What’s that got to do with Soledar? Death and renaissance of Russian occupation Telegram channels
At the end of October 2022, we published a data project about the Russian "Telegram occupation", in which we investigated 120 Telegram channels that were set up by the Russians under the guise of Ukrainian local news channels to prepare for and justify the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territories. However, things didn’t turn out as planned, and by the end of September 2022, almost half of these news channels stopped working. As we learnt later on, not forever. Some Telegram channels still got a chance for a second life, although again, not for long. More details about Russian activity in Telegram and what Soledar offensive has got to do with it – in the article below.
Death of the Telegram channels
For the first time, the Russian centralised network of occupation channels on Telegram "died" in the summer of 2022. On 9 July, all channels created in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Zhytomyr, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, and partly Kharkiv regions stopped updating their feeds.
Not that they had quality content there any way – the “artificiality” of this network could be easily seen even without any analytical tools. All the channels have had approximately the same amount of fake subscribers,identical description and contacts of a single admin; they were all created in a span of a few days and had the same first opening post with only the name of the city being changed.
For the second time, the Russian Telegram network “died” on 20 October 2022. Then, along with the start of Russia’s missile terror on the power grid of Ukraine, all Telegram channels for the eastern regions of Ukraine got simultaneously “switched off” with most of them remaining inactive until now.
The only exception was the Kharkiv Telegram channel. It continued to work with variable success, counting almost 130,000 subscribers (of whom a little more than 30,000 actually view posts) and featuring content about fire occurrences across the city or how Kharkiv policemen fine pedestrians for crossing the streets in the wrong place. In general, it seemed as if Russian propagandists had listened to our remarks about the need to strengthen the local angle of the news feed. However, reports about “the troops of the Russian Federation destroying the units of Ukrainian Nazis” or that “people from 46 cities in Bulgaria coming out on the streets to attest their support of Russia” nullified these efforts and greatly complicated our attempts to understand who is (or should be) the target audience of this channel (except for citizens of the Russian Federation).
Back in autumn 2022, we called the first two waves of Telegram channel activity fade-out the final reduction of Russian military ambitions. But, as it turned out, this was more about the regrouping, strategy change and (in a sense) decentralisation.
Soledar offensive
On 9 January 2023 (exactly on a day after a 6-month break), 18 channels in northern and central regions of Ukraine were resuscitated. This time with new logos, more new followers (12 thousand in 2023 compared to 2 thousand subscribers back in 2022) and a simple task: to pretend that Russian troops are successfully attacking the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Sumy and Chernihiv regions one time; to instigate hatred towards the Ukrainian military who are allegedly looting and abandoning their wounded fighters a couple of times and to promote information about the successful Soledar offensive for the rest of the time. Not forgetting, of course, to “dilute” the feed with messages about power outages, air strikes and the Ukrainian entry at Miss Universe global contest.
Death and revival of Russian occupation Telegram channels
Similar publication patterns signal that the Russian occupation channels on Telegram are being managed by the same entity. They simultaneously publish identical content and stop feed updates on the same day. After several months of “rest” they resume their work to deliver on the new narratives.
one row = 1 channel,
created for the city
of this oblast
day when at least 1 post
was published
March 6-7, 2022
network creation
October 20
January 9
April 10, 2023
July 9
Zhytomyr
Equal spaces are a sign
of a single control center
Kyiv
Channels that were turned on
to cover Soledar's capture
Chernihiv
Sumy
Dnipropetrovsk
Mykolaiv
Kharkiv
10 days after the start of the missile terror
on the energy infrastructure, the channels
for the eastern regions of Ukraine were turned off
Luhansk
Donetsk
Zaporizhzhia
Kherson
Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblast are always at the centre of attention.
This is where most of the Russian resources and efforts go
Data: 54 Russian occupation channels (a characteristic feature is the ending «_ru» in the name)
Date of unloading: 10.04.2023
one row = 1 channel
created for the city
of this oblast
day when at least 1 post
was published
March 6-7, 2022
network creation
October 20
July 9
January 9
April 10, 2023
Zhytomyr oblast
Equal spaces are a sign
of a single control center
Kyiv
Chernihiv
Channels that were turned on
to cover Soledar's capture
Sumy
Dnipropetrovsk
Mykolaiv
Kharkiv
10 days after the start of the missile terror
on the energy infrastructure, the channels
for the eastern regions of Ukraine were turned off
Luhansk
Donetsk
Zaporizhzhia
Kherson
Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblast are always at the centre of attention.
This is where most of the Russian resources and efforts go
Data: 54 Russian occupation channels (a characteristic feature is the ending «_ru» in the name)
Date of unloading: 10.04.2023
one row = 1 channel,
created for the city
of this oblast
day when at least 1 post
was published
March 6-7, 2022
network creation
July 9
October 20
January 9
April 10, 2023
Zhytomyr
Kyiv
Equal spaces are a sign
of a single control center
Chernihiv
Channels that were turned on
to cover Soledar's capture
Sumy
Dnipropetrovsk
Mykolaiv
Kharkiv
10 days after the start of the missile terror on the energy infrastructure, the channels for the eastern regions of Ukraine were turned off.
Luhansk
Donetsk
Zaporizhzhia
Kherson
Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblast are always at the centre of attention.This is where most of the Russian resources and efforts go
Data: 54 Russian occupation channels (a characteristic feature is the ending «_ru» in the name)
Date of unloading: 10.04.2023
So instead of a large group of channels with identical content, we grouped them by the region: six Telegram channels from the Sumy region have updated their profile images with maps and are trying to set up their own chat; six channels from Chernihiv region decided not to change the Russian tricolor on their avatars and keep on publishing air raid alerts more often than other groups; while the low-quality profile photos of four other groups from the Kyiv region were destined to live a little longer than the previous two groups from Sumy and Chernihiv.
The “party” didn’t last for too long, though – in just 10 days, Telegram channels created in the northern regions of Ukraine have started showing activity again. Often with the messages like “the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have struck all target objects of the military administration and energy system of Ukraine”. However, both the tactics as well as dozens unsuccessful Telegram channels have been eventually abandoned.
Emphasis on the South
Despite this, one shouldn’t be too optimistic as Telegram channels operated in Russia-occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions might tell a different story. They remain to be consistently active, with a strong angle on local news and content resharing from outside the cluster.
It is difficult to estimate what share of the local Ukrainian population they managed to reach, but the largest network channel “Glavnoye v Khersone i oblaste” (All the latest from Kherson and the region) has currently more than 160,000 subscribers with about 40,000 views per post.
However, the sheer number of the subscribers does not paint a complete picture. For example, even the seemingly “dead” Telegram channel “sumy_ru” has been seeing an increase in the number of its subscribers since the end of January. Since the moment of the last publication, the total number of pseudo-followers has increased from 3,000 to 20,000.
