The Ukrainian PR Army

Doug Downs (00:01):

23-year-old Kateryna was living with her boyfriend in Mariupol, a city of 120,000 people in southern Ukraine in the spring of 2022 when the Russian invasion began quickly, Russian troops surrounded the city and blocked evacuation routes preventing people from getting back into Ukraine. The only permitted exit was toward Russia controlled territories. Kateryna and her boyfriend accepted the only option they had was to accept this deportation. They packed a small bag and took their cat before boarding a bus to a city within Russia just on the other side of the Ukraine border. It really was their only means of survival becoming captives in the aggressor's country. When they arrived, they underwent an eight hour interrogation. Their phones were seized and scrutinized, and they were asked for names and contact information of people they knew. Russian staff told them they should move to a city just east of Moscow, where more settlement options would be made available.

(01:13):

Their Ukrainian money couldn't be exchanged for Russian rubles. Their credit cards were not accepted and they couldn't find any work. They were hungry alone and no one was helping. Fortunately, Kateryna had distant relatives who lived in Russia. She was able to contact them and they provided her with enough money to reach the Estonian border where once again, they were interrogated by Russian officials, but allowed to cross into EU territory, Kateryna her boyfriend and their cat.

(01:49):

According to the Global Conflict Tracker, as of February, 2024, the Russian invasion of Ukraine as seen nearly 10,000 civilians killed another 18,000 injured. 5 million people have been displaced, and over 6 million people have fled Ukraine. Ukraine has received 350 billion in aid, including 77 billion from the United States. There are voices now in the western world beginning to say, maybe that's about enough, and Ukraine should broker a peace deal with Russia and seed territory. With that sentiment growing from a murmur to a very audible voice, the conversation and the PR efforts that go with them has changed. This episode isn't about the conflict, but the intricate web of human communication that has spawned today on Stories and Strategies, the Ukrainian PR Army.

(03:01):

My name is Doug Downs. My guest this week is Julia. Petryk, joining today from Kyiv Ukraine. Hi Julia.

Julia Petryk (03:08):

Hi Doug. Happy to be here.

Doug Downs (03:11):

And how are things in Kyiv tonight?

Julia Petryk (03:15):

It's more or less last safe right now as we don't have air raid attack, but from time to time we hear air raid alarm and it can become dangerous. So we need to think about the nearest shelter or if you are on the way, you need to figure out how to get home or whether to take some break on your journey and find the nearest shelter and go back when it's over.

Doug Downs (03:51):

Does it become normal at any point for you? We have a tendency to normalize things as humans. Do you accept that as part of your day, your night

Julia Petryk (04:01):

In a way? Yeah, we need to figure out how to combine and how to live under that. We are joking war, life, work balance. So it's not about just life and work, but worry is definitely present in any possible ways in our life. So it's becoming kind of normal, but I am always saying that we normalized. I mean the world normalized something that just can be normalized.

Doug Downs (04:37):

Cannot be, yeah, cannot. So Julia, just quickly touching on your comms background. You have more than 10 years experience in digital PR and media relations. You help Ukrainian tech startups get global coverage and you co-founded the Ukrainian PR Army to fight on the information front and keep Ukraine in the spotlight of international media. You have been recognized as a future is female award winner and one of the top 25 PR innovators by our friends at Provoke Media. Julia, the latest battle in this horrid war is a public relations battle. There are political members in the United States, Britain and Canada, mostly on the conservative side in each country, all showing waning support for additional funding to Ukraine. There was one Ipsos poll in Canada in February saying about 30% of Canadians now think Ukraine should broker an agreement with Russia and seed territory give up territory. In that agreement, the narrative in the Western public view is shifting. This is a big reason for the PR Army,

Julia Petryk (05:54):

Not only for the PR Army, but for the whole country. And unfortunately when we talk about season territories, we are not talking about acres, miles of the land. We are talking about people. We are talking about someone's lives, someone's past someone's destiny in some way in this war. I've lost the nearest place to my heart, my grandparents' house near bmo. And of course it can't be compared to the losses of human lives, but I can't imagine how, I can't explain how difficult it is and depriving to get deprived of what was so precious to my heart. This is the place when I got the first bike ride, the first lake swim, my first kiss was near, is near that house and it's level to the ground. No pictures, no memories, nothing, no legacy from my grandparents. And this is not a question of some piece of land.

