything that the Russian military command does is bad. And that was a shock because the Russian TV has never admitted to any significant losses. They... Or...

even when they did admit to some losses, they didn't dwell on it. But this was the time that we saw them dwell on it. And that is when we assessed that the Russian MOD and the Kremlin were losing their grip of the dominant narrative, something that they were able to preserve.

Their narrative itself, of which we tend to call the Swan Lake in the 90s, when things weren't going well for Soviet Union and as it was declining, Russians used to put up a Swan Lake, like performance of the ballet on TV to mask the situation on the ground. And that was the intent behind the information operation going into the war. But it gained significant criticism. And that is when Russians were at a loss.

Now, the prospects and I guess the forecast of this is that we're seeing Putin and the Kremlin and Gerasimov and Shoigu try to regain the narrative right now. We're seeing a lot more of them. Putin, for one, wasn't really showing up much on television at all during the first

10 months of the war. And now we're seeing that they're trying to regain the narrative. But I'll lean over to you if you have any questions on the forecast itself and some observations that we've been seeing. So Katya just referred to Gerasimov and Shoigu. That's Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov, who was appointed theater commander in Ukraine in mid-January of 2023.

after in many ways being absent for much of the war, at least in the public eye, and Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Minister of Defense, who has been given the very unenviable task by Putin of reforming the Russian military in the midst of major combat operations, even while not carrying out the full mobilization that this large war the Kremlin has found itself in likely deserves.

We're seeing this interesting effort by the Ministry of Defense to, in many ways, reassert control over both the command and the framing of the war. They certainly used Prokosin and these other proxy forces in late 2022 when Russia was desperate for personnel and are now in some ways trying to reassert control of the information space and certainly will do so later.

with the ongoing Russian offensive in northern Luhansk oblast as it continues into March and further into this year. Katya, to close out here, looking forward a little bit, what's your forecast of how well the Russian Ministry of Defense will be able to control this? How are you seeing the mill blocker community start to discuss the Russian offensive in Luhansk? And what do you think their prospects are for the rest of the year? Yeah, of course.

The first thing I want to mention is that there's shifts that we're noticing about the key players in the information space. Namely, there is a lot more hate towards Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had previously dominated the Russian information space, especially around his forces efforts around Pahmut.

So I can see how the Kremlin might try to capitalize on any type of successes that they can, you know, achieve or will try to achieve in this offensive operation to sway the narrative. I mean, we're also seeing that already with Tsoigu coming out and claiming, you know, that they have seized like nine villages, I believe.

in Zaporizhia and Donetsk Oblast publicly, which is something that we didn't really see in the past where they didn't attribute the success to themselves. So I can see how any type of successes that Russia tries to achieve on the front lines right now during the decisive offensive might be used as sort of propaganda ways to diminish the influence of Wagner and other irregular forces

namely elevating the main core institution. However, I mean, this is also futile because it's unclear to what extent Russia will be able to achieve at least the stated goal of reaching the administrative borders of the Dnetsk Oblast. And if it fails to do so, after Gerasimov had publicly recognized that this is the goal in the outcome

upcoming months, this can spiral again to the area of mass anger among the same nationalist figures who are never satisfied. They always want to advance all of the goals, the stated original goals of capitulating Ukrainian government, the claim to unification. They're never going to be satisfied. They've already shown that they're always going to find some area of criticism. And a

That remains to be one of the vulnerabilities of Putin's regime right now is that

He continues to focus on the oppression of opposition voices and independent voices. He's blocked Meduza and all of these prominent Russian independent platforms. But he's still not doing enough to impose censorship on these mill bloggers who, at one point, he must realize will never be satisfied with no matter what he does.

He might seize a village or two around Bakhmut, but they will not be happy with that end result because the goal that he had established and painted for them is always going to be fully seizing Ukraine, competing with NATO, being the superpower that frankly at this stage Russia cannot achieve. It's not a realistic goal.

And that is something that is going to continue to be an area where Putin will need to maneuver and appease and continue appeasing these factions by offering them some, you know, half of an achievement rather than the full and always having to find newer and creative ways of satisfying their thirst for these advances.

Yeah, certainly a very key aspect of this war or special military operation is Putin still continues on framing it as this discontinuity between his very maximalist objectives of capturing Ukraine and the strange sort of half measures instill in many ways that Russia is using to fight this war.

And one of the big key elements of our coverage has been that in some ways the information space and the framing has been just as, if not more important than the actual occurrences on the ground, the control of terrain of individual villages.

Well, Katya, thank you so much for speaking with me today. You know we could do this for hours and hours more, and I look forward to your further coverage and insightful assessments of the Russian information space in the coming year, not to mention your insight on the operations on the ground that we didn't even get a chance to speak about today. Thanks for joining me today. Thank you so much, Mason. Thank you for listening to this episode of Overwatch.

We look forward to your feedback on this episode and previous ones. Visit www.understandingwar.org to learn about ISW's work and to sign up for our mailing list.