PROPAGANDA, FAKE VIDEOS OF UKRAINE INVASION BOMBARD USERS

The messages, videos and photos flying across Twitter, Facebook and Telegram far outnumber the airstrikes raining down on Ukraine.

They claim to show Russian fighter jets being shot down or Ukrainians dodging for cover in their own homes.

Some are real, horrifying images of this war. Others had been lurking on the internet for years before Russia launched the largest attack on a European country since World War II.

The invasion of Ukraine is shaping up to be Europe’s first major armed conflict of the social media age, when the small screen of the smartphone is the dominant tool of communication, carrying with it the peril of an instantaneous spread of dangerous, even deadly, disinformation.

TikTok videos, propagandized headlines and tweets pinging out across screens around the world are confusing millions about the reality of how this battle is unfolding on the ground.

Across Telegram and Twitter, Russia’s attack on Ukraine was both “unprovoked” and “necessary,” depending on the sender of the message.

“The prayers of the world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces,” President Joe Biden tweeted to his 40 million followers.

Russian state media, however, echoed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments across its platforms, with RT News blasting to hundreds of thousands of followers on Telegram that the action was “necessary.”

Over the last few days, Putin and Russian media have ramped up false accusations that Ukrainians are committing genocide, and mischaracterizing the majority of the country’s population as Nazis, said Bret Schafer, who heads the information manipulation team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.