Talk:Russian information war against Ukraine/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Methods poorly sourced

Some paragraphs are unsourced.Xx236 (talk) 13:45, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Dead link

http://tvi.ua/new/2014/10/16/derzhkomteleradio_zvynuvatylo_v_separatyzmi_18_hazet_ta_zhurnaliv Xx236 (talk) 09:47, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Sources

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46616/7 Xx236 (talk) 11:07, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

https://jsis.washington.edu/news/a-russian-federation-information-warfare-primer/ Xx236 (talk) 11:40, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Removed text

“The information war against Ukraine is being waged by all possible means, and not only Ukrainians are its indirect victims.“

Very sweeping yet says nothing specific. Can be returned to article if somebody thinks it is important, but must be cited by RS Elinruby (talk) 04:54, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Donated by or given to

The NYT editorial by Fiona Hill (a gold-standard source) has the quote from Putin to Bush as “given to”, which I read as meaning “originally ours”, rather than the “donated by” that I found there. It is not unusual for machine translation to be confused about such things, and Fiona Hill is clearly meticulous, so I went with the version I have s source for, but a Ukrainian speaker should really verify this — I gather that most of the sources are Ukrainian, although I lack the background to affirm this Elinruby (talk) 05:39, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

True? But so far unable to cite

“Russian leaders aimed in part not to develop their own state, but to continue having influence or control over neighbouring nations, and retaining the production capacities of former USSR members and their guaranteed sales markets. They saw relations with Ukraine in the context of global geopolitics.”

so far best I can do for corroboration is that this was a centralized and planned economy but I have mainly been looking at news not books Elinruby (talk) 11:10, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Yanukovych

Based on some quick skimming it seems pretty disingenuous to claim that the Court had jurisdiction over his ouster and the court did not intervene. The article on this president seems to say that a quorum of the court had been removed from office. I don’t doubt the man was a puppet and I agree that none of this was the business of Russia, but I do insist that the article should be accurate. The truth is outrageous enough. Elinruby (talk) 05:54, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Removed text

“through its agents in Ukraine such as Viktor Medvedchuk and Yevgeny Muraev”

Pretty sure calling oligarchs Russian agents might violate the BLP policy. Definitely needs to be cited if it goes back in, but is peripheral to the point being made in that paragraph so it better be really good citations Elinruby (talk) 09:58, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Bibliography

I imported this information from the Ukrainian wikipedia’s page — whoever translated this didn’t bring it over, or perhaps it is more recent. I merged and alphabetized the lists in the Bibliography and Materials sections. Where I specify a language or translate a title this is via Google. I am sure a native speaker will be able to improve the list but I don’t have one handy at the moment for either Russian or Ukrainian, so...

To do still: standardize format, check for dead links, specify language where still needed.

Also: Improve referencing, expand Elinruby (talk) 15:07, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Removed uncited text

This absolutely must be heavily cited, especially the part about deceit: “From November 2013, when Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych blocked the legislatively enshrined course towards European integration, and the Revolution of Dignity began, Kremlin propaganda has devolved into an openly chauvinistic, imperial and deceitful information war against Ukraine, which had the goal of preparing the world's public opinion for the aggression of Russian Federation to Ukraine.”

I happen to believe that this is at least somewhat true, but you cannot say this in wikivoice. I have no objection to this or similar text returning to the article if accompanied by RS. Oh, and I think you mean imperialistic Elinruby (talk) 03:12, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

I have been able to cite some of this, still in progress Elinruby (talk) 11:05, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

actually there seems to be an overwhelming consensus about deceit Elinruby (talk) 10:09, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Volunteers

On my first pass I stuck a clarify tag on a reference to “volunteers”. Have not come back across this, but subsequent reading makes me think this was the name of an actual unit/brigade/army in 2014 (Ukrainian Volunteer Army?) — note to self and anybody else editing Elinruby (talk) 02:38, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

• Right Sector#Ukrainian Volunteer Corps Elinruby (talk) 06:51, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

an artifact of the overly literal translation, I think. Seems to have been frequently used in Ukrainian to describe irregular fighters in 2014 Elinruby (talk) 10:12, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Ukraine perhaps should be a different article

In any event it needed to be moved from where it was. Putting here for the moment. I think what’s here is ok, though I have questions about notability, but the text itself is fine. I also think that Ukraine actually is a participant in this information war (see excellent social media campaign, Zelensky’s appeals to Europe and to his population, etc) although I am not seeing much about false narratives so far. Granted that I started from deciphering this article (apparently written by an assortment of angry Ukrainian activists who weren’t talking to one another). But I’ve read quite a few sources at this point. Open to whatever, if it seems appropriate. Meanwhile putting this out of the way while I remodel.

Right now we either have a problem with the title or with WP: DUE. Suspect somebody tried to both sides this Elinruby (talk) 07:26, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Currently agnostic on whether there should be two articles, although if as I suspect the article gets long that would be one way to split it up. But it also runs the risk of a POVFORK. Splitting out the timeline might be a better idea. But after going through quite a lot of sources, it looks to me as though Russia attacks and Ukraine defends. “Each other” definitely needs to come out of the lede as the rest of the article does not support it.

Within the Russian concept of information war as opposed to cyberwar, there is no question than Zelensky is fighting back, but he has waged a masterful PR campaign and focused on inspiring his people and advocating for help for his country, whereas Russia intends to conquer and has no qualms about destroying the concept of truth to do so. It has for example for years denied that its troops are doing what they clearly are in fact doing. Some hoaxes have surfaced on social media, probably not started by the Zelensky administration, which is too focused on survival to worry about whether Sikhs are serving food at the Polish border. The sunflower seed lady may or may not exist, though, and if invented was clearly a brilliant piece of propaganda, but still qualitatively very different than falsely convincing the country’s own population that it is being shelled as Putin has done in Russia.

Both countries have withdrawn some broadcast licenses but for very different reasons: Russia wants to control the flow of news coverage, and Ukraine just dislikes false accusations of genocide. Yet as I write this I can see that a cynic might argue that these are not all that different. Needs more thought and does assume there is in fact no genocide, although I am fairly sure of that. Elinruby (talk) 12:58, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Media

The first Ukrainian international TV channel, Ukraine Today, broadcast 2014–2017.

Ukrainian Crisis Media Center

At the beginning of the 2014 Russian invasion, the Ukraine Crisis Media Center was created, a platform for speeches by experts, government officials, international organizations and the diplomatic corps. It provides support to media representatives who cover events in Ukraine.

Articles in about Ukraine in The Guardian receive tens to hundreds of times more comments than others, effectively impeding any real discussion, according to Natalia Popovich, co-founder of the UCMC, and armies of Russian bots only undermine discussion in the forums in which they participate. This undermines confidence in Russia as a source of information, she says, advocating truth against lies and “asymmetric approaches to combating information aggression.””

Blocking Russian and pro-Russian media

Since the summer of 2014, the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine has fought separatist and anti-state materials in the media. In October 2014, they revoked the state registration of one collection, seven newspapers and eleven magazines. Elinruby (talk) 07:32, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

An assessment of the information war against Ukraine on March 7, 2014, was given by Yevhen Marchuk, the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine, and earlier the prime minister, defence minister and secretary of the NSDC of Ukraine. He also pointed out the necessary measures of state bodies today to counter the information and military aggression of the Russian Federation. Elinruby (talk) 08:29, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

In April 2014, Ukraine banned the rebroadcasting of four Russian TV channels for inciting ethnic strife and propagating war in Ukraine. At the same time, Lithuania banned two Russian channels from broadcasting there. Elinruby (talk) 16:54, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

The Lead

• The modern Russian-Ukrainian war started in 2014 and this article describes years before the war.
• Ukraina mostly defends itself, there is no symmetry described here.
• The conflict is postcolonial. Russia does not accept any cancel, BLM ideas, but reconstruct the Russian empire. Please compare Algerian War, after which 13% of the total population of Algeria left the country. No occupants left Crimea or Eastern Ukraine after 1991.

Xx236 (talk) 11:41, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

@Xx236: lede is completely rewritten, input welcome. I am somewhat familiar with the Algerian war but do not quite understand your analogy, explanation welcome Elinruby (talk) 07:27, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Russia thinks it is a target of infowar

This is an important point I have not yet been able to explain, but I have a very good source for it (Handbook, already cited) and have seen the point made elsewhere Elinruby (talk) 06:07, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Dead links in bibliography

All the dead links in the bibliography are published by the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies (Національний інститут стратегічних досліджень). This organization is still extant and tweeting so I suspect the dead links are archived somewhere Elinruby (talk) 05:48, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Isolation vs Insulation

Probably need a Ukranian to answer this. Going with Isolation because that is what the article said when I got here. Google Translate is saying “insulation” so it’s not a machine translation error and whoever changed it to “isolation” may have known what they were talking about. I don’t and I admit it and therefore don’t have a good reason to change it. Just noting the question. The answer probably matters to someone Elinruby (talk) 05:41, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I do not think anybody can answer this question unless you provide more context.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:41, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: Ha. On re-reading, I think you are right. In my defense, I am not used to people answering questions that I put here. But ok: Russian information war against Ukraine#Staged videos, third bullet point. It’s the name of a former factory in Donetsk that became an art center then was seized by pro-Russian fighters and used to make fake videos. If you can read Ukrainian or Russian, there are multiple translation questions in the article that I can’t resolve, and input is extremely welcome. The specific Google Translate result I am talking about here is in an article title. I was running article titles in Cyrillic characters through Google Translate; obviously not ideal, but a first step towards validating/verifying sources. As best I can tell most are either pretty good or cited in an appropriate context Elinruby (talk) 05:23, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

ІЗОЛЯЦІЯ в вигнанні - Ukrainian? Elinruby (talk) 05:56, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I believe it is isolation (like someone got 10 years sentence and was isolated from the society, not insulated). Ymblanter (talk) 06:34, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: while I have your attention, do you have any feedback on CENSOR.NET? It’s Russian-language but I think it is Ukrainian, or at least not Kremlin-controlled. It’s cited several times in this article and I have been meaning to search the archives at the RS noticeboard. Thanks for any thoughts on this or anything else that needs help in here: I am sure there is quite a bit Elinruby (talk) 07:18, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that censor.net is a RS. It is indeed a Russian language Ukrainian medium (meaning it is outside of the government control), and they have editorial policy and reasonable quality of reporting and opeds, in contrast to most Ukrainian media who unfortunately rely on reposts of social media. So I would definitely keep it. If they report on something incredible, this might require a second independent source, but otherwise they should be fine.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:36, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

thanks, that is also my impression Elinruby (talk) 07:54, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Elinruby: it's definitely Ukrainian; Russian does not have an 'І' character. WP:PNT has a link to a language detector, iirc. Mathglot (talk) 06:45, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

thank you both. I am mainly getting the language parameter when I run the titles to get trans-title, but in a later pass I will re-review that unless some help arrives from people who actually know these languages. Isolation it is then. Elinruby (talk)

@Elinruby:, More on language detect: if you have enough text, Google translate does a great job of identifying the language (as long as it's one that they translate). For most languages, just a few words are needed; a sentence or two is almost always enough, even for closely related languages like Danish/Norwegian. Just click "Detect" in the left-hand panel, above the source text you paste in. If you try it with ІЗОЛЯЦІЯ в вигнанні, it comes back as "Ukrainian" in an eye blink. Mathglot (talk) 05:34, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Mathglot, if you have time I could especially use your help with a reference that looks transcluded, or possibly just mangled; let me get you some specific on that. I am working on the article but will be in the Timeline section for the rest of the night (pacific time zone) Elinruby (talk) 07:06, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

See edit summary here?

