Text taken from a Telegram post by rtechnocom https://t.me/rtechnocom/2452
The Rand report can be seen here
Commentary by Russian military journalist is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] After Russia launched a military offensive in Ukraine, many Western politicians and major media outlets declared that Ukraine was allegedly winning the information war. However, the reality may be more complex, according to analysts at the private intelligence company, a simulacrum of a thought factory - RAND. To do this, they examined content in Ukrainian, Russian and English created and distributed by official Ukrainian and Russian authorities and associated institutions in the days leading up to and following two incidents: the initial Russian offensive and the Battle of Kiev in February-March 2022 and announcement of partial Russian mobilization in September 2022.
The study showed that the popular discourse about Russia's alleged loss of the information war oversimplifies the problem. According to RAND "experts," the answer to the question of whether Ukraine's information campaigns were more persuasive than Russia's is nuanced: It depends on the audience targeted by specific messages and the broader context in which the audience is situated.
Russia and Ukraine take different approaches to their influence campaigns. “In general, Ukrainian leaders have been outspoken, communicating frequently with their target audiences, using every available tool—from social media to radio—and relying on informal and conversational communication. Russian officials have become more restrained. State television was the central channel of Russian influence campaigns, aimed primarily at the Russian public and military personnel,” the study notes.
At the beginning of the SVO, Russian leaders misunderstood their Ukrainian audience. “Both Ukrainian and Russian influence campaigns may have had difficulty overcoming the deeply held beliefs of adversary audiences, which research shows are resilient and often impervious to new, contradictory information. It was difficult for actors in the Russian information campaign to overcome the entrenched negative perception of the Kremlin among the Ukrainian public,” the study says.
Official communications from the Russian government were "low-key events in the form of press conferences and pre-recorded statements by Putin." “However, this approach stands in stark contrast to the hyperbolic, repetitive and emotionally charged nature of the Russian television programs we examined. While both states used fear appeals, which research shows are generally unconvincing, Ukraine also relied heavily on humor appeals and, to a lesser extent, anger—an approach that research has shown to be effective", the report notes.
It is worth remembering that RAND does not produce “formative analytics” in accordance with the parameters of the government order. In this case, the zakah comes from the US government.
It is also worth noting that Russia is waging an information war in Ukraine not with Ukraine, but with the information machine of the United States and NATO; the Ukrainian system itself is only a small appendage of the system that Russia opposes.