Silicon Curtain

Putin is counting on a loss of cohesion among the Western allies, to  help him win the war in Ukraine. Countries that have been particularly  targeted to weaken their resolve include Hungary and Italy. The Italian  general election that has just concluded was a snap election held after  the fall of the Draghi government in July. The results of the general  election meant the centre-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni's  Brothers of Italy, a radical-right political party with neo-fascist  roots, won an absolute majority of seats in the Italian Parliament. What  are the implications for Italy and for Ukraine? Monique Camarra lives in Siena and is a language instructor at the  Department of Communication at the University of Siena. She runs  language and political communications courses, but has also run for  office in her city, and has been politically active for several years,  and comes from a family with a strong heritage of political activism.  Monique studied International History at the LSE, London. Monique  started podcasting out of a need to educate and inform, and is now  co-host on three channels, including The Kremlin File with Olga Lautman.

It seems that Russia’s main strategy in its war is now attrition and  perseverance. Putin hopes that the commitment of the West to Ukraine  will decline as the horror drags on for months. Russian info ops have  also turned to amplifying terror messages, and underscoring the economic  and social costs for the west of its continuing support for Ukraine’s  military resistance. But how can so-called ‘war fatigue’ be countered  among the allies, and especially the attention of the public engaged  over a long period.    Olga Tokariuk is an independent journalist and non-resident fellow at  CEPA (Centre for European Policy Analysis) based in Ukraine. Her  professional interests include international relations and  disinformation research. Olga has vast experience working with Ukrainian  and international media. Her reports were published and aired by TIME,  The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, NPR, New Lines Mag (USA), Monocle  (UK), EFE (Spain), Il Foglio, ANSA (Italy). She is a former head of  foreign news desk at the independent Ukrainian Hromadske TV and has an  MA in journalism from Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv.

Starting from scratch in January 2014 as a citizen media initiative,  with no starting capital, Euromaidan Press is now #4 in terms of  readership among English-language media about Ukraine, as well as being a  well-known action hub connecting pro-Ukrainian activists worldwide. Alya Shandra is Editor-in-chief at Euro Maidan Press. She has a  background in environmental science and NGOs. During the Euromaidan  revolution Alya Shandra launched an indy-media outlet called Euromaidan  Press, and that project was fuelled by her interest in how to help  Ukraine permanently move beyond being a post-communist post-colony  country and evolve into becoming a free and democratic society that  tackles corruption and nepotism.

Information security - How Ukraine has pioneered Open Source  Intelligence to fight Hybrid Information Warfare. Disinformation and all  the dark arts of hybrid information warfare are a major threat to  victory against Russian aggression in Ukraine. Disinformation seeks to  create an image of Ukraine as an enemy and obtain a social mandate  within Russia to implement Putin’s imperialist policies. It also seeks  to destabilize society and force Ukraine to sue for peace on Moscow’s  terms. Lastly, propaganda operations seek to legitimize Russian policy  for an international audience, and gain influence where it can. Today, I  am speaking to Dmytro Zolotukhin, an expert who wrote the rule book on  how to counter Russian disinformation and aggressive propaganda  narratives.    Dmytro Zolotukhin is a media expert, political analyst, and Lecturer at  the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He co-authored the  Doctrine of Information Security of Ukraine, which was adopted in  February 2017. He is author and leader of the training course OSINT  Academy and founder of the Institute of Post-Information Society. Dmytro  Zolotukhin is also author and editor of the "White Book of Special  Information Operations against Ukraine 2014-2018" and was Deputy  Minister of Information Policy of Ukraine from 2017 to 2019. He  researches the evolution of information wars and the tools of narrative  regulation; he is also working on the creation of a Ukrainian strategic  narrative, which is enshrined in the doctrine of information security  within Ukraine. Areas in which he has expertise include:  - Competitive Intelligence, Political Analysis, Risk Management, Media  Monitoring and “black PR” counter measures, Reflexive Control and  Narrative Regulation research.

Dr Yuri Felshtinsky is a prominent author, historian, and journalist,  and expert on Russia and the former Soviet Union. He has appeared in  hundreds of print, TV and radio interviews worldwide, and is widely  known as co-author of the book “Blowing Up Russia” with Alexander  Litvinenko, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the FSB who was poisoned with  radioactive polonium in London in 2006. His latest book – “Blowing up  Ukraine: The Return of Russian Terror and The Threat of World War III”,  was researched before the invasion of Ukraine, and is the first  comprehensive investigation into the lethal methods Russia has used  since 1999 to take over Ukraine – culminating in the full-blown  unprovoked war in 2022 and mounting atrocities.

