On August 19, 2024, Volodymyr Zelenskyi suggested establishing the Ministry of Unity. According to the President's plan, this institution should "bring back 7.5 million Ukrainians" who left abroad due to Russia's full-scale invasion and still stay there. If the ministry comes to life its team will face a difficult task: in addition to creating the necessary security conditions, they need to take care of housing, jobs, education and medical services for the returnees. If fighting continues, the process could drag on for years. 

Social networks have long been an integral part of our lives. We read the news on Facebook first thing in the morning. We chat on WhatsApp, view memes on Instagram, and watch videos on YouTube or TikTok when we have a minute to spare. According to the results of OPORA’s survey, more than two-thirds of Ukrainian citizens (73%) get their news from social media.

Whenever you have an hour to kill or procrastinate, watch educational videos or get your daily dose of cringe, you’re likely to go to TikTok, which will be happy to recommend funny videos with cats, dogs, clumsy kids, and much more. TikTok will do everything to make you perceive it as a social network where happiness, laughter, goodness, and other positive emotions reign supreme.

Die Menschen, das human capital, sind das Wertvollste eines jeden Staates und die Ukraine wird sich auch nach dem Sieg über Russland nicht vollständig erholen können, wenn es niemanden gibt, der das Land wiederaufbaut und niemanden, für den es wiederaufgebaut werden muss. Wollen die Ukrainer:innen im Ausland zurückkehren? Welche Motivation haben sie und was treibt sie dazu, im Ausland zu bleiben?  Eine Umfrage des Netzwerks OPORA liefert Einblicke.

However, the opponents of Ukraine are not interested in any explanations. The notorious Fox News journalist Tucker Carlson, referring to the mentioned interviews of Zelensky, concluded that the "main defender of democracy in the world" decided to "abolish democracy in Ukraine." Carlson's disinformation narrative about the “Zelensky dictatorship” and “cancellation of elections” was quickly picked up by other American figures, including US House of Representatives member Marjorie Taylor Green and a journalist Glen Greenwald. Civil Network OPORA investigated who else had joined the discreditation campaign in the American segment of Twitter and Facebook, and what key disinformation narratives about the Ukrainian elections are spreading in these social networks.

Last year in the third month of Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine,  Civil Network OPORA decided to carry out a survey of Ukrainian media space.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine led to radical changes in the lives of Ukrainians. Some people took up arms and heroically defend our Motherland on the frontline, others joined the volunteer movement and provide the army with everything necessary. Some entrepreneurs are developing their business to support the long-suffering Ukrainian economy even in war-time. Living conditions have changed a lot in Ukraine: some people lost their property due to Russian shelling of peaceful cities, others lost their jobs, health, security, and the opportunity to provide their children with a good education. Some Ukrainians have spent their entire lives in the occupied territories.

In the era of Twitter and Facebook just about anyone can create a new media resource with just a few clicks. It’s simple and cheap. This kind of democratization of the information space allows the new media to quickly carve out a niche and promote themselves to attract the attention of target audience, but it also leads to negative consequences by bringing the methods of manipulating public opinion to a whole new level. Over the past few years, Ukrainians have been subjected to many manipulation methods. These include coordinated networks of social media pages, clickbait headlines that trigger emotional reaction and help both truthful and fake news go viral, as well as sock-puppet farms – networks of fake user accounts that comment on social media posts to create an illusion of their popularity. Although the social media companies treat such activities as a violation of their standards, we still see hundreds of fake pages that are using these tools.

After the abolition of martial law and the restoration of long-awaited peace, Ukraine will face many new challenges requiring an adequate response from the government and civil society. The post-war elections represent one such challenge. The list of potential problems includes the reformatting of  political space following the prohibition of pro-Russian parties, the prospect of holding vote in the regions that have been occupied since 2014, preparations for expression of the will of the peop...

How oppositionist is the Russian “Opposition”? What ideas do they share in the media, also in Ukrainian media where they are invited even after more than a year into the full-scale war? How does their activity impact the international opinion, and therefore the attitude to the Russian-Ukrainian war? OPORA team was looking for answers to these questions in a thorough study of the media activity of Russians who present themselves as opposition to the current Russian government.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, restrictions have intensified. Now the Russian Federation is blocking everything they are not able to control. Since the summer of 2022, there has been no free access to radio and television in the temporarily occupied territories (TOTs), neither to most Ukrainian and international websites nor even popular social networks. As a result, residents are cut off from impartial news and fall under the crushing influence of Russian propaganda. Civil N...

For now, at least until the end of hostilities, a tribunal on russian propagandists seems to have little chance of working. However, there is a way to at least partially reduce the damage from their actions, such as to impose sanctions against the propagandists themselves and against TV channels and other media that share disinformation. OPORA explored what sanctions against russian media had been imposed by various countries of the world and why it is important to continue lobbying for their...