Information Space

Inside the temporarily occupied territories (TOT), Russia has engineered an information space defined by near-total control — an information blackout for residents — layered over a tiered set of audiences: the Russian domestic public, occupied Ukrainians and the children of the occupied territories, each fed messaging that sustains a public story of improvement, restored "historical unity" and permanence. Behind that story sits an explicit goal: the replacement of Ukrainian identity with a Russian one, codified in Russia's State National Policy Strategy to 2036, which sets a target of at least 95% of the population identifying as Russian.

Control begins with infrastructure. Russian forces seized telecommunications equipment, rerouted traffic through Crimea, blocked non-Russian platforms and left connectivity deliberately intermittent — an architecture now anchored by the state super-app Max, pre-installed on phones sold in the territories since 1 September 2025, usable only with a Russian or Belarusian number, unencrypted and data-harvesting. Institutional and cognitive layers follow: banned Ukrainian outlets replaced by occupation media; automated Telegram accounts manufacturing a fake consensus; and manuals instructing residents to trust only official sources and to report the rest.

Propaganda, schooling and surveillance reinforce one another most sharply through children. Seized schools lend an appearance of normality while stripping Ukrainian language, history and culture from the curriculum, and enlist children as intimate informants — and, strategically, as an entry point into the family itself, where the dissonance between loyalty demanded at school and life at home can be turned to the state's advantage. The occupation's own teaching materials, from authorised reading lists to "Ukrainian Crimes Against Humanity," reveal psychological operations designed to instil shame, alienation and rage rather than mere political messaging.

None of this is a settled outcome: resistance endures and Ukrainian identity has not been remade. But mapping how the ecosystem is built and enforced is itself a form of defence — exposing its seams turns the information space into ground for resistance now, and for repair once the territories are freed.

Questions we ask

1. How does Russia control information flows in the occupied territories, and to what end?
2. Which audiences does the occupation address, and with what narratives?
3. How do propaganda, schooling and surveillance reinforce one another?
4. What do the occupation's own media and teaching materials reveal about its aims?

The full picture

The Russian information space within the temporarily occupied territories can be characterised by persistent control amounting to an information blackout for residents; a tiered set of target audiences, namely the Russian domestic public, occupied Ukrainian residents, and the children of the occupied territories, each addressed with messaging that sustains a public transcript of amelioration, restored historical unity and permanence; and a campaign against Ukrainian identity whose desired end state is its replacement with a Russian one.¹ That end state is codified in Russia's State National Policy Strategy to 2036, which sets a target of at least 95% of the population identifying as Russian,² and it is pursued by psychologically fracturing the individual, family and community sense of Ukrainian self-esteem, and through the weaponisation of Ukraine's own children.

Russian occupation information control and flows in the TOTs

Control of information flows can be characterised as physical-infrastructure capture followed by managed substitution. On seizing territory, Russian forces confiscated telecommunications equipment from Ukrainian operators, installed their own networks, blocked third-party news sites and rerouted internet traffic through Russian providers via Crimea. Having isolated the territory under digital surveillance, the occupiers reactivated FSB-handled opinion curators and relaunched pro-Russian social media accounts.³

Infrastructural. The occupation has progressively rewired Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea into the Russian internet, blocking non-Russian platforms and leaving connectivity deliberately intermittent.⁴ The endpoint is the state super-app Max, pre-installed since 1 September 2025 on phones sold in the territories and pushed through schools and public services. Usable only with a Russian or Belarusian number, without end-to-end encryption and harvesting user data, Max severs residents from free Ukraine and turns the communication channel itself into a monitored space, pulling users into a consolidated Russian information ecosystem.⁵ This apparatus of mandatory apps, data harvesting and pervasive monitoring echoes the techno-authoritarian surveillance model China has built in Xinjiang. Max is reportedly available through internet service providers in more than forty countries, making the occupied territories a proving ground for the global export of surveillance rather than a purely domestic Russian project.⁶

Institutional. Authorities banned Ukrainian outlets and replaced them with occupation media, including ZaMedia, the holding founded by Aleksandr Malkevich⁷, alongside Russian state broadcasters. State campaigns such as the 2024 "Year of the Family," and an authorised corpus of textbooks and reading lists catalogued in the occupation's own education and propaganda manuals, embed Russian norms across public life.⁸

Cognitive. Russian-produced educational manuals⁹ instruct readers to trust only official information and to report suspect material to the competent organs, relocating control from the network to the reader's own judgement. Automated Telegram accounts crowd the comment spaces of local channels, in one instance posting some 1,300 comments in a single day, so that the visible consensus is manufactured rather than expressed. The aim is a fabricated majority opinion, an illusion of agreement with and acceptance of the occupation for audiences in Russia, Ukraine and abroad.¹⁰

Propaganda as the price for information. Persistent denial of information makes residents dependent on the occupier for life-saving knowledge such as safe routes and clean water. Information becomes a commodity, and in exchange Ukrainians must absorb Russian propaganda. Blocking non-Russian networks also pre-empts horizontal, word-of-mouth sharing between residents.¹¹

