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

 
Image
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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Kursk Gamble

Image
WEAPONS AND SECURITY BY STEPHEN BRYEN  The Kursk Gamble A Ukrainian Gamble for peace negotiations?  STEPHEN BRYEN AUG 9 via email, [ article contains a video]; see also The Russians got caught with their pants down in Kursk. The Ukrainians pulled off a large-scale invasion using new tactics. They advanced far into Russian territory, mostly unopposed, or countered only by some inexperienced territorial units. They did it with drone power but not any other air power, mostly because they don't have any (notwithstanding the symbolic F-16s which are based in Romania). Russia has declared a  Federal Emergency  in the Kursk region.  This is written on the morning of Friday, August 9th.  The invasion started on the previous Tuesday, August 6th.  While the Russians are now pounding the Ukrainians, the Russians are only just bringing up sufficient troops and special operators to try and crush the Ukrainian advance.  This too was pre-planned by the Ukraini...
Read more

Ukraine turns the tables on Russia

Image
A bold Ukrainian operation in Kursk has humiliated Russian President Vladimir Putin and upended some of the logic of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Column by  Ishaan Tharoor The Washington Post , August 14, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. EDT; see also Ukrainian soldiers pose for a picture as they repair a military vehicle near the Russian border on Sunday. (Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters) Russia’s Kursk oblast is no stranger to war.  In medieval times, the district was overrun by the Mongol horde, and was claimed and ceded down the centuries by Eurasian empires. During World War II, the environs of the city of Kursk became the site of the greatest tank battle in history, as Nazi Germany suffered a grievous strategic defeat at the hands of  the bloodied yet unbowed Soviet Union . This past week, Kursk has been the site of the first major invasion of Russian territory since then. This time, it’s not the Nazi war machine rolling in — no matter what Kremlin propagandists insi...
Read more

Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Image
 [image, without its caption, not from below article; but  from ] From:  Wikipedia   [excerpt]; see also  Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine Prelude      (up to 23 February 2022) Initial invasion      (24 February – 7 April 2022) Southeastern front      (8 April – 28 August 2022) 2022 Ukrainian counteroffensives      (29 August – 11 November 2022) Second stalemate      (12 November 2022 – 7 June 2023) 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive      (8 June 2023 – 31 August 2023) 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive, cont.      (1 September – 30 November 2023) 2023–2024 winter campaigns      (1 December 2023 – 31 March 2024) 2024 spring and summer campaigns      (1 April 2024 – 31 July 2024) 2024 summer offensives      (1 August 2024 – present) On 24 February 2022, Russia launched  a military invasion  of  ...
Read more