How Telegram is used for Psychological Warfare against Ukraine

An image of the remains of a Ukrainian soldier slumped down on the ground with severe and lethal trauma to the head. A video of two Russian soldiers dragging a deceased Ukrainian soldier across a field and throwing his body on a pile of his killed countrymen. A collage of images of Ukrainian soldiers who got maimed after their vehicle was attacked – one of the bodies missing both a leg and its head. 

These are just a few examples of graphic images and videos of Ukrainian soldiers killed on the battlefield that get posted on the Russian Telegram channel “Arkhangel Spetsnaza Z”, or “Archangel of the Special Forces” in English. Supposedly run by a group of anonymous Russian soldiers, the channel raises money to fund Russia’s war effort, wages psychological warfare against Ukraine and echoes the propaganda of the Kremlin. At almost two million followers, it is now one of the most popular and influential pro-Russian military accounts on Telegram. 

As political and academic discussions about the Russia-Ukraine war focuses its attention on the Russian government, the impact and weaponization of the content on Telegram channels like Arkhangel Spetsnaza slip under the radar. On these channels, propaganda, psychological warfare and profits from posting gory footage from the war reach new extremes. Here’s how. 

A safe haven for both dissidents and criminals 

First, let’s talk about Telegram. A free messaging app, Telegram allows users to communicate through end-to-end encrypted chats and video- and voice calls, as well as share photos, videos and files with each other. In addition to communication, users on Telegram can also start and subscribe to channels where administrators can post texts, images and videos, and also live-stream content to their followers. Since launching in 2013, Telegram has become a popular app across the former Soviet space, including in both Russia and Ukraine. Boasting around 950 million active users, content posted to Telegram has potential for immense reach and impact across the world. 

Since its inception the founder of Telegram, Russian tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov, has displayed an obstinate commitment to freedom of speech and communication on the platform. When faced with pressure and demands from governments to release decryption keys or personal data about users, Durov has consistently refused. In 2018, Durov clashed with the Russian government over his refusal to compromise on Telegram’s protection of user privacy. After trying to ban Telegram in Russia, the Kremlin eventually gave up on its crusade against Durov and the ban was lifted in 2020.

Although Telegram’s strict adherence to its privacy policies provide protection for dissidents and pro-democracy protesters against surveillance and persecution from authoritarian governments, the app has also become a digital safe haven for terrorists, corrupt politicians, drug smugglers, human traffickers, money launderers and paedophiles alike. In a 2016 interview, Durov addressed growing criticism against the lack of government oversight of illegal activities on the app, stating that: “You cannot make it safe against criminals and open for governments. It’s either secure or not secure,” referring to communication on Telegram.

Durov has also stated that it would be absurd to expect the owner of a platform to be responsible for people abusing its services. However, one could also argue that it is not unreasonable to expect the owner of a platform which enables activities that harm people – not least children – to also take responsibility for what said platform is used for.

Telegram as a weapon for propaganda and psychological warfare 

The unregulated and free-for-all media space on Telegram is ideal for waging psychological warfare. On a daily basis, gory and gruesome footage of wars and its victims is posted to channels on Telegram, and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine is no exception. Uncensored footage of the mangled and bloody bodies of deceased soldiers, civilians and children is made readily available for millions of users on the app. This never-ending barrage of explicit content – sometimes referred to as ‘war porn’ – is often intended to be sensationalistic and have a shock-and-awe effect on its target audience. 

These posts often come with captions that use sarcastic and mocking language about the Ukrainian soldiers in the footage. However, the images and videos do not show the chain of events leading up to the deaths of the soldiers. Their last moments in life are instead obscured by propagandistic claims about how the dead soldiers were abandoned by their fleeing brothers, that they were too incompetent to defend themselves and that their unit was ultimately no match for the superior Russian army.

While the Arkhangel-channel uses this grim footage to highlight or twist Ukrainian losses and deaths on the battlefield, there is hardly any mention of Russian setbacks or defeats. And when there is, they are spun in a way that makes Russian strategy appear carefully calculated and successful.

Since the faces of the Ukrainian soldiers are visible in a majority of the footage on the channel, they would be easily recognized by their friends, family and fellow soldiers. Witnessing such footage would undoubtedly cause immense distress to the families and friends of the soldiers depicted, as well as have a demoralizing and perhaps fearful effect on Ukrainian soldiers still fighting in the war. This is psychological warfare at its finest (or perhaps at its worst) – and it’s a quite ruthless form of psychological warfare at that. 

With almost two million subscribers and hundreds of thousand views on their posts, the anonymous administrators behind Arkhangel Spetsnaza has built an influential platform that reaches a large audience and actively tries to shape perceptions about the war in Russia’s favour, while slandering and ridiculing Ukraine’s combat effectiveness and military strategy. The fact that the channel only posts in Russian does not limit its reach since Telegram has a function where posts can be translated into English, enabling it to reach non-Russian speaking audiences. 

The propaganda and psychological warfare on the channel also becomes crowdsourced since its followers can participate in it by liking, commenting, sharing and reacting with emojis to the channel’s posts. On average, the posts on Arkhangel Spetsnaza tend to get thousands of positive reactions which is a testament to its popularity and ability to get followers to engage with its content. It is however not possible to tell how many times a post was shared with other users on Telegram, and adding to that uncertainty are the unknown number of screenshots and saves to private clouds or memory cards. 

