Oleksii Danilov: We are well aware of what is going on in the media landscape – this is a war

Russia’s hostile propaganda is in full swing. This was emphasised by Oleksii Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, on 20 December during the 2023 final press conference of the Centre for Countering Disinformation.

“We are well aware of what is going on in the media landscape – this is a war, a fierce war”, – he said.

Oleksii Danilov cited the example of NATO countries which with the onset of Russian aggression, began to create organisations to counter disinformation to assess information threats and provide a prompt response thereto.

“Today, similar structures for countering hostile information campaigns operate in virtually all NATO countries”, – noted the Secretary of the NSDC of Ukraine. In particular, the European Centre for Countering Hybrid Threats has been operating in Finland since September 2017 to counter “new threats aimed at destabilising the situation in European countries”.

The centre was founded by 12 countries, including Finland, Sweden, Norway, the USA, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

For his part, Andrii Shapovalov, Acting Head of the Centre for Countering Disinformation, noted that the team of analysts investigates information incidents to identify campaigns that threaten Ukraine’s national security. Thus, they monitor more than 150 foreign Internet resources on a daily basis, analyse more than 100 YouTube channels and about 500 TG channels, and track the activities of 812 speakers and almost 300 organisations.

The main consumers of the materials, according to the Acting Head of the Countering Disinformation Centre, are the security and defence sector of Ukraine, central executive authorities, the Office of the President of Ukraine and our international partners.