Ukraine War

• Russia began bombarding Kyiv yesterday.
• Ukraine is significantly outpowered, but its resistance is fierce: analysts expect Russia will eventually prevail and capture the capital, although it could take at least a month of fighting (plus a couple weeks to surround the city first).
• Ukraine says the 35 people who died when Russian airstrikes hit a military base in western Ukraine were Ukrainian soldiers—not foreign fighters as Russia had claimed.
• Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia failed to reach any breakthroughs yesterday, but will continue today.

Messaging War

• Outgunned on the battlefield and with its allies thus far unwilling to risk WWIII by directly joining the fight, Ukraine has done a brilliant job of using the media to appeal to leaders, celebrities, and citizens of other countries for help.
• A fascinating NYT article pasted below tracks Ukrainian minister Mykhailo Fedorov’s effort to rally Western companies to Ukraine’s side with a combination of direct lobbying efforts and public shaming on social media.
• In one example of a direct result of Fedorov’s efforts, billionaire Elon Musk—with whom Fedorov has been texting—sent Starlink satellite internet technology to Ukraine, and yesterday publicly challenged Pres. Putin to “single combat” on Twitter: “The stakes are Ukraine.” Putin hasn’t responded yet.
• Taking a cue from the Ukrainian government’s grasp of social media as a key weapon of this war, the White House apparently held a Zoom info session with 30 top American TikTok stars last Thursday to brief them on U.S. strategy and policy in an effort to combat misinformation. A Post article about that initiative is also pasted below.
• In addition, Pres. Zelensky is expected to address the U.S. Congress today, and could ask for fighter jets and other direct military support. Naturally, his address will also be broadcast to American television networks so the U.S. public can watch too.

Venezuela

• Chevron is preparing to take operating control of its joint ventures with PDVSA in exchange for debt relief—if the U.S. approves a new license that would allow it to do so.
• The U.S. is reportedly drafting that new license, and also considering similar oil-for-debt authorizations for Eni (Italy) and Repsol (Spain) to operate joint ventures in Venezuela.
• The White House faced backlash in the U.S. and from the Venezuelan opposition for meeting with Pres. Maduro last week, and will have to balance its desire to replace Russian oil imports and lower gas prices with caution dealing with another dictator.

China

• According to a readout, yesterday’s meeting between U.S. NSA Sullivan and Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi was “intense” and lasted seven hours. Sullivan sought to warn Yang and China of consequences if China gives Russia the military and economic aid it reportedly asked for. China denies ever getting Russian requests for aid, but U.S. officials believe it may already be preparing shipments.
• While countries like Australia and New Zealand are starting to relax their zero-tolerance COVID policies, China is not. In the past week as new cases popped up, China ordered 51 million people into lockdown in Jilin, Shenzhen, and Dongguan.

Afghanistan

• Aid workers in Afghanistan say the Taliban has given them unexpected access to do their work—"because they want to stay in power,” says one—but funding and supplies for humanitarian work are still scarce. They warn that food insecurity is still a critical issue across Afghanstan.

Shaming Apple and Texting Musk, a Ukraine Minister Uses Novel War Tactics (NYT)

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s youngest minister, has turned technology, cryptocurrency and social media into modern weapons of war.

After war began last month, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine turned to Mykhailo Fedorov, a vice prime minister, for a key role.

Mr. Fedorov, 31, the youngest member of Mr. Zelensky’s cabinet, immediately took charge of a parallel prong of Ukraine’s defense against Russia. He began a campaign to rally support from multinational businesses to sunder Russia from the world economy and to cut off the country from the global internet, taking aim at everything from access to new iPhones and PlayStations to Western Union money transfers and PayPal.

To achieve Russia’s isolation, Mr. Fedorov, a former tech entrepreneur, used a mix of social media, cryptocurrencies and other digital tools. On Twitter and other social media, he pressured Apple, Google, Netflix, Intel, PayPal and others to stop doing business in Russia. He helped form a group of volunteer hackers to wreak havoc on Russian websites and online services. His ministry also set up a cryptocurrency fund that has raised more than $60 million for the Ukrainian military.

The work has made Mr. Fedorov one of Mr. Zelensky’s most visible lieutenants, deploying technology and finance as modern weapons of war. In effect, Mr. Fedorov is creating a new playbook for military conflicts that shows how an outgunned country can use the internet, crypto, digital activism and frequent posts on Twitter to help undercut a foreign aggressor.

In his first in-depth interview since the invasion began on Feb. 24, Mr. Fedorov said his goal was to create a “digital blockade” and to make life so unpleasant and inconvenient for Russian citizens that they would question the war. He praised companies that had pulled out of Russia, but said Apple, Google and others could go further with steps such as completely cutting off their app stores in the country.

