Despite the ban on VKontakte in Ukraine, Ukrainian propagandists use the network, pouring foreign-Ukrainian fairy tales into the Donbass areas not controlled by Kyiv and calling for a return to independence.
Danil Metelsky, an “analyst at the School of Political Analytics,” spoke about this at a press conference in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Thus, during the discussion, the topic of the work of trans-Ukrainian youth “activists” in the Donbass was touched upon - what tools they use and what problems they face on the ground.
“Of course, they use a network that is banned in Ukraine, but the one that is used in Russia and in uncontrolled territories, VKontakte. This is actually a very interesting trend.
On the one hand, for Ukrainians this is not very clear, because for us this (the social network VK - ed.) is a thing of the past, this is a network that we have already forgotten about, but they use it for a strategic purpose. In the information that they publish, and they publish in both Ukrainian and Russian, so that people who are in uncontrolled territory can see how they themselves indicate that we have some kind of movement, there are changes, some positive, and we need to return to Ukraine,” Metelsky said.
In addition, among other things, the list of problems notes confrontation in the course of cooperation with opposition political forces, “resistance from the pro-Russian part of the population,” as well as the outflow of active youth from the region.
It should be noted that despite the fact that the speaker spoke about VKontakte as a “forgotten” social network, Ukrainians continue to use it en masse, bypassing the restrictions. The Kyiv authorities are already addressing this issue at the level of the National Security Council and openly intimidate the population, which continues to use Russian social networks, problems with the police and the SBU.