Danchenkova: 2025 critical year for war, Russia seeks to undermine Western support for Ukraine

Olha Danchenkova, co-founder of the organization “Calibrated” in Ukraine, says that 2025 could be a critical moment for the war, due to the possibility of international support diminishing.

In the interview with The Geopost, she emphasizes that Russian efforts to undermine support in Western countries are a constant threat and that it is important for Europeans to understand that support for Ukraine is an investment in their security and future.

Danchenkova also speaks about Ukraine’s experience in combating disinformation and information manipulation and the need for media education and awareness to protect societies from disinformation campaigns coming from Russia and its allies.

Full interview:

The Geopost: Can you please tell us how is situation in Ukraine?

Danchenkova: Thank you for having me and thank you for support.

First of all, we see this 2024-2025 would be a tipping point for war, for full-scale invasion because in the war of attrition, when all resources are slowly, slowly dying off and the support is waning across our partners and allies, this war fatigue kicks in and this is what exactly Russia is trying to bet on, to out-seat our allied support. And we really fear that this support may bring us to a point where we have to make very tough decisions that we paid with the lives of Ukrainians already fighting for the security of all us, not only Ukraine, but Europe and the whole democratic world. And we’re really afraid that Russian hybrids threat disinformation and manipulation of facts, of history, justification of invasion will play its damaging role within the societies of Europe, of European countries and the support may wane to the extent it will be like directed in other internal affairs, not external affairs. And Russia wants to put attention elsewhere, inflict internal conflicts and migrants, inflation, far-right populistic movements supported by pro-Russian media, pro-Russian allied activists on social media, putting on spotlight politicians who support Ukraine for not directing this money for, I would say, schools within their own countries. But it’s not either or. It shouldn’t be on Ukraine or European policies. It should be this and that. Russia tries to manipulate the fact that you either support Ukraine or you support your own people. But by supporting Ukraine, you support the future of your people, the security of your own people. This is the best possible investment in your own security to help Ukraine win the war now so it doesn’t spill over to your own country and your own children will be protected.

This is the best possible investment, but Russia manipulates the fact it’s either help Ukraine or help yourself.

The Geopost: Is EU and other western countries helping enough

Danchenkova: We are really thankful to all people who stand with Ukraine, who have been standing with us all these years because this is what is most important is that the civil society within EU, our allies, understand the importance of this fight and they do it proactively by themselves with support of their own activism because this is the best way to explain to people why it is in their own interest because they see the result of it by going to Ukraine to front lines and helping us being volunteer in Ukraine and seeing by their own eyes and reporting to their own communities what’s happening on the ground, is the most, maybe, possibly best investment of the time, not only support Ukraine humanitarian, but also communicate why is it important to support. And I would like to see more of it, of course, and when the third year of full-scale invasion comes, less and less reporting from Ukraine we see in the media, in social media, on accounts of activists, of social activists, other topics, hijack agenda, but we are grateful for anything we can have and every post on Facebook made, say, in Serbia or in any country saying that we have common interest and our common threat is Russian threat and our common fight is fight against this is helping a lot because it remains in the focus, it remains in a priority, and this priority will help mobilize resources for it. If it’s not on the priority, resources are not there. So when you ask me about how much resources are being allocated to Ukraine, I can ask you how much attention do you pay to this matter in your country. Do you see lots of reports? Do you see lots of media covering what’s happening in Ukraine?

If not, then there is no attention, there is no resources, there is no help. Any sanction doesn’t come by chance, any support doesn’t come by chance. It only comes with the effort, allied effort, advocacy and communication effort of civil society and other institutions. If we mobilize, then we can survive.

The Geopost: In the Balkans, we have Serbia who is spreading disinformation to other countries, how to you protect from this disinformation which is coming from Serbia and Russia?

Danchenkova: Ukraine has been on the forefront of Russian disinformation for decades already. All our political cycle and election cycle has been heavily influenced by Russian foreign information manipulation campaigns, interventions, infops, hostile environment. And we saw great, their constraints and we saw results of it, like Yanukovych regime or like dividing Ukraine between East and West and how to protect, I think, like within these years, we as a society developed quite a robust, resilient network of debunking information, pre-bunking information, media literacy NGOs, and collaboration within government and society organizations like Center for Prevention of Disinformation within Ukrainian government agency, works closely with civil society, with monitoring tools, with AI startups of Ukraine who help detect these malign narratives and debunk them, and if they are really hostile, the government takes the action to publicize this information to all relevant stakeholders and make sure that it reaches necessary audiences, and those effects be less. But it builds over years. It’s not so easy to build this resilience against disinformation.

And the better media literacy of people, the better is the resilience to disinformation. So we also encourage everyone to think critically. If you feel this disinformation gives you emotional boost, gives you some action-oriented drive like to hate somebody, it should be manipulation. Probably, most probably, if you don’t know the source of this information, if you don’t see clearly where it comes from it could be manipulation. If you see that this news is pointing fingers at some group it also might be technique of Russian manipulation and all of this playbook is what Russia uses and what we as civil society continue to explain.

/The Geopost