A technological and business blockade, he said, “is an integral component of stopping the aggression.”

Mr. Fedorov, speaking via videoconference from an undisclosed location somewhere around Kyiv, also brushed off concerns that his actions were alienating urban Russians who might be the most likely to oppose the conflict.

“We believe that as long as Russians are silent that they are complicit to the aggression and to the killing of our people,” he said.

Mr. Fedorov’s work is not the only reason that multinational companies like Meta and McDonald’s have withdrawn from Russia, with the war’s human toll provoking horror and outrage. Economic sanctions by the United States, European Union and others have played a central role in isolating Russia.

But Peter Singer, a professor at the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University, said Mr. Fedorov had been “incredibly effective” in calling for companies to rethink their Russia connections.

“No celebrity, let alone nation, has ever been more effective than Ukraine at calling out corporate brands to name and shame them into acting morally,” Mr. Singer said. “If there is such a thing as ‘cancel culture,’ the Ukrainians can claim to have honed it in war.”

In the 45-minute interview on Zoom, Mr. Fedorov, wearing a loosefitting gray fleece with black zippers, sat in front of a wood-paneled wall. He has gotten about three to four hours of sleep a night, he said, often interrupted every 30 minutes or so by alerts on the iPhone that he keeps next to his bed. He said he has been worried about his father, who has been in intensive care for the past week after a missile struck the house next door.

“I’ve brushed shoulders with the horror,” he said. “The war has come knocking on my door as well personally.”

Mr. Fedorov grew up in the small town of Vasylivka in southern Ukraine near the Dnieper River. Before going into politics, he started a digital marketing company called SMMSTUDIO that designed online advertising campaigns.

The work led him to a job in 2018 with Mr. Zelensky, then an actor who was making an unexpected run for Ukraine’s presidency. Mr. Fedorov became the campaign's director of digital, using social media to portray Mr. Zelensky as a youthful symbol of change.

After Mr. Zelensky was elected in 2019, he appointed Mr. Fedorov, then 28, to be minister of digital transformation, putting him in charge of digitizing Ukrainian social services. Through a government app, people could pay speeding tickets or manage their taxes. Last year, Mr. Fedorov visited Silicon Valley to meet with leaders including Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Mr. Fedorov immediately pressured tech companies to pull out of Russia. He made the decision with Mr. Zelensky’s backing, he said, and the two men speak every day.

“I think this choice is as black and white as it ever gets,” Mr. Fedorov said. “It is time to take a side, either to take the side of peace or to take the side of terror and murder.”

On Feb. 25, he sent letters to Apple, Google and Netflix, asking them to restrict access to their services in Russia. Less than a week later, Apple stopped selling new iPhones and other products in Russia.

The next day, Mr. Fedorov tweeted a message to Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, asking for help in obtaining Starlink satellite internet systems that are made by Mr. Musk’s company SpaceX. The technology could help Ukrainians stay online even if Russia damaged the country’s main telecommunications infrastructure. Two days after contacting Mr. Musk, a shipment of Starlink equipment arrived in Ukraine.

Since then, Mr. Fedorov said he has periodically exchanged text messages with Mr. Musk.

Mr. Fedorov also had a call last month with Karan Bhatia, a Google vice president. Google has since made several changes, including restricting access to certain Google Maps features that Mr. Fedorov said were safety risks because they could help Russian soldiers identify crowds of people. The company has since then also suspended sales of other products and services, and, on Friday blocked access to Russian state media globally on YouTube.

Mr. Fedorov has traded emails with Nick Clegg, the head of global affairs at Meta, which is the parent of Facebook and Instagram, about the unfolding war.

Apple, Google and Meta declined to comment. Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Public shaming has been effective, Mr. Fedorov said, because companies are “emotional as well as rational in decision making.”

But while many companies have halted business in Russia, more could be done, he said. Apple and Google should pull their app stores from Russia and software made by companies like SAP was also being used by scores of Russian businesses, he has noted.

In many instances, the Russian government is cutting itself off from the world, including blocking access to Twitter and Facebook. On Friday, Russian regulators said they would also restrict access to Instagram and called Meta an “extremist” organization.

Some civil society groups have questioned whether Mr. Fedorov’s tactics could have unintended consequences. “Shutdowns can be used in tyranny, not in democracy,” the Internet Protection Society, an internet freedom group in Russia, said in a statement earlier this week. “Any sanctions that disrupt access of Russian people to information only strengthen Putin’s regime.”

Mr. Fedorov said it was the only way to jolt the Russian people into action. He praised the work of Ukraine-supporting hackers who have been coordinating loosely with Ukrainian government to hit Russian targets.