Coercion. The information space is enforced as much as engineered. Residents are expected to perform the public transcript, and visible failure to do so, whether accessing Ukrainian media, keeping proscribed contacts, or voicing dissent, invites armed home raids, the seizure of phones and computers, and detention.¹²

Dissemination. For Ukrainians, initial messaging arrived via satellite dishes and loudspeaker vehicles, proclaiming Russian goodwill as civilians queued for bread and water. To Russian audiences, it comprises statements from collaborator officials, output from regional branches of federal media, and collaborator Telegram channels. Within the territories the flagship instrument is the encrypted "Russian World" satellite package of 20 Russian and 10 local channels, installed across the five regions under Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko while Ukrainian terminals are dismantled by edict.¹³ Encryption ensures outsiders cannot see what these audiences are told, giving Moscow control of information in both directions.

Narratives and their audiences

Russian framing of "liberation" failed to resonate. Ukrainians resisted both military force and psychological operations, and Moscow underestimated the strength of Ukrainian civic and national identity.¹⁴ Occupation of the Donbas since 2014 had backfired, consolidating Ukrainian identity and preparing the ground for resistance that empty signifiers such as "Nazi" accusations could not challenge. Initial messaging into the territories mirrored domestic propaganda: that Russia was returning to rightful lands lost by accident thirty years ago; that the Ukrainian government was illegitimate; that Ukraine was a failed state; that Ukraine was a Western puppet project to destroy Russia; that Russia was liberating Russian-speakers, and all Ukrainians, from a Western-imposed Nazi yoke; that Russia had to strike first or be attacked; and that Ukraine was committing genocide in the Donbas.¹⁵

As efforts to win over adults failed through spring and summer 2022, authorities shifted in September 2022 to present, for domestic audiences, a facade of reunifying "historical Novorossiya," and for residents, a veneer of improved conditions backed by threats and coercion to force assimilation. A parallel strand worked to convince residents that Ukraine had abandoned them: that no one was waiting for them, that imperfect Ukrainian would leave them unwelcome, that no one would even sell them bread.¹⁶ Inverted framings even cast Ukraine as the "occupier" and "aggressor."¹⁷ This lays the groundwork for betrayal: persuading residents that Ukraine has abandoned them makes it easier to induce them to betray Ukraine in turn, a sequence that breeds shame, alienation and rage.

How do propaganda, schooling and surveillance reinforce one another?

Authorities seized educational institutions in the first months of occupation. Schools and universities are critical nodes of communication and carriers of collective memory, culture and national identity; controlling them lends an appearance of normality while preparing the terrain for long-term occupation. Russia targets children through compulsory anthem and flag ceremonies, Putin speeches, military lectures and militarised extracurriculars, alongside stripping Ukrainian language, history and culture from the curriculum.¹⁸ Children also provide intimate surveillance, identifying uncooperative parents or neighbours. Educators were co-opted through incentives such as promotions and pay, and through coercion including armed home raids and, in one case, taking a principal to the basement and threatening detention on "Russian territory."¹⁹

Strategically, education offers an entry point into family structures. Demanding loyalty at school while depicting "evil Nazis" and Ukrainian "war crimes" creates dissonance at home. Where the family is loyal to Russia there is no rupture; where the child feels the dissonance, family intimacy frays, and the need for belonging can be redirected to the state through rituals that generate esteem.

What do the occupation's own media and teaching materials reveal?

Occupation authorities have built a pedagogy through authorised reading lists and alternative accounts of the "History of Ukraine."²⁰ These deny the legitimacy of a separate Ukrainian nation and sever its connection to the present state. Materials on "Ukrainian Crimes Against Humanity"²¹ deploy a victimhood-inversion frame casting Ukrainians as aggressors, designed to instil shame, rage and disgust. These are not empty tropes but psychological operations targeting Ukrainian identity, especially among the young. Russia's approach is visceral and pathological: a war fought across a human terrain of betrayal, alienation, shame, rage and collapsing social structures, in which operators exploit ethnic heritage and language to recruit, organise and divide the populations they engage. Over time, constant exposure to false narratives in an isolating environment reshapes self-perception, attitudes and, eventually, belief about identity itself.

Conclusion

None of this amounts to a fait accompli; resistance endures and Ukrainian identity has not been remade. But the psychological isolation, the engineered alienation from Ukraine, and the dissonance Russia deliberately manufactures to turn the youth of the TOTs against their own nation are the real costs, and the operational context in which its information ecosystem must be understood. What is under way is the malign weaponisation of a vulnerable civilian population, one made psychosocially, emotionally and physically vulnerable by the occupier so that it can be broken and turned. Yet elucidating how that ecosystem is built and enforced is itself a form of defence. Mapping its methods exposes their seams, turning the information space into clandestine ground for resistance under occupation and laying the groundwork for repair once the territories are liberated. The same science that explains how populations are motivated to resist occupation can be turned to defend them now, and to restore them later.

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