As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine progressed, the Russian media and major television networks aired a history lesson on an 18th-century battle between German and Russian forces in Poland.

This type of coverage is considered normal, in a country where the Kremlin exercises total power. This power is evident in the press, radio and television.

“The Kremlin is clearly looking at ways to prevent cracks from forming in that dam,” said Gavin Wilde, a Russia expert who previously served on the National Security Council. “China was able to seal off its so-called sovereign information space in a way that Russia simply couldn’t,” he concluded.

Because of this, despite his propagandist allies, there is not much that Vladimir Putin can do to keep reality off cell phone and computer screens, which makes control of traditional media all the more urgent.

“The control of the classical media is already quite complete,” Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs told Yahoo News. “It’s hard to find the truth about the war there,” she said.

In this sense, on radio stations like Komsomolskaya Pravda , whose very name is a reminder of Soviet propaganda as it means “The truth of the Young Communists”, episodes like the one on Thursday night were presented, in which the presenter of the program amplified anti-Ukrainian sentiments on the part of his followers. In the program it seemed that the Russian people were completely with Putin in the “necessary invasion” to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine.

“We have to take Kiev, the sooner the better,” said one listener. On the other hand, the host of another Moscow-based radio show promised that once Russia occupied the country, right-wing Ukrainian nationalists would be “eliminated”.

The Russian media has been giving history lessons about World War II, as the Kremlin has resorted to these tactics to convince the Russian population and silence any differences.

Cyber attacks

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, toughened this Friday the measures taken against the Russian government, also adding President Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to the list of sanctioned officials.

The confrontation between the two powers, the United States and Russia, has been on two battlefields: diplomatic and economic, but among the Americans there is fear that the offensive will turn to cyber attacks, a place where the Russians have shown great ability by leaving some damage in the past.

As reported by CNN, last Tuesday “a senior FBI cyber official warned US businesses and local governments that they should be on the lookout for potential ransomware attacks , just days after multiple US agencies issued a similar warning. executives of major US banks.”

Among the precedents of cyber attacks on the infrastructure of the United States, they recall: “the SolarWinds hack that infiltrated several government agencies in 2020, the ransomware attack that forced the closure of one of the largest fuel pipelines in the United States for several days last year and another attack on one of the world’s largest meat producers, JBS .

It is important to understand that ransomware is a class of malware that poses a risk to devices. “Ransom” is an English word that means “ransom”. Ransomware is extortion software : its purpose is to prevent you from using the device until a ransom has been paid”, according to the Kaspersky firm portal.

Although these attacks are not directly related to the Russian government, the US authorities hypothesize that the hackers have the “blessing” of Russia. “They don’t operate directly for the Russian government, but they operate under a set of rules that says, ‘you do what you want…don’t target Russian stuff and we won’t bother you,'” said Herb Lin, senior policy researcher and cyber security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University , in words collected by CNN.

Banks would be targeted by cyberattacks, said George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike. “I talked to a lot of banks recently, a lot of top executives, and they’re concerned,” said Kurtz, who leads the cloud-focused cybersecurity firm, which works with 14 of the 20 largest U.S. banks, as well . It was highlighted by the CNBC portal .

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