@Elinruby:, not sure what you mean by a transcluded reference, it looks like a normal, inline reference in the wikicode to me. In any case, I feel strongly that you cannot use the КИБЕРБЕРКУТ reference, or any of the content based on it. This is a highly unreliable post by the equivalent of a facebook troll, about as far away from a reliable source as you can get. It is Russian disinformation, yes, by that's me saying that, and I'm not a reliable source either. (If you're curious, КИБЕРБЕРКУТ is КИБЕР- (cyber) + БЕРКУТ (Berkut – Ukrainian riot police). According to the blog post (which is in Russian), the Ukrainians are recruiting ISIS and other terrorist fighters from across the Middle East, to assist the Nazis running the Ukrainian government. You get the point. But the whole thing needs to be ripped out, content and reference, as wildly unreliable. By the way, don't forget to {{reply}} or {{ping}} me to your comments if you want a reply; I only happened to see your comment above by accident. Mathglot (talk) 05:48, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

That’s true but all that citation is referencing is that Cyberberkut made a claim. Also pretty sure I added in text that explicitly links them to the IRA and cites that. If not feel free to add that in. You are right but it is an example of a Kremlin lie, and is not presented as any kind of truth. This is me you are talking to, my friend ;) Elinruby (talk) 05:53, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

without going to look, I am fairly sure that reference is used in a list of faked videos in a section titled Staged videos. Feel free to edit if you think that’s in any way unclear. Back to the reference I asked you about — I am unsure what that exclamation point does. Apparently it doesn’t transclude, based on your reaction. My issue with this reference is that the citation text says it is BBC but the url goes to the Russian equivalent of Facebook. The author does write for the BBC. Maybe I just need to track down the real url and (most likely) delete the social media post. Elinruby (talk) 06:03, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

now that I look the IRA connection is In the previous bullet point for another video. I’ll repeat that in this one too, thanks, just in case somebody doesn’t quite process that this is a list of bullshit. Good catch I guess. I’ll try to get to this tonight. Will need to find another reference for the connection, but I know one is out there. I probably cited this point elsewhere in the article, since I am so sure of it Elinruby (talk) 06:12, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Urban legends vs propaganda

There is definitely a PR effort by or on behalf of the Ukrainians. Currently struggling with DUE. I don’t think it amounts to disinformation or even, probably, propaganda, as the fiction appears to be fan fiction but the jury is still out. I currently have the Ghost of Kiev for example in Countermeasures despite this but this needs expansion and refining. Zelenskyy’s speeches are definitely an official information campaign. The Facebook memes, not so sure. Also need to cover Ukrainian news coverage since we are covering Russian. Doing my best for an NPOV although I definitely do know who I am cheering in this conflict. Elinruby (talk) 23:51, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Scope and to-do

in keeping with the observation (cited in lede) that the Russian concept of information war does not confine itself to times of overt armed conflict, the structure I am attempting here envisions the information war as a years-long campaign dating back to ca. 2008. Unlike Russo-Ukrainian War, which has a similar scope, however, this article focuses on the information space and I have only included what I called landmark events in the timeline for context. For example, the seemingly random example inherited from the Ukrainian Wikipedia article of buses being burned at a checkpoint makes a lot more sense when it is clear that it took place within hours of Russians having boots on the ground in Crimea. Perhaps this seemed blindingly obvious to Ukrainian editors. So the timeline, which may already have to be spun off due to the length of this article, should not include every single skirmish or news story. Claiming to protect Ukrainians is within the scope I envision, though, and so is assembling lawmakers at gunpoint if it happens at the same time.

In addition to some of the issues from above, the to-do should also include the withdrawal of news outlets from Moscow, the blocking and de-platforming of web access and broadcast signals by all parties, and Russia’s perception of an information war against it. Ukrainian messaging has been very notable - war by selfie? and setting up a hotline for Russian prisoners and families of Russian soldiers as well. We should probably mention Anonymous if we can validate any of their claims and other hacktivist groups as well, as a separate set of players unless there’s a documented link to either did, as is the case with Cyberberkut Elinruby (talk) 23:33, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Cyberberkut ref and content needs to be removed; see my response above. Mathglot (talk) 05:49, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

did you read mine? It’s in the same category as the references to TASS. It’s hard to fact-check bullshit if you can’t have a pointer to the exact bullshit you’re fact-checking. I think you need to stand down from red alert and actually read the text, which is a bullet point in a list of faked videos. Given your concern I repeated the attribution to the Kremlin in that exact bullet point and cited that as well. But now I no longer even slightly agree that we can’t quote them because propaganda. I think you need to take a deep breath. This is an article that talks about Russian propaganda. Of course it will contain examples of that propaganda. We need to be very careful not to endorse the propaganda but no, it is not taboo somehow to quote it. If you think it is unclear that it is utter bullshit, that’s another matter. Go read the article, buddy. Come talk to me when you have and can explain to me how we are going to have a list of lies without talking about the lies and the liars. There is room for caution but not deletion, or we will be deleting the entire article. Why the hell do you think it’s so highly documented?Elinruby (talk) 11:01, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: fyi Elinruby (talk) 23:52, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

No invoking Nazis in Wikivoice

Removed text:

The Russian politician, and Putin opponent, Boris Nemtsov described the information war, which is the information support for the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, as a war of the Nazi regime against a democratic state: "The Nazis with Goebbels at their head can win the war. The fact that Ukraine has lost the information war is a fact. But the fact that you shouldn't worry too much about this is also a fact. You are not a Nazi state," the Russian oppositionist said. Elinruby (talk) 08:10, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

actually this isn’t wikivoice, on second look, but I think it should stay out because the scope is already huge and it’s unclear why we need this long quote by one Kremlin critic. And the Goebbels think makes people stop listening Elinruby (talk) 23:56, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia editor arrested for violating Russian law

"Prominent editor of Russian Wikipedia pages detained in Belarus," Yahoo.

"Authorities in Belarus have arrested and detained ... one of the top editors of Russian Wikipedia.... Bernstein was reportedly accused of violating the "fake news" law Russia passed in early March by editing the Wikipedia article about the invasion of Ukraine. Under the new law, anybody found guilty of what the country deems as false information about the Ukraine invasion — remember, the Kremlin calls it a "special military operation" — could be imprisoned for up to 15 years." --2603:7000:2143:8500:19EE:D8B5:8A85:4329 (talk) 06:23, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

this is covered, unless you want to add something Elinruby (talk) 10:38, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Russian information war against Ukraine

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Russian information war against Ukraine's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "uatoday.tv":

• From Dmytro Yarosh: "UNIAN news. The latest news in Ukraine and worldwide". uatoday.tv. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
• From Igor Girkin: "UNIAN news. The latest news in Ukraine and worldwide". www.unian.info.
• From Russo-Ukrainian War: "NATO sees increase of Russian tanks and artillery in Ukraine". Ukraine Today. 22 January 2015. Retrieved 11 August 2016.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 01:43, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

thank you, will look Elinruby (talk) 05:44, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

are all of the sources meant to be archived?

what if someone looks at this years later and most of the links are gone? they won't have access to the citations. would this be a problem or not? most of the citations aren't archived.

on a lot of articles, all the citations are archived, that's why I'm asking this blueskies (talk) 19:36, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

It would be a good idea to archive them if you are volunteering to do that Elinruby (talk) 19:49, 15 March 2022 (UTC) @Aleeza2018: just drawing your attention to the reply Elinruby (talk) 20:26, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Kudos on adding projects

@Mathglot That’s been bugging me. Maybe journalism should be in there also? They aren’t real active though last I looked Elinruby (talk) 22:54, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Translation issue re Viktor Medvedchuk (media mogul)

Viktor Medvedchuk article says Putin is godfather to one of Medvedchuk’s children. Elsewhere, possibly in this article, I have seen it said that Medvedchek is Putin’s godfather. If so this is a machine translate fail, please kill this with fire. While machine translation often gets pronouns and declensions wrong, and the former seems more likely, I am not familiar with the source in the Medvedchek article and there are other ways to show that they are/were close. If anybody encounters this while reading the article please delete, or discuss here if you think you have RS and want to keep it. Thanks Elinruby (talk) 02:23, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Deepfake: good add!