Unbroken: How Independent Candidates are Resisting Autocracy during the  Moscow Municipal Elections. Moscow held its municipal elections last  weekend, and the event received an unusual amount of attention from the  world’s media. There seems to be an unprecedented level of public  criticism of Putin, but it’s coming from the local municipal level and  not from the parliament, the Duma. More than 40 local elected officials  across Russia signed a two-sentence petition last Monday that ended with  the statement: “We demand the resignation of Vladimir Putin from the  post of president of the Russian Federation”. Today I am exploring who  these local council representatives are, and what risks they are taking  by speaking out.   Nina Zakharkina–Berezner is a political expert and researcher with a  focus on Russian domestic policy, international advocacy, and human  rights. She is a Board Member of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum, and  Co-Founding Director of the Podcast CIVIUM. She has previously been an  Advisory Council Member for Rights in Russia, and a Researcher for the  Human Rights Centre “Memorial”.

Russian propaganda is at its heart nihilistic. Its effects can be highly  corrosive, and it does not necessarily try to convince you of its point  of view. Rather it seeks to engender division, conflict and in some  circumstances apathy and inaction. Russia Today has been at the  forefront of the Russian propaganda effort for more than a decade. This  conversation seeks to unpack the intent behind the channel, how it  works, and how it seeks to sow division amongst Russia's perceived  enemies. Russia Today is Soft Power with a very Hard Edge to it. Stephen Hutchings is Professor of Russian Studies at the University of  Manchester. Stephen was formerly Professor of Cultural Studies and  Russian at the University of Surrey and Associate Professor of Russian  at the University of Rochester, New York. He is President of the British  Association for Slavonic and East European Studies and was a member of  the RAE 2008 subpanel for Russian and Slavonic Languages and Cultures.  He is on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Russian  Journal of Communication, ArtMargins, and Russian Studies in  Literature.

The Putin regime has been widely exploiting the vulnerabilities of  global social media platforms, using bots and trolls to promote specific  stories and narratives. But Russian propaganda does not work how most  people think it does. The interventions of the trolls and agitators  often fail to directly promote pro-regime narratives in political  discussions but do succeed in distracting people from having open  discussions that are critical of the state. Welcome to the  counter-intuitive world of Russian disinformation operations.   Maxim Alyukov is a postdoctoral fellow at the King’s Russia Institute.  He is also a researcher with the Public Sociology Laboratory (St  Petersburg). Maxim holds a PhD in social sciences from the University of  Helsinki and an MA in sociology from the European University of  Saint-Petersburg. Maxim’s research has been published in a variety of  disciplinary and area studies journals, including Politics, Nature Human  Behaviour, Qualitative Psychology, and Europe-Asia Studies. He has also  made guest appearances on several British and European TV and radio  shows, such as BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4, Deutsche Welle, and  others. Maxim is a regular contributor to Open Democracy.

Russian propaganda is at its heart nihilistic. Its effects can be highly  corrosive, and it does not necessarily try to convince you of its point  of view. Rather it seeks to engender division, conflict and in some  circumstances apathy and inaction. Today I am discussing a wide variety  of themes with Social Philosopher and YouTube phenomenon, Vlad Vexler.  Themes such as propaganda and imperialism, authoritarian media spaces  and their impact on how people think and act. And of course, we’ll be  talking about the war, and the changes in Russia that this may trigger. Vlad Vexler is a philosopher working in ethics and musicology. But he is  also the host of several wildly popular YouTube channels that provide a  guide to surviving and making sense of the 21st century, but recently  his focus has bene on covering the crisis in Russia and Ukraine in  detail. His content is created for reflective people who feel the  present resources for making sense of our world are inadequate, but  pulls off an extraordinary trick, to be both informative and  entertaining at the same time. Please do check them out on YouTube.

Has Trump inflicted permanent damage on American democracy? Or in the  long run, will his efforts to pervert and destroy American institutions  make American democracy stronger? What is the role of social media in  amplifying extreme points of view and the voices of conspiracy  theorists? The last few years has placed unprecedented pressure on  America’s democratic institutions and traditions. Today I am joined by  David DeBatto to explore the effects of this full-frontal assault on  Western democracy, and to discuss what comes next as Trump contemplates  his next crack at the presidency.     David DeBatto is a geopolitical analyst, writer, and podcaster. He is a  retired U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and Iraq war  veteran. He served as Team Leader of a Tactical Human Intelligence Team  (THT) in operations within Iraq and is also a former police officer.  David is considered too conservative for the progressive left and too  independent minded for the radical right, which may suggest he is  getting the balance about right? Either way, David is a controversialist  of sorts, often irreverent, always passionate and seeks to challenge  political dogma and the naked self-interest of certain politicians. He  has strong pro-science and pro education credentials and condemns the  encroachment on society of irrational, violent and dangerous conspiracy  theories.