UKRAINE’S COGNITIVE WARFARE OPERATIONS AGAINST RUSSIA: REPRESENTATION, STORY AND MICRO-MYTHOLOGY

Year 2022, Volume: 10 Issue: 32, 358 - 367, 25.09.2022

Emrah Aydemir

Abstract

In recent years, geopolitical rivalries within the international system have been gradually
increasing. It’s evident that nations that are under attack, fragmented, and militarily weak in
geopolitical rivalry have no other choice than going to a war both traditionally and cognitively to
survive. Military operational victories do not mean victory in cognitive warfare, and the conquest
of target audiences’ mental functions is essential to win the war. With cognitive warfare
planning, the mind map of the target audiences is drawn, and a suitable environment is
prepared for the public to support the struggle, apart from focusing on traditional security
measures. The battleground for cognitive warfare is the mindset of society, and properly
planned cognitive warfare operations help overcome chaos and uncertainty. In this sense, the
attack launched by Russia on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, is the scene of operations that
constitute a wide range of cognitive warfare, and affects the whole world, although the outcome
is still uncertain. The narratives, stories, representations and micro-mythology created in various
dimensions and reflections of Ukraine’s cognitive warfare operations are closely followed by
mass media all over the world. In this war, in which the non-military aspects of the RussiaUkraine War are also important, Ukraine desires to manage the perception of the international
community on a large scale and tries to create behaviors that determine their identities. This
article addresses the narrative strategies of Russia and Ukraine during the war that started in
2022 and continues until today; and it evaluates Ukraine’s cognitive warfare operations from
various perspectives and examples.

Keywords

Cognitive Warfare, Micro-Mythology, Representation, Russia, Story, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy

References

• Aydemir, Emrah. 2020. Terörizmle Mücadele ve Kamu Diplomasisi: Bilişsel Savaş. 2. Baskı, Ankara: Siyasal Kitabevi.
• Claverie, Bernard, François du Cluzel. 2022. “Cognitive Warfare: The Advent of the Concept of “Cognitics” in the field of Warfare”, https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal03635889 Last Accessed June 20, 20