Been meaning to do that. That video is actually quite notable besides just as a video. It was, I believe, what triggered Zelenskyy’s first livestream to his people and possibly should be mentioned in Countermeasures:Zelenskyy. I would put it after that second blockquote to balance out the text a bit but am open to other concepts. Since it is so notable — afaik nobody has faked a presidential addressed before — maybe it should also go further up (in the disinformation section?) as a lot of the examples towards the top are still from the translated 2014 article. Just some thoughts, notes to self or anyone willing Elinruby (talk) 19:47, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Also in Timeline, which as mentioned elsewhere is likely to get spun off as article gets longer. A lot of things need to get added to the timeline but that’s definitely one of them. Elinruby (talk) 19:49, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

another side comment: it is also interesting that this aired on Ukraine 24. I am still working on the media ownership section here, and it’s a murky topic to begin with, so I shouldn’t say much until certain, out of WP:BLP concerns, but that channel is mentioned there, and there are several things that have been said about the owner.Elinruby (talk)

Not notable for this article

But amusing: [1] Elinruby (talk) 20:04, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Zelensky vs Zelenskyy

The en.wikipedia page says Zelensky. This keeps getting changed to Zelenskyy. Does this mean that en.wikipedia has the transliteration wrong? Throwing this out there as a question; I have no idea which is more correct and invite comment.Elinruby (talk) 03:08, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Off-topic carping about user behavior

@Elinruby: I have discerned a pattern in your comments both here and at my user talk page. You make assertions without including a WP:DIFF. This inevitably creates confusion. In the present instance, you state, The en.wikipedia page says Zelensky. Since you omit a diff, I can only conclude that you are referring to the Zelensky (surname) disambiguation page. Yet in Russian information war against Ukraine, we refer (apart from citations) to only one variant: Volodymyr Zelenskyy (born 1978), President of Ukraine. A diff from that page shows that during the timespan in which you posted your comment here, his surname had not been vandalized and was correctly rendered as Zelenskyy. In future, please provide diffs when making assertions about what other editors may or may not have done, so that our response need not require detective work. Repszeus (talk) 07:33, 16 March 2022 (UTC) I will strive to meet the standards of your month-old account. Your edits have been helpful and I don’t want to quarrel with you; you are clearly familiar with Wikipedia and for all I know have excellent reason to be using an alternate account. Me, I dislike wiki litigation and all that goes with it, and am only in this article because I believe it is important. This is only the fourth or fifth highly contentious article I have ever been involved in — usually I have done obscure translations—and I am doing my best to work it collaboratively, I am so sorry if that best does not meet your standards. I am spending a lot of time I don’t have and in my solo effort to keep up with the news I have at times been confused. And admitted it. I don’t do diffs because I don’t like wikilitigation, and strive to AGF. If that is a problem for you, I am so sorry. It is unlikely to change. I myself wish that somebody would discuss some of the above questions rather than confining themselves to their specific niches of interest, but this too is unlikely to change. Such is life. If I am unclear then please do feel free to ask me what the hell I am talking about. I am going back to working on the media ownership section now. I take it you feel that Zelenskyy is more correct. So noted Elinruby (talk) 08:02, 16 March 2022 (UTC) @Elinruby: Your snark is not appreciated. The age of my account has nothing to do with my expertise. Editing Wikipedia is not rocket science, especially for someone who has completed Edit-a-Thon training and been additionally tutored by an experienced family member. Repszeus (talk) 08:21, 16 March 2022 (UTC) You’re lecturing somebody who’s done this more than a hundred times longer than you have if the age of your account is correct, and has helped shepherd some really big articles into existence. That isn’t appreciated either. Ask your experienced family member what AGF means and realize that I am still trying for accuracy and WP:DUE while you’re demanding diffs over quote marks, eyeroll. That said, a lot of your copy edits are helpful, but i’ve put many days of work into this translation and don’t like being growled at by people who don’t even know the standards I am trying to meet. So chill with the demands. Elinruby (talk) 20:57, 16 March 2022 (UTC) Collapsed. Mathglot (talk) 21:46, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Back to the topic at hand: the short answer is, "Zelenskyy" is correct in English for the romanization of Ukrainian name "Зеленський". In Ukrainian, "Зеленський", with its two i-like letters -ий at the end, is transliterated -yy in Latin script.

As a side note: although Zelensky's name has the same two-letter suffix -ий in Russian, that would be romanized differently, using -iy instead. The reason for this, is that Ukrainian has four i-like letters: і, ї, и, and й, whereas Russian has only two (the last two), so romanization of i-like letters isn't always the same when coming from Ukrainian or from Russian. Beyond that, there are dozens of romanization standards for Ukrainian and for Russian, and they don't line up.

If you want more detail, romanization can follow a couple of routes generally speaking for alphabetic scripts such as Cyrillic, namely: a character mapping, or a sound mapping (although in practice it tends not to line up exactly with either one). Different applications or users might call for different methods. Let's say you wanted to transliterate "Roughage" into Cyrillic: you could have a sound mapping, so we could use a [Cyrillic equivalent of] letter 'F' for the first 'g', and a [Cyrillic equivalent of] letter 'J' for the second 'g'. We'd end up with the Cyrillic equivalent of / rafij / which would be pretty good at telling Russian readers how that word is pronounced in English. But, if you're a librarian trying to index a book with that title in your library, it would be terrible, because all sorts of letter combinations in English have an 'F' sound, like "phone", or, "foe" or "rough", and if you try to classify the title in your Russian library using "rafij", then which 'F' sound was it in the original English, an 'f', or a 'ph', or a 'gh'? You have no way of knowing. So, librarians would typically use a character-mapping scheme, which works out great for them, but a naive Russian user finding that title, might think it was pronounced "roh-gag", although at least they would be able to find it on the right shelf. Wikipedia is inconsistent in its romanization because I think we follow the majority of sources, which may prefer one scheme in one case, and a completely different one in another case. In this case, we use "Zelenskyy", which is a minority romanization, but does correspond to BGN/PCGN Ukrainian Romanization. HTH, Mathglot (talk) 21:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

It does, thank you Elinruby (talk) 22:20, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Bottom line we should use Zelenskyy then? Links to Zelensky work, but via redirect, and you wind up at Zelenskyy anyway, so ... Elinruby (talk) 02:28, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Elinruby: I would, but whatever spelling we use, it should be consistent across all articles. Since he is so much in the news and articles are developing rapidly, this discussion section or a new one on this topic should be held at a more visible venue, where more people will see it and can weigh in. Maybe at WP:WikiProject Ukraine, with a notification at WP:Village pump to invite more feedback. Mathglot (talk) 06:08, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

probably a good idea. But you seem to think there has already been a policy decision? I am not adamant about one or the other; I had been using Zelensky based on the sources I was looking at, and somebody kept changing it, is all my issue was. Seemed like wasted motion. Meanwhile he doesn’t come up in this article a *whole* lot, but let’s standardize on Zelenskyy for this article, pending the RfC if you want to do one. I am sure somebody out there cares a whole lot, and if will be easier to change, if we eventually change it, if the transliteration is consistent (within this article at least) Elinruby (talk) 06:26, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I am not aware of any decision having been made about this. Mathglot (talk) 06:40, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ukraine § Zelensky or Zelenskyy

0K Elinruby (talk) 05:45, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

The videoblogger case

Russian embassy in London misinformed:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10601967/Trolls-target-pregnant-Ukrainian-beauty-blogger-survived-Mariupol-hospital-attack-abuse.html

https://inews.co.uk/news/mariupol-bombing-pregnant-woman-russian-embassy-injuries-ukraine-hospital-attack-birth-1512393

Xx236 (talk) 07:26, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

good example Elinruby (talk) 15:23, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

added and used the iNews reference; Daily Mail is deprecated Elinruby (talk) 07:50, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Another possible example

Elinruby, Check out this Google ru-to-en translation of laughable nonsense by Russia: "Russia will turn to international organizations because of the genocide of civilians by Kyiv" (original Russian article from TASS here). The Ukrainians are committing "genocide of civilians", you see, in places like Mariupol. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 23:21, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Yep. They shelled a bread line this morning, and they have been negotiating humanitarian evacuation corridors then shelling them. Trying to get to that. Thanks for the source. Elinruby (talk) 23:36, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

that maternity hospital in Mariupol supposedly harbored right wing extremists and that woman who died was a crisis actor. In bizarro world Elinruby (talk) 23:39, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Those "buildings" in Kiyv that have "holes" blown through them and are burning or crumbling to the ground, those are just Potemkin paper-mache facades put up in a hurry by the Ukrainians so they can shoot 'em up or burn them, and then cry "Russian missiles did it!" while shooting videos for the western press. Bodies on the ground are all department store mannequins. The real building residents are all at the mall, sipping lattes, buying Louis Vuitton bags, and planning their next fake news operation. </rant> Mathglot (talk) 05:55, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I got the bread line in last night along with Russian claim they aren’t operating in that city, (this seems to have also happened March 3rd? Confused about that.) Anyway added in some articles about the 500lb bombs they’ve been dropping there and a couple other bombing incidents. I put these in timeline, which I figure will probably eventually get spun off, and perhaps should get worked into flagrant falsehood section. (As I recall this is still largely based on the 2014 translated article) The maternity hospital and apartments buildings are equally good examples and also should probably be in the timeline at a minimum. Haven’t managed to do this yet, feel free if so moved Elinruby (talk) 15:59, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Could well be, but watch your units; I remember hearing about 500kg bombs on the French news, and 1000lb bombs on the English news, and that lines up; but 500lb bomb is half the size, unless the 500lb bomb was a completely different incident. Still pays to watch the units, anyway. Mathglot (talk) 09:05, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

model number of the bomb has 500 in it and we have an article on the model saying it’s Russian. If there is any confusion I should probably find another RS to be on the safe side though, thanks Elinruby (talk) 11:19, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Identity

Does the Afganistan part belong here? Xx236 (talk) 12:08, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

The 'Russian world' propaganda is used in Russia either. Xx236 (talk) 12:09, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

maybe not? Need context to answer Elinruby (talk) 15

41, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I mean the 'Identity' subsection. It is about the 'Russian world'Xx236 (talk) 06:53, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Ah. Let me look. I didn’t understand that. Elinruby (talk) 10:56, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

ok, I put that there and think it’s a valid parallel but I guess it is not necessarily a parallel that needs to be made? I was still assembling my thoughts when I wrote it. Tell me why you don’t like it? Also, the blockquote is a bit awkward and needs work, but the old men are the the Kremlin inner circle, not the leadership of Afghanistan, in case it’s the awkwardness of that you dislike. Let me know. Suggest a change? or just make one? If I dislike something about it I’ll ping you Elinruby (talk) 11:06, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Come to think of it both those paragraphs deal with information but not information war, hmmm Elinruby (talk) 11:09, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

just noticed your Russian World comment, please expand on that Elinruby (talk) 11:12, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