What is for certain is that on Telegram, channels like Arkhangel Spetsnaza are weaponizing the brutal reality of war on an unprecedented scale.

Monetizing murder 

Apart from echoing Kremlin propaganda in its ‘analyses’ of the war and posting horrific content from the battlefield, Arkhangel Spetsnaza also raises money for Russia’s war effort. In addition to selling merchandise with the channel’s logo on it and collecting donations from its followers, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, Arkhangel Spetsnaza also advertises having a second ‘secret’ channel where the administrators posts exclusive content about and from the war. 

According to an investigation by Istories, an open source intelligence (OSINT) organization, the exclusive content is “original snuff videos from the war, that is, scenes of real-life killings” of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. A monthly subscription to the second channel costs between 500 and 1000 rubles, which is roughly 5 to 10 dollars. At about 800 subscribers, the channel can collect around 800 000 roubles, or around 8,500 dollars, per month. The money is allegedly spent primarily on purchasing drones that play a  crucial role in tactical operations on both sides of the war.

As well as being used as weapons on the battlefield, drones themselves are integral for raising money for the war effort. Both Russian and Ukrainian military units will post edited drone footage of unsuspecting enemy soldiers getting killed on the battlefield on their Telegram channels. The purpose is to show off the effectiveness of the drones and the skills of the unit operating them as a means to encourage viewers and followers to continue donating money for equipment. 

The videos will often come with added sound effects of explosions and some kind of impactful background music. A friend who wrote his master’s thesis on a Ukrainian unit posting these types of videos found that they mimicked the design and feel of playing a video game. In other words, soldiers on either side are portrayed as fair game and their deaths are treated as something fictional or trivial with no real-life consequences or moral dilemma. 

Social media and digital archives of war crimes 

So how to deal with the new reality of uncensored digital warfare on social media? Well, while the content posted by Arkhangel Spetsnaza Z strikes one as morally reprehensible and something that should be illegal, especially the monetized material, there is some nuance to this issue. 

For example, Ukrainian journalists and activists document graphic footage of civilians killed as a result of Russian strikes to counter Russian disinformation about war crimes not being committed against civilians,  with footage uploaded to platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. The idea is that in addition to countering Russian propaganda, these platforms also become a digital archive for footage of war crimes that can, and are, being used as evidence in international courts. 

In stark contrast to Telegram, these platforms have taken steps to oversee and moderate the content that their users post. Graphic and violent footage from warzones therefore tend to get swiftly taken down by AI that sweep the platforms for content that violate their rules and restrictions. In the age of AI, the saying that ‘the internet is forever’ is not necessarily true. But are social media platforms responsible for archiving footage of war crimes? Commenting on this issue, YouTube has stated that: “Human rights  organisations; activists, human rights defenders, researchers, citizen journalists and others  documenting human rights abuses (or other potential crimes) should observe best practices  for securing and preserving their content”. 

In this regard, it could be Telegram to the rescue, where such data and material is rarely, if ever, taken down. A potentially rich archive of open-source material waiting to be collected by OSINT-organizations investigating and mapping war crimes, as well as foundations archiving the footage as future evidence, Telegram’s commitment to free speech is turning out to be a double-edged ethical sword – on the one hand, graphic image and videos could  serve as evidence of war crimes, and on the other hand, this footage is being mercilessly exploited for propaganda and psychological warfare, as well as capitalized to fund war. 

As of now, whether posting war footage on social media constitutes a war crime or not depends on context and interpretation of international law. In light of the fact that immense and incomparable digital battlefields are now a reality that not only have an effect on public perceptions of war through propaganda and disinformation, but also have kinetic effects on the actual battlefield through raising money for equipment, it might be high time to revise international legislation in order to keep up with the rapid changes in modern warfare. However, this could be easier said than done, and justice and dignity for the dead in the digital age might still be far off. 

If posts of drones getting delivered by Arkhangel Spetsnaza to grateful Russian units at the front are a reliable indicator, then the channel has been successful in its endeavour to raise funds for the war and contribute to Russia’s war economy. The sinister tactic they employ to earn that money, facilitated by the unregulated media ecology of Telegram, is at the moment neither well understood nor studied. While academic and political focus tends to be on the Russian state, actors like Arkhangel Spetsnaza Z slip under the radar. 

To better understand the logistics and infrastructure of how war is financed on Telegram, as well as the propaganda and psychological warfare which is conducted on the app, research needs to turn its focus to actors other than Russian state institutions, such as individual military units, soldiers, military bloggers, journalists and civilians. Although these actors certainly could be affiliated with or even backed by the Russian government, they do a great job of hiding it so as to appear as independent sources of information to their audience.

Lastly, understanding the phenomenon that is modern digital warfare will inform us of what we are up against when building resilience for psychological defence against information and propaganda campaigns, as well as online influence from external forces. In the meantime, the sinister and coldblooded propaganda war between Russian and Ukraine continues to rage on Telegram while soldiers, civilians and their families get caught in the crossfire – it hardly seems like things could get much worse. But then again, if researching content on Russian war channels on Telegram has taught me anything, it is to never say never.