THE PROPAGANDA MANUAL OF THE UKRAINE WAR takes readers inside the new battlefield where wars are increasingly won or lost-not with tanks and missiles alone, but with propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, and cyber operations.
The Russia-Ukraine war has been fought as fiercely in the information sphere as in on-the-ground combat. Russia has relied on Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine to sustain domestic support despite staggering military losses. Ukraine has used strategic communication and influence campaigns to strengthen national resolve while persuading Western democracies that continued military and financial assistance is essential. Across Europe, North America, and the Global South, governments, intelligence services, media organizations, and private actors have competed to shape public opinion around the war.
Drawing on extensive research and decades of experience studying Russia and international media, Thomas Kent reveals how Russia, Ukraine, and Western governments employ disinformation, psychological operations (PSYOP), cyber warfare, covert influence campaigns, media manipulation, strategic communications, and digital propaganda to influence both domestic and international audiences.
The book examines forged websites, hacked broadcasts, manipulated social media algorithms, anonymous influence operations, deception campaigns, and coordinated messaging designed to alter public perception and political decision-making. It also explores how violence against civilian targets serves as propaganda, with Ukraine striking infrastructure deep inside Russia and the Kremlin directing arson and assassinations in Western Europe.
Kent analyzes the propaganda successes and failures of each participant in the Ukraine conflict while offering practical recommendations for defensive and offensive information operations by Western countries. Essential reading for anyone interested in geopolitics, international security, Russia, Ukraine, NATO, intelligence, cyber conflict, journalism, and the future of information warfare, THE PROPAGANDA MANUAL OF THE UKRAINE WAR explains how the struggle to control information has become one of the defining weapons of the twenty-first century.