The subsection is mostly about the "Russian World". The Afaganistan analogy is put in the middle of it. Is it about the Russian information war against Ukraine at all? Xx236 (talk) 12:59, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

No. Flaw left over from my early rewrite of the lede. As far as I am concerned, move or delete as you think best, especially since I am noticing in the talk page of another article that you have some knowledge of the topic. Nice catch, thanks Elinruby (talk) 16:57, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

just realized that the same can be said of the blockquote, and the Russian world idea could be expanded. I didn’t really understand that Russian world point when I rewrote the lede and moved the article after I realized how far away from the sources the 2014 article had become. I think there is quite bit more on the topic in the intro to the translation of the Russian military handbook that is one of the first sources in the lede, if you need a source. An important point I haven’t been able to work in yet, also, is that Gerasimiv was describing what he thought the West was doing, not advocating that Russia do the same. The reference for that is cited pretty high up and should be obvious from the title. I can’t fix either of these right now; seriously need a break. Back to the blockquote — I am rather fond of it but somebody could legitimately object to the tone of “bunch of old guys” perhaps. But I think the point about the inner Kremlin being told what it wants to hear is important — and conceivably due to its own censorship - and I don’t think it’s anywhere else in the article, so I would prefer it be rehomed rather than deleted. Thanks for the suggestion.Elinruby (talk) 17:22, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Moved the two paragraphs discussed here elsewhere in the article Elinruby (talk) 09:17, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Discuss this

Accusations of genocide

Putin accuses Ukraine's government of committing genocide and he also accuses Ukraine's army of using women, children and the elderly as human shields. NTV, owned by Kremlin-controlled Gazprom, dismissed Russian involvement in the shelling of Kharkiv as "fake": "Judging by the trajectory of the missile, the strike was delivered from the north-west where there are no Russian forces," Hours later, the state media outlet Rossiya 1 blamed the Ukrainians for the shelling of their own city.

Accusations of antisemitism

Putin claims that he will de-Nazify Ukraine in 2022, while The Times of Israel has described Zelenskyy as "a Jewish defender of Ukrainian democracy". In an open letter to Putin, the Ukrainian Jewish community called this "a lie from the first to the last word". Putin "confused Russia and Ukraine", they said. In Russia, antisemitism increased in the past year, but in Ukraine, even nationalist groups do not demonstrate antisemitism or xenophobia. "Stability in our country is under threat. And this threat comes from... your policy of inciting separatism and crude pressure...that poses a threat to us - the Jews, as well as to the entire people of Ukraine, including the inhabitants of Crimea and southeastern Ukraine..."

Ukraine's rejection of the adoption of Russia-initiated General Assembly resolutions on combating the glorification of Nazism, the latest iteration of which is General Assembly Resolution A/C.3/76/L.57/Rev.1 on Combating Glorification of Nazism, Neo-Nazism and other Practices that Contribute to Fueling Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, serve to present Ukraine as a pro-Nazi state, and indeed likely forms the basis for Russia's claims, with the only other state rejecting the adoption of the resolution being the US. The Deputy US Representative for ECOSOC describes such resolutions as "thinly veiled attempts to legitimize Russian disinformation campaigns denigrating neighboring nations and promoting the distorted Soviet narrative of much of contemporary European history, using the cynical guise of halting Nazi glorification".

In June 2014, Russian presidential adviser Sergei Glazyev called the newly-elected President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko an illegitimately elected president and a Nazi, and likewise, he also stated that this fact made the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement which was signed on June 27th 2014 illegitimate. On July 5, the SBU opened criminal proceedings against Glazyev for publicly calling for military conflict with Ukraine. Elinruby (talk) 20:23, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Scope of article is since Ukrainian independence Elinruby (talk) 20:24, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

What is there to discuss? Refer to my comments above. I don't think you read the article Elinruby; it does not suggest what you are purporting it does. Ljgua124 (talk) 00:39, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I did read you remarks. I haven’t read the article yet so I currently have nothing to say. I will but there is a real mess I am trying to fix in another section (ownership) right now.

References

quick skim. The ODS document won’t open; says it doesn’t like my security settings. I don’t suppose you have a different link or some news

coverage about it? Meanwhile hmm I have questions. I will need a little time to formulate them. I do see why a document in Serbian would be relevant, if I am reading this right. I think spelling out the full name of the resolution might be a mistake from the point of view of readability. Also the transition to 2014 is a bit jarring and needs work, but without looking at history, which I would rather not do, I don’t think this is caused by you, I put the 2014 text there and at the time was thinking timeline. I’ll take care of that part of it. I was not aware that this resolution had been kicking around. That doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t important. Is this getting coverage in Europe? I am still a little alarmed at any sentence trying to state a “basis” for these claims of Neo-Nazi thought. Who knows what Putin thinks? I read somewhere that the belief might date back to a World War 2. I think there is something to discuss? If only the wording, but ok. The raskrikavanje source - sorry if this is an ignorant question but what is this organization? Something like Amnesty International? Not trying to give you a hard time, just thinking about the likely reliable source questions. I guess I can try googling the domain name. Meanwhile, just noting that I have started to look. I may have more questions shortly, or tomorrow. Also want to give that other editor time to respond. If he/she does not I pretty much agree with getting rid of the part about the rabbi cursing, which always did seem a little undue Elinruby (talk) 06:17, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

based on google translate of website looks more like snopes. Looks like a good source on the surface. Would like to see if en.wikipedia has previously decided it is a good source. Not relying solely on the RS board, which is bit erratic, but it should be part of any vetting. Assuming we decide it’s a good source there should still be a rewording, I am thinking right nowElinruby (talk) 16:19, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Ljgua124 just drawing your attention to questions and reply Elinruby (talk) 09:20, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Requires clarification

“Thus, one of the examples of creating the illusion of one's significance was the falsification of photographs of the visit of the Russian patriarch to Kharkiv in 2011, where painted people were found.”

Please explain patriarch and painted people Elinruby (talk) 07:47, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

This might be the patriarch: https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/patriarch-kirill-to-visit-donetsk-kharkiv-103690.html — are we saying the audience was a backdrop or something? Please explain and preferably provide an English-language source. Demonstrating that this one is reliable would also be acceptable for returning the text to the article. More context would be better though. Elinruby (talk) 07:54, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

now convinced Kyiv Post is reliable, but still don’t understand painted people Elinruby (talk) 07:30, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

@Elinruby: it's about photoshopping more people into a crowd image than were really in the image. Not sure if experienced photoshoppers would say "pasting" people into the image (not "painting" them, surely), but there might be some photoshop-jargon that belongs here. You could ask this question of the folks at the WP:Graphics Lab, to see if there's a proper word for it; otherwise maybe just "cloned more people into the image", or "pasted people into the image", or some such. Mathglot (talk) 07:39, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Notes to self, anyone else interested

Consolidating a new to-do:

• underground cable mentioned in article lede, noplace else yet. This is part of the question of ownership and control of communications channels.
• the geekier aspects of the network security questions perhaps should spin off as the article is getting long, but I am probably others am quite interested in the Great Wall of Russia and whether they are just dropping packets at the backbone, or?
• the suggestion that cell towers were spoofed in 2014 is something else that would go there
• Also the technology calling the families of soldiers to harass them
• OSINT based on Google location services is notable and do if the fact that Google turned it off (except for select accounts perhaps?)

+++

• Return to question of Ukrainian information war defense - announcements on Trlegram, cheerful Ukrainian soldier pistol, have they really killed that many generals
• Outside actors such as Anonymous and Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Media ownership by oligarchs is an intricate and murky topic fraught with BLP concerns. But I myself can’t even summarize it right now, except that it seems to be Important

+++ Timeline should spin off eventually. Also should not be a timeline of the war itself but rather a pairing of event + rs then lie about event + es

+++ Asov battalion as a focus for propaganda Elinruby (talk) 23:10, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

• Telephony and the death of generals Elinruby (talk) 07:40, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Sourcing

I am unable to assess the reliability of most of these sources. I am not specifically questioning them, since I know that foreign-language sources are often a by-product of translation, but I think that many English-language sources do exist for many of these statements and will work on the article from that direction, since I don’t read either Russian or Ukrainian Elinruby (talk) 02:34, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Going to consolidate sourcing remarks here rather than start a new posts for each; we can always do that if somebody disagrees with me about a given source.

• Going to push to at least translate the titles of Russian and Ukrainian sources. These will be from Google Translate unless a native speaker appears. Article is already listed at WP:PNT. I don’t know either one but I think that somebody should be working on this article
• Hromadske appears to be reliable but possibly opinionated. Has its own Wikipedia article, where the only criticism is that they pushed a Human Right Watch spokesperson to say that Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine. Registered as an NGO. The article has a reference tonit that is on YouTube; despite the platform it seems ok, but it’s useless unless you can follow rapid spoken Ukrainian, as far as I can tell. Probably will add to bibliography and find another reference.
• StopFake: just noting that it is quoted as an authority here
• Bellingcat: I am not sure how clear to is to everyone, but noting it here. I know this for a fact and unlike some of the other sources in this article that I have questioned myself, these people really are definitive. They are experts in their field and the last word on computer forensic topics. Making a point of spelling this out because their website is self-published and may look like a blog to somebody. It is common for computer experts to have a blog if it is a blog, and they are experts
• RT, RIA Novosti: owned by Russian state

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Elinruby (talk • contribs) 10:18, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

