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Although at a disadvantage militarily, the country led by Volodymyr Zelensky took precedence on the communication front, an essential cog in the wheel to unite its population and reach international opinion.
His stagings alone symbolize the power of storytelling Ukrainian in this war. Volodymyr Zelensky, systematically khaki t-shirt, blacked out eyes, camera in hand, in his office, in the streets, in the trenches, talking to his people or addressing the rest of the world, through social networks, the tone serious and galvanizing. “I stay in Kyiv, on Bankova Street. I don’t hide. I’m not afraid of anyone. […] The Russians forget that we are not afraid,” he expressed again in the night from Monday to Tuesday, in a video posted on Facebook.
In the space of fifteen days, the Ukrainian president has become a hero of the fatherland, a unifier of the nation, a world icon, a catalyst for sympathy. And above all, a skilful master of the use of digital channels, like an entire country, faced with a Russian enemy who is totally overwhelmed for the time being in the field of communication. “Ukraine is not winning the battle of hearts and minds online, it has already won it,” summarizes the American political scientist Peter Warren Singer, researcher at the New America think tank, in a webinar published on YouTube.
Although confused and slower than expected in its breakthrough, the Moscow army advanced. But the story of the ongoing conflict is indeed Ukrainian. “Reputed masters of narrative warfare, <…