Russia Takes Its Ukraine Information War Into Video Games

Propaganda is appearing in Minecraft and other popular games and discussion groups as the Kremlin tries to win over new audiences. 

Steven Lee Myers and Kellen Browning, The New York Times, July 30, 2023

 
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In a still from a video game, three tanks are aligned side by side in a large plaza that is decorated with Soviet insignia. The year 1945 appears on a wall on the far side of the plaza.
A recreation of a Soviet Union military parade in Moscow in 1945 in the video game World of Tanks.Credit...via YouTube
In a still from a video game, three tanks are aligned side by side in a large plaza that is decorated with Soviet insignia. The year 1945 appears on a wall on the far side of the plaza.

Russian propaganda is spreading into the world’s video games.

In Minecraft [jb - see], the immersive game owned by Microsoft, Russian players re-enacted the battle for Soledar, a city in Ukraine that Russian forces captured in January, posting a video of the game on their country’s most popular social media network, VKontakte.

A channel on World of Tanks, a multiplayer warfare game, commemorated the 78th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in May with a recreation of the Soviet Union’s parade of tanks in Moscow in 1945. On Roblox, the popular gaming platform, a user created an array of Interior Ministry forces in June to celebrate the national holiday, Russia Day.

These games and adjacent discussion sites like Discord and Steam are becoming online platforms for Russian agitprop, circulating to new, mostly younger audiences a torrent of propaganda that the Kremlin has used to try to justify the war in Ukraine.

“The gaming world is really a platform that can impact public opinion, to reach an audience, especially young populations,” said Tanya Bekker, a researcher at ActiveFence, a cybersecurity company that identified several examples of Russian propaganda on Minecraft for The New York Times.

— Steven Lee Myers and Kellen Browning

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