@Elinruby: I'll try and look at some of the reference titles for you, although my Russian is pretty elementary. The first one I looked at is 'Блок НАТО разошелся на блокпакеты' (see Note [23]), which you/Google-translate translated as 'NATO Bloc Divided into Blocking Packages' which is pretty mysterious. If you read the article, though, it's (partly) about different NATO members supporting or blocking MAP (membership application packages) of wannabe member countries, like Macedonia (Greece is against it, some others are for it). So, I think the title is saying that there are subgroups within NATO pushing in different directions wrt whether to offer MAP to certain countries or not; and they're also playing on the noun "bloc" vs. the verb "to block". How to say all this in just a few words is not easy; maybe something like, "NATO Bloc Divided Regarding New Members", which is a free translation, and not a literal one; because the word 'блокпакеты' is kind of a compound of 'блок' ("bloc" or "block") and 'пакеты' ('packages'; and imho is a reference to the MAPs; so the neologism 'блокпакеты' is their rendering of MAP. (Or else, it's a neologism compound meaning "member-wannabe-blockers, like Greece; not sure which; in which case it would be "NATO Bloc Divided into Opposing Blocks Regarding New Members".) But I'm way over my pay grade, here, so will ask User:Ymblanter for their opinion. One down, 94 to go... (But don't worry, the others will go much easier; this was a tricky one.) Mathglot (talk) 07:21, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah it baffled me, that one. Anything you can do to improve it would be appreciated. As I think I mentioned and as you know, I am very well aware of the perils of machine translation, but in these languages I cant fix problems even if I can see them. Btw, there is a mysterious use of “stamp” in one of the titles. I think I decided from context in the text that this is the verb to print, but I totally could be wrong about that, Dates, trans-title and language parameter all came from google translate, which was mighty tedious, and there could also be some error in there from sheer fatigue. Oh and I forgot how to do notes so about three of the references should be notes. Thanks for any help you are able to provide. I am around but tied up with a related article that will help me sort out some shady propaganda stuff mentioned in the article that I don’t quite understand Elinruby (talk) 07:37, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

User:My very best wishes, I noticed your response at Elinruby's page, and I see that you're a Russian speaker. Can you help out with the title translation? I just edited the article (diff) and set it to "NATO Divided About New Membership Applications" but with my elementary Russian, I'm only maybe 40% confident about that. Can you have a look at Note 23 and see what you think? P.S. You might need to scan the original article to get a clue what they're talking about; at least, I did; the title by itself wasn't enough to figure it out; in my understanding, the блокпакеты are MAPs ([new] membership application packages). Mathglot (talk) 01:32, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

rv undiscussed move

I'm afraid that, as much as we may be inclined to support Ukraine in this conflict, Wikipedia needs to be neutral and reflect the fact that both sides are carrying out misinformation campaigns in order to promote their narrative. RS support the fact that Ukraine is actively participating in information war:

• "Outmatched in military might, Ukraine has excelled in the information war" Washington Post
• In Ukraine’s Information War, a Blend of Fact and Fiction NYT
• The Information War Between Ukraine and Russia Is Far From Over Atlantic

These are some of the top results for information war in Google News right now... (t · c) buidhe 02:20, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with buidhe that moving this article to a different title should happen only if/when there is consensus for it. I'm not going to propose that move myself, however, because I agree with Buidhe that there is a real purpose to describing a two-sided "war" of information. HouseOfChange (talk) 02:29, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

HouseOfChange Sorry if I wasn't clear. The article was originally Russian–Ukrainian information war, the was moved without discussion to Russian information war against Ukraine. I moved it back, and left this section on the talk page to discuss why. (t · c) buidhe 02:32, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@Buidhe: What you just described is what I thought happened. So I guess I was unclear in my response. I endorse the original title Russian–Ukrainian information war and therefore I endorse your rv. Nice to see you again, by the way. HouseOfChange (talk) 02:35, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Why would you do that? It completely misrepresents the contents of the article. You were bold, I am reverting, now take it to mergers for discussion Elinruby (talk) 01:03, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@Buidhe: @HouseOfChange: do not move the Russian disinformation page again without discussion. Neither of you has previously made a single edit to either the article or the talk page and you appear not to have read it at all. If you had even read the lede you would appreciate how inappropriate your move was. It was extremely disrespectful to show up here for the first time ever and assume that your random Google search based on unknown search terms entitled you to think you knew enough about the content of an extremely lengthy article with 299 references than the people who put them there. To show up here in tandem with another editor who also has never touched the article, minutes after I told you on another page that you don’t understand the reliable sources policy, is blatant edit warring and only proves my point. You cannot prove s preponderance of RS if you do not understand RS. Please go read the reliable sources policy: WP:RS Elinruby (talk) 06:47, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

that said

this may not be the best possible title for the article but as currently written it contains very little about Ukraine. That is a problem previously discussed above but the Ukrainian information war if there is one is definitely different in its nature and In character. There is actually another discussion starting about this at Russian information war, Ukrainian information war, and anyone willing to read the lede of this article — so you understand its topic — is welcome to comment Elinruby (talk) 07:07, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Russian information war, Ukrainian information war

We should investigate whether military history has conventions about naming. And whether they apply.

i have been struggling a bit with this but see current Countermeasures section, which I have recently updated and reflects *my* current understanding.

The article begins by discussing the *Russian* definition of “information war” and that definition, which is different than NATO’s, is critical. It is cited by NATO, US military, and Baltic military journal articles, so I am pretty confident about the discussion, although if somebody had say a Pakistani or Russian source I am sure it could be improved

Based on that definition Russia's has been at war with Ukraine since its independence.

Based on the Russian definition of information space we need to cover PR, physical attacks on infrastructure, social media, cyber warfare as construed by media in Europe and North America, war propaganda, domestic propaganda, fifth columns, psyops, and I am leaving some out. It is important to realize that Russia believes NATO is at war against them every day in every way, and that they are retaliating in self-defense. It is less certain what the Ukrainians believe. They have only been independent since 2014 after all, but the past month has demonstrated that Zelenskyy at least makes the news cycle part of the war effort. It is unclear, at least to me, whether this is Ukrainian policy or merely an inspired improvisation by Zelenskyy. I would say that his addresses are an information campaign geared to a domestic audience on the one hand, an audience of NATO decision-makers on another, and a domestic campaign on the other to remind his population that Ukrainians and brave and ferocious. Elinruby (talk) 05:07, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I forgot to mention above that the main article for this one is Russo-Ukrainian war. We are not trying to cover random non-information events. But they may have tie-ins that are not immediately apparent. For instance CNN recently aired a discussion of how you lose five fairly senior generals in the first month of a war against a much smaller and more lightly armed military. Apparently the Russian secure telecommunications are not working so soldiers are using personal consumer-grade phones, unsecured. So the Ukrainians can at a time of their choosing either eavesdrop (remember, a lot of Ukrainians speak Russian) or pinpoint locations for their own purposes or alternately just disable all Russian area codes, just drop packets or disable GPS I guess. This is trivial at the port level and is definitely defensive warfare by the Ukrainians and a technical fail by the Russians. This is just barely mentioned in the Information operations section as a mention of specific equipment that is likely meaningless to moist people, and should be expanded. I am telling this based on a broadcast but I am sure links are out there. Ars Technica comes to mind as a likely source, as well as NetworkWorld and Gizmodo. Prior to February 2022 Russian and Donbas fighters have spoofed cell towers to harass Ukrainian soldiers and their families, I saw this technology demonstrated at Black Hat years ago so there will at a minimum be a lot of industry sources, This would in my opinion be offensive information war by the Russians, and is definitely mentioned and cited in the article, possibly in the same section. Elinruby (talk) 05:34, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

While we are on the information operations section, it is huge and this is definitely an area where the article needs to be improved. There is a big mess in the section on media ownership section and I am not necessarily averse to the whole section moving to the talk page. The main articles (Mass media in Ukraine and Mass Media in Russia) are out of date and the articles about individual owners and outlets and shell and holding companies contradict one another. A majority of the people in both countries get their information from television (think that is in there cited to foi.se) so ownership is important. Oligarchs own most broadcasters in both countries, At least some of the outlets are officially Russian-controlled, and the last two presidents have “blocked” outlets for broadcasting Russian propaganda, it isn’t clear to me whether this means the signal was blocked or the license was pulled. This is Russian information war against Ukraine, as it was when “little green men” seized the broadcasters in Crimea or the same day they seized the Parliament and forced it to vote at gunpoint to secede from Ukraine. I am not aware of any Ukrainian operations against Russian broadcast media. In Russia, as we probably all know, they just passed a draconian law and most if not all of the foreign and independent journalists have fled.

Elinruby (talk) 06:02, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

More thoughts - afaik Ukraine is not making fake videos to prove Russia has done something. Ghost of Kiev was yes, shared by the Ukraine account on Twitter, but as I recall somebody looked into the forensics and couldn’t find a connection to the original poster. Some may have surfaced since. But this brings us to something I have been wondering, which is what to do about third parties and uncertain attribution? There is also the video game video, the stuff anonymous says it is doing, the citizens filming war crimes, the US administration going to bat for Zelensky and probably a bunch of other stuff Elinruby (talk) 08:58, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Random thought - A non-negligable amount of Ukraine’s telecommunications infrastructure in controlled by Russians. AFAIK the reverse is not true Elinruby (talk) 09:01, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Identity - Russia dreams of empire. Ukraine dreams of being left alone

Proxy war and occupation are not reciprocal either. Remember that Donbas and Crimes have been occupied under the guise of separatism Elinruby (talk) 09:07, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Background section and information policy section probably could be combined Elinruby (talk) 09:10, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

"seized yachts and villas belonging to Russian oligarchs"

Is it 'information war'? Controversial.Xx236 (talk) 14:08, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

No, good point; I removed it. Mathglot (talk) 00:38, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

.Meh. Kind of agree. However there are events mentioned throughout the article for context; what I was finding was that a lot of times an embarrassing event would be followed by some Kremlin tall tale about the Azov Battalion shelling a nuclear plant or a hospital. I remember adding that (in Results, right) and that was what was thinking. But you’re right, it would be a result of the war not the information war, so if there isn’t anything like that just after that article came out, well good. We also need to watch scope. But if there are other similar questions please discuss, especially in the timeline, that will probably spin off soon anyway. Question to you both, since we are here: should we have a results section at all? It was inherited from the Ukrainian article that was languishing in WP:PNT for months if not years, and I am not entirely certain that the results of the 2022 are at this point notable. I’d like to discuss the fate of any other contents if we delete it though, mind you Elinruby (talk) 03:41, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

*tying up a couple of loose ends - turns out Russian information war, Ukrainian information war is talking about both. I will add to this that I am not necessarily against .Mathglot’s suggestion to create separate Ukraine and Russia sections under each section header, but the inherited section headers could be better and i don’t think it will work out. For example, afaik the Ukrainian government is not itself making fake videos, and we don’t know that it has knowingly sharing those it has shared. Unless you find sources for this of course. I took a pretty good look as to Ghost of Kiev, but it’s probably been a couple of weeks.