(07:29):

It's much more than that. And when we say about seasoned territories, we are talking about seizing someone's life. We are talking about trading someone's lives. And as you know, the invasion was unprovoked. It was not in any possible civilized way justified. So it's impossible for the aggressor to be given what they expect to be given. So it's the question of the border of the line where the grasser is stopped because he won't stop there. Tomorrow, it'll be a second anniversary of the full scale invasion and soon it'll be 10th anniversary of the Crimea annexation. So it's not a matter of some territories that put in claims to be historic historically Russian. It's not the matter of some historic justice as he puts it. It's a matter where he will be stopped because otherwise he will go farther. The role of public relations

Doug Downs (08:55):

Here and founding the PR Army, why is that so important?

Julia Petryk (09:03):

Now? I'm constantly getting back to those flashbacks of two years from now of the day when we were awakened by explosions and the sounds of air raid alarm and that day changed our lives forever. No, Ukrainian is having the life as it was before the invasion, and I'm so proud of the level of the Ukrainian professional PR community of resilience that literally under the physical threat and with all those airplanes flying over our heads, we managed to unite our efforts and organize the Ukrainian PR Army on the very first day of the full scale invasion. We were completely driven by enthusiasm and adrenaline to contribute somehow to our victory and to contribute to something that would be beneficial for our country. That's why on that very day, on the 24th of February in 2022, we united our efforts. We created a chat when we helped international media to get access to eye weaknesses, to volunteers, to military, to authorities.

(10:41):

And I think that our official government was just attacked by, not just by Russians, by tons of requests from international media and PR Army was of big help to provide those services of connecting media was the experts they needed. And after that, we've been operating for two years already. We didn't stop for a day as we know that we are still far from victory and we are still necessary for our country. And I guess this is like unprecedented case of the professional community being united for the big, big impactful and meaningful goal. And we have really amazing cases when thanks to some coverage by the PR Army, we managed to release people from Russian captivity. They are like civilians, some activists volunteers, and they were captivated by the Russian Army when by the way they occupied some territories. And we are so happy that we are capable to deliver some messages and we are capable to save someone's lives and dignity. And when someone asks themselves in the profession whether I'm doing some meaningful job, whether I do something that the society needs, we don't have those questions. In the PR Army, we understand pretty well how every effort in our everyday activity can be really, really a matter of someone's life or someone's health or someone's dignity. And we are super proud to be a part of the PR Army as a professional organization to deal with Ukrainian narratives and spreading truth about the events in Ukraine and amplifying Ukrainian voices in the international media.

Doug Downs (13:14):

When I go to your website and I see voices of freedom, is that what you mean by voices of freedom? Expressing that Ukrainian narrative

Julia Petryk (13:22):

In a way? Like all our activities are somehow targeted at delivering messages from Ukraine, but voices of Freedom is actually a digital platform when a media can place their request on the platform and through that platform, voices of Freedom, one can search for relevant experts, authorities who can comment on a number of topics for the media.

Doug Downs (13:56):

Excellent. That sounds like a fantastic tool. How has artificial intelligence AI played a role in the information battle?

Julia Petryk (14:05):

What a good question. I guess that the situation that Russian invasion in Ukraine raises so many questions regarding the word order regarding the distribution of some political forces or some new narratives. It arises so many questions and it actually challenges that the word order we got used to have, and I guess using AI in disinformation detection is another lesson that Ukrainians can teach the world with. So there are a number of tools that appeared after the full scale invasion as a response to massive information attacks by Russia. And I can name a few like class data and osl, which work on the disinformation detection in the information sphere. It is done with the help of ai, it's properly trained. Luckily we have so many examples with for AI detection as Russia keeps spreading disinformation and force narrative. So it's very easy for the AI model to be trained.

(15:43):

And now those tools are able to detect cases of disinformation. Let's say the recent narrative that the Russian side have been distributing refers to that insect farming. It's a sustainable way of doing farming, like growing insects and using them for multiple purposes. But Russia puts it as if the whole Europe is starving that they start eating insects. And there was absurd absolute messages in different social media about that insect farming, but they call it that way. They say that Europeans are starving without Russian gas and Russian resources. That's why now you can find worms and bugs in every sausage. So be aware and look on the labels, on the sausage cautiously as you may find it, among the listed ingredients that are containing in some sort of food. We understand that it's absurd, but a friend of mine said that her mom who absorbs and consumes all the news in Russian, she was seeing her in Latvia.