• turns out you can’t revert a page move, so disregard comments above about cache and redirects. I moved the article back just to keep the title a reflection of the article’s content, but I am not in any way adamant about the title and am very open to any suggestions. This title is just better than the one that was there Elinruby (talk) 08:48, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

  Sometimes you can, but you might have to resort to a round-robin move if the slot is already occupied by a redirect. I've done these before (including one yesterday) so if you'd like to undo the move, lmk with a ping, and I can do it. Mathglot (talk) 08:57, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I moved it back. However they have some sort of automated page move set up to default to the other name Elinruby (talk) 00:25, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Russian Wikipedia

Subsections Wikipedia and Attempts to censor Russian Wikipedia could be unified. Xx236 (talk) 13:41, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

offhand seems iike a good idea but other editors have been working on that; give them a chance to see this and express their thoughts about that, z? Elinruby (talk) 15:44, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Xx236: they appear to have edited stage left. Did you still want to do this? Elinruby (talk) 00:28, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Add for propaganda

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220325-azov-regiment-takes-centre-stage-in-ukraine-propaganda-war Elinruby (talk) 22:24, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-war-azov-battalion-putin-premise-war-vs-nazis/

Broader definition of information war

Information war has been described as "the use of information to achieve our national objectives." According to NATO, "Information war is an operation conducted in order to gain an information advantage over the opponent."

See for example in today's NYT, social media postings from Ukraine "have become powerful ammunition in an information war playing out on social media."

By treating "information war" as a synonym for "disinformation war", we shortchange our readers. Russia and Ukraine are engaged in an "information war" targeting people's opinions--to influence worldwide opinion as well as to keep their own domestic populations convinced of their rightness. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:47, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Disinformation is just one tool in the kit of information warfare. Mathglot (talk) 10:34, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

References

Mathglot this editor still hasn't read the lede or most of the article, since they don't know yet that the article in fact covers considerably more than they think it does. I was thinking, suppose we change the title to the Russian term? Perhaps than would allow us to break out of these painfully earnest pointless conversations. I guess we would need a request for merge discussion given that the people at the other one where they are voting based on mistaken assumptions. Is it ok to start a second request for merge? And what do you think of using the romanized Russian word in the title? We should still use "in Ukraine" or "against Ukraine" though, otherwise the scope will be too large to tackle. @HouseOfChange: ok? Those are very nice sources, yes. The fact that you have titled your post "broader" makes me think that you still don't realize that the article says this and cites this in its lede. I can copy the references over here from the lede if it will help you to realize this?? As for that NYT article, as I've said above and elsewhere, what I am not seeing is attribution of any of these memes to official Ukrainian sources. And I was looking for this on digital forensics sites. Ghost of Kiev was shared by the official Ukraine account on Twitter, for example, but it was first posted somewhat earlier by an apparently completely unrelated account. This is discussed in the article under Countermeasures. If you can find a good source that its origins are governmental then hurray. As I keep saying. Elinruby (talk) 00:31, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I assume you are just talking about the word дезинформация (dezinformatsiya). I don't think that's a good idea, because English does not use that word, unlike it does, say, with apparatchik, Sputnik, or glasnost. I mean, you see the word used sometimes in articles about Russian disinformation, but never alone, only as a kind of one-time nod to its Russian origins, after which it's always in English. Regarding another RM, which "other one" are you talking about? Can you provide a link? Mathglot (talk) 00:56, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

The "other one" I refer to is further up the talk page. You commented on it and said it would cause a false balance. HouseOfChange wants to change the article title back to the one that causes false balance problems, remember? I see your point about the Russian word; I am just tired of repetitive conversations with people who assume I'm misguided Ukrainian patriot or something. I suppose that your alternate proposal would be the one you were talking about before? If I understand this correctly (I should go look at the disinformation article you did) I might be in favor, but won't Russian information war continue to have this problem with people adding NNPOV? Elinruby (talk) 01:12, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Lede copied here in hopes HouseOfChange will read it finally.

Information war by Russia incorporates elements of propaganda, demoralization, distraction and political posturing in addition to cyberwarfare as NATO understands the word. "Informatsionnaya voyna" differs from cyberwarfare, usually framed as technical defenses to technical attacks in warfare.

Even in times of peace, Russia's information war continuously seeks strategic victory and reflexive control through tools as diverse as undersea cable, national origin stories, control of the news cycle, or polluting an information space with Russian bots and trolls.

It has "a broad political objective — to distract, divide, and demoralize — but otherwise it is largely opportunistic, fragmented, even sometimes contradictory", carried out by an assortment of "political entrepreneurs" seeking Kremlin approval, wrote Mark Galeotti in Foreign Policy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin cares most about his domestic audience, so the Russian Federation focuses its propaganda there. Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times says this may explain why, outside Russia, "Russian propaganda about Ukraine has fallen so flat... the invasion is just too ugly a pig to pretty up — an act so baldly unjustified that no amount of propaganda could set it right."

References

|}

Your first two sources probably could be added into the lede if the day what you say they do, and offhand I think it's likely, since the US Marines are probably on the same page as as the US Air Force, and NATO most likely agrees with itself. If they also support something else that you think should be added, let us know and we'll probably be fine with rewording. But please don't write me any more reproachful letters about not covering material that is in fact covered. And please don't make me copy the section on memes to get you to read that.Elinruby (talk) 00:50, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

aha, reference number 2 didn't make it because for some reason it doesn't have a link, but it is findable based on its citation and is actually fundamental to understanding why "Russian information war" is a term of art and quite different from "information war", so I urge you to look at it. Pretty sure I found in through Google Scholar;

Russia's Information Warfare: Exploring the Cognitive Dimension], Blagovest Tashev, PhD; Lieutenant Colonel Michael Purcell (Ret); and Major Brian McLaughlin (Ret). Marine Corps University, MCU Journal vol. 10, no. 2, Fall 2019 https://doi.org/10.21140/mcuj.2019100208129 p.133

Elinruby (talk) 01:00, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Not crazy about quoting such a long piece out of an article instead of just linking to it, but okay. However, it needed to be collapsed so as not to interrupt the flow of the discussion. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 01:04, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Give it a little time; HouseOfChange seems to be having trouble finding this. After the editor demonstrates that they have read it, as I have been begging them to, by all means collapse. Please do the list of sources above also. Thanks for patience. Actually, the stuff about schools doesn't need to be in the discussion so I will look that off. And LMK if you yourself have any thoughts on improving the lede, k. 01:25, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Elinruby Please stop making the false claim that I have not read the article or its lede. I also have not claimed that things in the article are not in the article. See also Talk:Russian_information_war_against_Ukraine#Article_needs_a_major_overhaul,_whatever_its_title.

Extended content

. You have also falsely accused me of never having edited the article. You then simultaneously accused me of having written a previous article lede, which was pretty funny. (If you did not write the lede then I will apologize, pending verification of that statement....By the way I see that you did in fact correct two typos in one section of the article on March 21...I have not had a chance to verify whether it was before or after I asked you why you were trying to rename an article you had never edited.[2]) In spite of your willingness to violate policy after it had been explained to you by striking parts of Buidhe's RfM 3 times, you have never bothered to strike a single one of your own PAs.

Rather than complaining about things I supposedly said or supposedly meant, why not use diffs to quote what I actually said? Rather than trying to discredit opinions of other editors with claims that they are dishonest or ignorant, please respond to their arguments with factual claims of your own. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:27, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Well then what is your point exactly, HouseOfChange? I am going by "By treating "information war" as a synonym for "disinformation war", we shortchange our readers." The fact that you are telling me that memes are a part of it also makes me think that you believe that I don't know this. How about if in future posts, if you think you are being misunderstood, you include a one-sentence summary of your point? If you want to use these sources in the article, more sources = good. Go for it. Maybe just stop telling me I am short changing the readers and that way I can stop feeling patronized. If you want to add to the article by all means do. But by my count this is the fifth time I have told you that, and I sincerely don't understand how you can be implying that the article needs things it already contains if you have in fact read it. All I ask is that you document substantive changes, but add all the sources you want, if they are of this caliber. Elinruby (talk) 01:44, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: That editor now claims to have read the lede, so I am withdrawing my request that you hold off on collapsing. Thsnks Elinruby (talk) 02:01, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Article needs a major overhaul, whatever its title

Consider, for example the section Russian information policy, four paragraphs of POV-pushing. (Here's its 2020 origin, a translation from Ukrainian.)

• First sentence: "The Russian Federation has conducted purposeful information war against Ukraine as part of a continual conflict since 2014," wikivoice POV-pushing.
• Second sentence: "Since then Ukraine has so far lost 13,000 people in the Donbas region alone..." etc. Cited to an Stanford News, this has no connection to the first sentence or to "Russian information policy."

Yeah, the text above it changed. But it’s a good source for the stuff about Russia World, and it’s definitely an expert explaining it. Working on trying to move that now. Elinruby (talk) 05:00, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

• Third sentence, more wikivoice POV: "Diplomats and leaders of the Russian Federation spread false information in their speeches, including speeches to the United Nations."
• Fourth sentence: Cited to a 2014 article in Ukrainian Pravda, one example supporting the very wide claim in sentence #3. Saying "Russia lies" is not helpful description of "Russian information policy."
• Skipping ahead to the final sentence: "The Putin regime contrasts "ours" and "fascists" in Ukraine, and suggests that violence against "not ours" as desirable and even required." Those Russians sure are bad, but isn't this section about "information policy"?

Consider another example, the timeline. Although a noble project, it COATRACKs unrelated Russia-bashing, and many events whose relation to "information war" is that wikivoice tells us Russia lied about them:

• "Mariupol bombing victim gives birth after Russian embassy falsely claimed she was an actress and faked her injuries." [3]
• Contesting narratives about an event in Russian and Ukrainian press cited to one source in Ukrainian, which says Russian version was false.[4]
• "February 9 - Artillery shell causes explosion at a chemical plant" [5]
• "Under sanctions that followed the 2022 invasion, governments seized yachts and villas belonging to Russian oligarchs" [6]

I am no fan of Russia or their information warfare, but these examples suggest the article's COATRACK and POV problems. I am grateful that Mathglot has volunteered to do some reorganization; the article needs major surgery as well. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:58, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

It's certainly true that the article will need work, including on many of the specific points you raised above, no matter the title. I think we are heading toward the same goal from two different angles: the content (as you point out above) and the section organization (as I've mentioned here and elsewhere). I tend to think that we should hold off on the section org stuff while the RM is going on, because the result of the RM could affect how it should be done; that's one reason why I haven't done anything about it. But I think one could go ahead with some of the points you suggest without interfering with the RM, although I'd understand if you wanted to hold off until after it's over. Mathglot (talk) 19:36, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I don’t disagree and have been crying for help. Let me go through your specific points and I will get back to you. Meanwhile: I have said a couple of times that the timeline should probably eventually become a separate article but in the meantime I consider it unfinished. Specific non-information events were included for context; as I said elsewhere, an otherwise mysterious incident involving some buses getting burned makes a lot more sense if you realize that it happened in Crimea, which had been invaded a few hours earlier. In some cases I was expecting to find a lie and didn’t. My suggestion is that if you find things you don’t think should be there, you bring them to the talk page. It is possible that I’ll agree with you about its place in the current article but still want to keep it, possibly in my sandbox if we agree it shouldn’t be in the current page. Also there’s a boatload of posts above that concern text I removed from the article I inherited. In particular, at one point when I was working on this by myself, I moved some stuff about Ukraine over here, thinking Ukraine should have its own article, so given your concerns you may want to review that. The structure is inherited, and I am open to suggestions about that. When I say I rewrote it I mean that I put social media with social media and cyber warfare with cyber warfare. Feel free to ask any questions, Elinruby (talk) 04:03, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

1. Agree. This text was inherited and I have been unable to cite it.
2. there was something I didn’t like about that passage, so you might be right. I think the text above it changed, but the source is good if niche: QA format interview of a former ambassador, now a prof at prestigious school. Let me deal with that. I will go look as soon as I get done with this post.
3. Also inherited and I agree. These sentences are example of why I disagreed that the previous article is useful. Kill it with fire if you want. It’s somewhat true, but way too broad a statement to source
4. Oh I did source it? If so please bring the citation to talk, because finding that took work. Sentence can still go. The further I get into this, the more convinced I am that that *is* their information policy, but that sentence is pretty high up as I recall, and liable to to make people stop reading. But let’s also remember that the article is talking about the Kremlin, not Russians in general.

final sentence: quote is awkward but accurate and yes it is information policy. This is tied up in the “Russian World” concept that underlies their domestic propaganda. I don’t mind if you find a better quote but the “Russian world” thing is important and needs to be better explained. Please leave for now if only as a prompt to find a better explanation Elinruby (talk) 04:22, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Timeline:

1. I believe this is an article title in the reference. If you think the summary that is there isn’t neutral, please do rephrase, but it absolutely is a lie. AP reporters were right there when that hospital was bombed, and that woman was a blogger who blogged a LOT about her pregnancy. Ukrainian source is good, but feel free to check it
2. that’s the bus-burning incident. Originally cited to an activist’s blog. I found RS for it, but would really like to pare the entry down for reasons of due.
3. I think this is an example of disinformation, let me look at it. If so need an entry to say so
4. example of something that was added in anticipation of an ensuing lie and didn’t find one. We already agreed that this (or something else that was very similar} is war but not information war Elinruby (talk) 04:43, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Hope that helps. I also came into this seeing NNPOV everywhere, so if you aren’t already familiar with the topic, that’s probably where you are now. I assure that although the article needs work a fair amount of care has been taken with sourcing, and I’ve made a huge effort to find stuff about a Ukrainian information war. They are very good at PR, is all I have been able to come up with, and it’s getting them money and weapons that are keeping them in the fight. Otherwise? If you can find stuff, more power to you Elinruby (talk) 04:43, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

oh you found the original machine translation ;) do you see now why I said no it was not useful? Elinruby (talk) 04:46, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Other random comment, said elsewhere but repeated here for your referencing convenience: the section on media ownership is a mess but important; remember Ukraine has only been independent for eight years and has been at war that entire time, Some television stations had been owned by oligarchs since before independence, One oligarch whose broadcast licenses were pulled for broadcasting Russian propaganda was supposed to replace Zelenskyy if the coup succeeded. I do ask you not to deal the mess wholesale; there’s definitely notable stuff there —most Ukrainians get their information from television —- but it needs a lot of work. All of the Wikipedia pages about the various oligarchs and television stations also need work, and contradict each other, but compiling what’s there took several hours. There is also an extensive discussion of the structure at the section titled Russian Information war, Ukrainian information war. For instance, “Background” and “Information policy” both discuss Russian nationalism and perhaps can be combined. Elinruby (talk) 05:17, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Whoa Nelly

@HouseOfChange: Deleting an a quote by the New York TImes technology writer on a technology topic is not constructive. if you don’t like it because you don’t agree with it bring it to the talk page.

Your additions to the lede also have made it not agree with the contents of the article. I sm questioning all over again whether you understand the topic. I am going to stand back and let you work, but please bring deleted material to the talk page and state your objection to it. I assure you that a NYT technology writer with his own Wikipedia article is indeed RS and I suggest you self-revert on that, and go with a lighter hand on your the first pass, unless you are claiming expertise in some aspect of this topic. I am not in Ukraine but I *am* in information security. And oh btw, you maybe should read the reliable sources policy on experts. That writer is one. I will entertain a constructive suggestion like moving the quote to another section. Elinruby (talk) 05:34, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Putting the RS policy here for your easy reference: WP:RSOPINION Elinruby (talk) 06:12, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

We are talking about this edit, which removed from the lead this text:

Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times says this may explain why, outside Russia, "Russian propaganda about Ukraine has fallen so flat... the invasion is just too ugly a pig to pretty up — an act so baldly unjustified that no amount of propaganda could set it right."

Emphasis mine on highly loaded language that should not be in the lead, whether in quote marks or otherwise. Manjoo's expertise in technology is a red herring here; his opinion does not refer to propaganda "technology" but to its effectiveness and the morality of Russia's invasion. Elinruby's latest PA, that you don’t like it because you don’t agree with it, is another red herring. I basically agree with Manjoo, but I still don't want loaded opinion words in the lead.

To quote MOS:LEAD "The lead is the first thing most people will read upon arriving at an article, and may be the only portion of the article that they read." The quote you suggest we retain is both unencyclopedic and POV, citing here 2 of 5 Wikipedia pillars. HouseOfChange (talk) 13:59, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

And yet you have slapped on a lede on this article that would be appropriate for a top-level primer on information warfare. That is not what this article is, and I am fairly certain that that we already have that article. Elinruby (talk) 21:11, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I am not the only person who has tried to explain the NPOV to you. It might be easier if I knew where you get your news, or what your objection is to reading the highly authoritative sources for the extensive definition of the article topic that you unilaterally deleted. You have slapped a lede on the article that doesn’t match its contents, in the name of some notion that I am being mean to the Kremlin. I really don’t know what to say to you and given my lengthy attempt to work with you this weekend, I am fairly certain you wouldn’t read it anyway.

1. Do not alter my talk page posts
2. Please register that the Russian military doctrine differs from NATO’s and it isn’t me saying so, it’s NATO Elinruby (talk) 17:27, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Citation problems in Wikipedia section

I am moving the text below here in hopes this will get somebody to fix the sourcing. I don’t doubt what it says, and assuming it *is* true it’s highly pertinent, but I haven’t been able to cite the point about the Russian Wikipedia, and I am pretty sure the document referenced at the end is self-published. Somebody please reference this. Thanks Elinruby (talk) 07:46, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

“The Russian-language article on "Konotop battle" defines the Battle of Konotop as an episode of the Polish-Soviet War, since the Russian-language Wikipedia lacks the concept of Russian-Ukrainian wars. It also lacks articles about the Russian invasions of Ukraine.”

While looking for something else I discovered that one can in fact link to Wikipedia and perhaps this is a case for it . I will come back to this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reliable_source_examples#/editor/5 Elinruby (talk) 22:04, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Please use the talk page

Two sections are getting edited a lot and I see at least one insertion of text I’m inclined to revert, purporting to excuse Russian claims of genocide. I am at an appointment and can’t dig into this, and the text the editor claims to be balancing out wasn’t written by me, and I slightly disagreed with it to begin with. However. Before we start defending accusations of genocide that are clearly bullshit imho I MUST insist on some discussion, or I will ask for that section to be full-on protected if this continues. Elinruby (talk) 19:48, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but I don't believe it's technically possible to protect a section of a Wikipedia page. Certainly the entire page can be protected by an admin, but I can't recall ever seeing a section protected in isolation. Repszeus (talk) 19:51, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@Ljgua124: I am looking at you here. A report in Serbian is not convincing evidence that a genocide was taking place that justifies this war. I think some of the text that was there was questionable (esp the rabbi cursing) so you possibly might have something of a point. I will ping the editor that wrote that section, but meanwhile I am removing the whole thing until you two discuss. Elinruby (talk) 19:55, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@GenoV84: pretty sure you’re the one who wrote the Accusations of Genocide Section, can you please discuss? Somebody thinks you are being one—sided. To be clear, I have t worked much on that section, since I have been busy cataloging all the lies, but I do think this is one of them and since presumably you have researched this I would appreciate it if you would discuss. @Repszeus: you might be right. Going to just move the entire section over here for discussion. It’s within the scope of the article but I don’t think we should be giving Russian apologists a platform. Whatever did or did not happen in World War 2, I have done a huge amount of research into the current conflict and simply don’t believe that the Russian-speaking inhabitants of the Donbas who are ducking Russian mortars need to be protected from the Ukrainians. I will accept actual evidence to the contrary but a report in Serbian isn’t doing it for me Elinruby (talk) 20:19, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@Elinruby: What the hell are you talking about? Did you check my contributions on the contribution history of this article before writing down that message? I already replied to you on my Talk page and clearly explained that I never wrote anything about antisemitism on this article, so why do you keep saying it? The only edits that I made were related to disinformation tactics and attempts to censorship of Russian Wikipedia by the Russian government in order to hide evidence of the 2014 invasion of the Donbas region and the casualties during the current 2022 invasion of Ukraine; nothing was even remotely related to antisemitism. GenoV84 (talk) 20:31, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