(17:17):

She came to see her and her granddaughter and she said that you won't believe it, but she was inspecting sausage and looking for insect ingredients in the sausage because her mom was a victim of that disinformation. She read it and she believed that it's true. And unfortunately Russia plays a big role in demonizing in some way European and American societies just to show how they're dependent on Russian resources and how liberal they are and how bad it is for the future of the humankind. So AI has a great role in terms of detecting those cases of disinformation, and I believe this is the time for international governments to think about policies, practices, how to adopt AI and to automate the process of disinformation detection. As you may have heard that the International forum in Davos detected misinformation and disinformation among the biggest threats in the common two years, and they are detected as the main threat for the humankind. So we are here to stress on the importance of that detection and actually prevention. It's not a matter of debunking something, it's much more productive to pre bunk something. So think about it. So pre bunking instead of debunking, and usually it takes less efforts to prevent something rather than to quench what is already started.

Doug Downs (19:19):

What have been the most successful channels for you of communication and which are the channels least successful is not the right term, but which are the toughest I would imagine, television news. You mentioned the one lady who gets her news and information, she consumes it in Russian, in that case she lived in Latvia, but you have citizens right within Ukraine who are of Russian heritage, who are watching Russian news. Where are you winning the battles and have the battles been tougher?

Julia Petryk (19:58):

I guess I wouldn't stick to one of the channels. I wouldn't distinguish even two or three leading channels. I believe that propaganda is ominous. It's everywhere, and as of now we see a lot of threats coming from platform X with a new appearance of bots. There they are so professional in Sprint is in spreading programing messages. Social media such as telegram channels are also a big threat for false narratives. I mean a big field for spreading false narratives and tv. I wouldn't say that the new generation is very addicted to tv, so even Russia, when they tried to occupy new territories of Ukraine, they would hit some TV towers for the first time, but Ukrainians consume more news on social media. That's why it was not a winning strategy. But overall, I believe that Russian propaganda is so deeply rooted that sometimes it doesn't refer only to the contemporary events.

(21:39):

Sometimes it's deeply rooted in history. For example, the recent interview was putting for Fox News shows that he's totally lost in his realistic views on the history and he's completely run on a number of messages about the Ukrainian origin, about denial of Ukraine as a state. And this is again a question to historians, to sociologists, to scientists, to academics, whether it's the time for them to wrestling their approach and to study the background of Ukraine as well as Russia because for a while Ukraine was not identified as a separate state. And it's a big question of self-identification and of Ukrainian identity as it is. That's why I believe this is a big, big question for the academics as well. Not like having to deal with the contemporary disinformation, but the one which was spread in historic books as well.

Doug Downs (23:10):

Julie, a last question. I'm a big believer with communications. It's just not enough for us to be informed. Great if you're informed, but it has to be a call to action. What can our listeners do?

Julia Petryk (23:25):

I would start with the first step. Go and find Ukrainian PR Army on social media and feel free to outreach and ask for fill out. You can reach out to social media channels of the PR Army and ask which help is needed. Sometimes you can donate except money. You can donate expertise, you can donate your network, you can donate your knowledge, you can donate your perception, you can donate your mindset, and we are very open to get connected with the professional communications communities all over the world to amplify the messages and to amplify the narratives that we are spreading. Unfortunately, we do witness media fatigue in the world and for someone, it's just a part of the agenda. But for us, it's a matter of our existence. If our kids will be born, if our grandchildren will be born, if someone will be Ukrainian, if someone will speak Ukrainian. Because for Russia, it's never a question of just borders. It's a question of extinguishing Ukraine as a nation,

Doug Downs (25:05):

I love that you've taken your profession, which I know as someone in it is more than a profession. It becomes a philosophical and spiritual belief that communications can change the world. I honestly believe that I love Julia, that now I've met someone who is genuinely doing it through their profession. What an honor to meet and to talk with you. Thank you.

Julia Petryk (25:28):

Likewise, Doug. Thank you so much for everything that you do for comms profession.

Doug Downs (25:34):

Dyakuyu. Did I say that right? Almost

Julia Petryk (25:38):

Dyakuyu. Yes.

Doug Downs (25:39):

Dyakuyu yes.

Julia Petryk (25:40):

Thank you.

Doug Downs (25:42):

I will get it. If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Julia Petryck, we've got her contact information and the PR Army's contact information. In the show notes, please do stories and strategies as a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcast. If you like this episode, I hope you take a moment to visit the PR Army website. There's a direct link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.