perhaps I am mistaken. Trying to deal with this on the fly while very distracted. Will dig deeper if you say I am wrong. This has been known to happen ;) Elinruby (talk) 20:35, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@GenoV84: sorry about that. I recognized your username, but this was from the section on the Russian Wikipedia, the other section that is getting edited a lot. But these seem to be mostly updates with no dispute as to facts. Sorry if I upset you Elinruby (talk) 01:02, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Xx236: looks like you were working on the genocide section, can you talk to this guy? also, seems that that rabbi is a bit of a provocateur, should we really be quoting him?Elinruby (talk) 20:57, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@Elinruby: Did you read the Raskrinkavanje article (yes through a translator)? It does not suggest a genocide is taking place or that Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis. The issue of the alleged genocide in the Donbas and claims Ukraine are run by neo-nazis are distinct. As articulated by the Deputy US Representative to ECOSOC, Russia has used GA resolutions seeking to 'combat nazism' as a guise to stifle freedom of speech and legitimise Russian disinformation campaigns. The Raskrinkavanje article merely corroborates this point of view. The fact it is in Serbian is irrelevant. Regardless, the quote by the Deputy US Representative to ECOSOC is sufficient to suggest that Russia is using GA resolutions as a guise. But the fact that Ukraine and the US have rejected GA Resolution A/C.3/76/L.57/Rev.1 is a fact.Ljgua124 (talk) 00:23, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Ljgua124: oh as a guise? Pretext? That didn’t come across when I was reading the section earlier, but as noted I was deep in real life at the time. I will take another look. I just very much don’t want to suggest that Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens currently being shelled by Russia are being protected from genocidal Ukrainians by that shelling, which was, at least at one point, the Russian version of events. The fact that it is in Serbian is... not quite irrelevant, but certainly does not rule it out as an RS. I agree with you there. For what, though, is the question. I don’t want to pontificate overmuch, but there is a policy out there about extraordinary claims. If the claim is not that the war is justified but that Russia lies about this war and here is one way that they do that, then the claim is less extraordinary. That said, I am just now back from the hospital and I am not going to crank up google translate or read a report in any language for another few hours, but I will look into this whether the other editor answers or not. Thank you for your reply.Elinruby (talk) 01:18, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Ljgua224: hi, pinging you again in case you didn’t notice that I withdrew my objection to your text, having decided that your source is similar to Snopes.com. Feel free to return it, or, if you prefer, I will do so for you Elinruby (talk) 21:15, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Section organization

The title "Russian–Ukrainian information war" (see #rv undiscussed move above) is symmetric, even if the amount of relaible sourcing for Russian vs Ukrainian disinformation is heavily lopsided. The current organization of the article doesn't make it easy to navigate that. Given that most users won't read the whole article, I'm wondering if there should be a top-level re-org with sections named #Russia and #Ukraine to more easily access efforts originating from each side, with themes as subsections. This would result in a lopsided difference in section sizes, but that's okay as it would duly reflect what's out there about the topic. Alternatively, we could continue to organize by themes at the top level (as it is now: #Policy, #Operations, etc.) and have Russia and Ukraine subsections under each of the them, or some of them, wherever appropriate. I'm thinking about how difficult it would be currently for someone browsing the ToC, to find the information they wanted. Thoughts? Mathglot (talk) 17:59, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Support, I agree that it would be a lot easier to navigate if it were organized as you said but doing this might be disruptive to other editors working on this article. Chrisanthusjohn (talk) 18:35, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@Chrisanthusjohn: that's a very good point. Could use {{in use}}, or hold off until a pre-agreed schedule and do it then, or just wait till the whole issue quiets down (but it might be a lot harder to do, then). I'll hold off in any case, to see if others are in agreement in principle, and if so, we can figure out what's best. Thanks for your comment. Mathglot (talk) 00:40, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

There’s a little edit war at Azov Battalion that has spilled over here and imho the article should not have been unilaterally moved when there is an unanswered request for comment on the original move further up the page. I tried to revert the move but I am getting a message saying that the move has already been reverted. Possibly a page cache problem, so let’s let it get its redirects sorted out before we do that. Elinruby (talk) 03:47, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

As to a section organization - I agree in principle. I just don’t think we should change the article to reflect the title, because I am pretty sure the sources aren’t there, and that was why I moved it in the first place. Somebody had tried really hard to both sides this and there simply isn’t a lot out there about any Ukrainian information war on Russia, at least until they were invaded. But I am ready to be educated about that. I do feel the need to mention that I’ve been working overtime on this article since the invasion began, and the article currently has 299 references. However I knew pretty much nothing about either Ukraine or Russia when I began, (although I have/had information security certifications) so I am extremely open to input and help. Just use the talk page, please. Elinruby (talk) 03:59, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Sorry about the multiple posts; I was just reproved for posting a wall of text elsewhere and the person was kind of right about that. I am trying to group these by topic.

And now that I have done the caveats, it is probably helpful for you guys to know I am on a mobile and don’t see the ToC, so I could easily make a mistake about the header hierarchy and if there is something that is clearly that, no need to discuss before fixing. Ditto typos and bracket errors. There is quite a bit to be said about this suggestion (see my answer re yachts, where I mention that I inherited the structure). I came to this article as the machine translation whisperer and first fixed a badly mangled translation, then deleted editorial comment and assertions I was unable to cite, then started resolving mysteries and adding English-language references.

At this point I think the article is well-cited and agree that it is disorganized. I think what I will do is start another post about whether it is a Russian War or a Russian-Ukrainian war, and yet another on issues *I* see in the structure plus what I think of the suggestions you guys made, which I will review now. By the way I have collaborated with Mathglot on a couple of other big sprawling articles so I trust them. I am just trying to give them some information before they start, but meanwhile if you two are here and I am not, then go for it. They have pretty good judgement about what I will care about 04:20, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I've alluded to a possible section reorganization in the #Discussion at the requested move below. While I still think it's possible a section reorganization might work, at this point I'm leaning towards a trio of articles in WP:Summary style, as the most likely approach that would preserve neutrality and avoid WP:FALSEBALANCE. See here for details. Mathglot (talk) 19:48, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I don’t necessarily disagree, but since you are disinclined to be drawn into the insults, and who could blame you, I think that meanwhile I should continue to fix the problems that *I* see, especially now that I have been encouraged to remove some uncited legacy text. It certainly seems that off-topic as it is, a discussion of NATO’s concept of information war may be needed for purposes of disambiguation. I am going to put it here as this is still one article, but I have no objection to it moving elsewhere later if that seems more appropriate. The discussion of Russian information war apparently needs some more in-text attribution, also. If I understand what you are proposing, you envision information war as parent, a short Russian-Ukrainian information war article as child, with its own children Russian information war and Ukrainian information war, which as you note, will be considerably shorter. I have no objection to this in the abstract; what I said would be silly is preserving the current non-optimal structure with separate Russian and Ukrainian subsections of each section, since this would result in a lot of empty subsections. If I misunderstood any part of that LMK. Elinruby (talk) 21:42, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Elinruby:, yes, that's pretty much it. I'm not married to the idea, and other ways could work, and in the end, it would have to be amenable to consensus. But I think it could be a good solution, and if it wouldn't satisfy everyone 100% (when is that even possible?) at least it would hopefully entail minor dissatisfaction equally all around, as the least bad solution. If not, we'll just have to find something else.

I understand your point about empty subsections, but if the top level were organized thematically instead of chronologically, then empty sections wouldn't be necessary. See how Disinformation in the 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis is organized now for an example of what I'm proposing. Although the title gives no clue of any disequality in disinformation on both sides (and doesn't need to), the content organization covers the highly-lopsided nature of disinformation in a way that fairly covers all the disinformation on both sides in a way that corresponds to DUEWEIGHT, and does not fall victim to WP:FALSEBALANCE. We should be able to do something similar here, although it's a bit like swapping table columns and rows, meaning a ton of tedious moving of paragraphs around from the current org to the proposed re-org; but it's doable. Mathglot (talk) 22:04, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Ping @Xx236:, who has been wikignoming on the article for quite a while, as I only recently realized, and has made several constructive suggestions Elinruby (talk) 21:50, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

haha I missed the bird thing altogether. Amazing. So there are several things I like about that article, including the section about the Russians in Donetsk, which I still hadn’t found an authoritative source for, whereas I assume your is. I do however wish that with reference to the Ghost of Kiev you would mention that while these accounts shared the video, it does not appear to have been created by the Ukrainian government (pending further evidence of course). But ok, it’s the structure I described sbove, but with sections not articles. Ok. Well, sure, I suppose, depending on the proposal exactly. Meanwhile, I am an incrementalist, as you know, and I think I will continue work on the problems *I* see and on which I suspect most people would agree. I think progress has been prevented for long enough, and as it stands recent changes have left it with a raft of additional flaws. And I am already being insulted, so. Elinruby (talk) 01:02, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I am seeing a consensus for a structure change, to be further discussed? Since I am now entering my third hour of hold music and am both tethered to my phone and extremely bored, I will make a start on what I see, on the understanding that any part of it will be open to insult-free discussion. Elinruby (talk) 01:15, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

going to sleep for a while, if anyone wants to work on the article without edit conflicts Elinruby (talk) 04:20, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

It is probably Okhtyrka Air Base

Xx236 (talk) 12:02, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Did I spell this wrong? If so feel free to correct or specify if I don’t get this sooner. If I expressed some doubt about which airbase it was probably based on the source I was looking at, so if you are sure, please feel free to edit, maybe add your source as well? You’re talking about the thermobaric weapon, right? I had a question about this that you might know the answer to: Is that base in Chernihiv? Asking because I was looking at sources re the Russian claim that they are not conducting operations there (timeline section) and one of the said a thermobaric weapon had been used there in early March. Was unsure if this is the same use as at an airbase earlier this month. Btw my phone keeps autocorrecting Chernihiv to Chernigov, and I saw you catch one of those last night, thanks Elinruby (talk) 15:38, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I do not know ij it is the same base (to be linked) or an another one, probably the same.Xx236 (talk) 06:51, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

getting back to this, the base near Okhtyrka is probably Okhtyrka Air Base, yes. I will make the change the next time I see that. The other questions above stem from a geographic misunderstanding, please ignore Elinruby (talk) 19:37, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Source

https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/emploi/metiers/armee-et-securite/guerre-en-ukraine-un-membre-du-regiment-azov-decrit-les-combats-a-marioupol_5047864.html Elinruby (talk) 07:30, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

It is rather about Azov, isn't it?Xx236 (talk) 12:14, 5 April 2022 (UTC)