“After cruise missiles started flying over my house and over houses of many other Ukrainians, and also things started exploding, we decided to go into counter attack,” he said.

Mr. Fedorov’s work is an example of Ukraine’s whatever-it-takes attitude against a larger Russian army, said Max Chernikov, a software engineer who is supporting the volunteer group known as the IT Army of Ukraine.

“He acts like every Ukrainian — doing beyond his best,” he said.

Mr. Fedorov, who has a wife and young daughter, said he remained hopeful about the war’s outcome.

“The truth is on our side,” he added. “I’m sure we’re going to win.”

The White House is briefing TikTok stars about the war in Ukraine (WaPo)

With millions getting their information about the war from the platform, the administration wants to get its message to top content creators

On Thursday afternoon, 30 top TikTok stars gathered on a Zoom call to receive key information about the war unfolding in Ukraine. National Security Council staffers and White House press secretary Jen Psaki briefed the influencers about the United States’ strategic goals in the region and answered questions on distributing aid to Ukrainians, working with NATO and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons.

As the crisis in Ukraine has escalated, millions have turned to TikTok for information on what is happening there in real time. TikTok videos offered some of the first glimpses of the Russian invasion and since then the platform has been a primary outlet for spreading news to the masses abroad. Ukrainian citizens hiding in bomb shelters or fleeing their homes have shared their stories to the platform, while dangerous misinformation and Russian propaganda have also spread. And TikTok stars, many with millions of followers, have increasingly sought to make sense of the crisis for their audiences.

The White House has been closely watching TikTok’s rise as a dominant news source, leading to its decision to approach a select group of the platform’s most influential names.

This week, the administration began working with Gen Z For Change, a nonprofit advocacy group, to help identify top content creators on the platform to orchestrate a briefing aimed at answering questions about the conflict and the United States’ role in it. Victoria Hammett, deputy executive director of Gen Z For Change, contacted dozens with invitations via email and gathered potential questions for the Biden administration.

The invitations to the event were distributed Tuesday and Wednesday. Kahlil Greene, 21, a creator with more than 534,000 followers on TikTok, said he wasn’t surprised when an invitation arrived in his email inbox. “People in my generation get all our information from TikTok,” he said. “It’s the first place we’re searching up new topics and learning about things.” So, he figured, it made sense that the Biden administration would engage people like him on the platform.

The briefing was led by Matt Miller, a special adviser for communications at the White House National Security Council, and Psaki. The Washington Post obtained a recording of the call, and in it, Biden officials stressed the power these creators had in communicating with their followers. “We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest,” said the White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, “so we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source.”

Jules Terpak, a Gen Z content creator who makes TikTok essays about digital culture, said the White House’s decision to engage creators such as she was essential in helping to stop the spread of misinformation. “Those who have an audience can ideally set the tone for how others decide to assess and amplify what they see online,” she said.

After the call, several influencers said they felt more empowered to debunk misinformation and communicate effectively about the crisis. TikTok has been overrun with false and misleading news since the war broke out, and, on Thursday, the company said it finally would begin labeling state-controlled media on its platform.

Biden has increasingly sought online creators to sell major policy initiatives. The administration worked with dozens of top TikTok stars last year to encourage vaccination. He also hosted a briefing for influencers to educate them about his infrastructure plan. To emphasize the child-care components of his “Build Back Better” initiative, he sat for interviews with two parenting influencers on Facebook Live and YouTube.

Teddy Goff, a founder of Precision Strategies, a consulting firm, said that the White House’s strategy of embracing the next generation of media voices was crucial. “There’s a massive cultural and generational shift happening in media, and you have to have blinders on not to see it,” he said. “The reach of a piece in a traditional news outlet is a fraction of what a big TikToker gets.”

President Donald Trump often engaged online creators and Internet figures, and he hired an influencer marketing firm during his reelection campaign. On Wednesday, he appeared on the NELK boys “Full Send Podcast” where he spoke at length about the Iran nuclear deal and the U.S. strategic oil reserve. The episode was live on YouTube for only a few hours before it was removed for violating the platform’s policy on misinformation.

The voices dominating conversation on the Internet can be freewheeling and unexpected. Many creators on Thursday’s call, for instance, were shocked by the presence of Aaron Parnas, the 22-year-old son of Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-born American businessman and former associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s who assisted Trump’s plan to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s rivals. Parnas was convicted in October on campaign finance charges and recently pleaded guilty to conspiracy.

Aaron Parnas has recently emerged as a powerful TikTok influencer by providing nonstop news updates about Ukraine. On the night of Russia’s invasion, he hosted TikTok live streams discussing the events to over 800,000 viewers. Since then, each day he has posted videos breaking down news about the war every 45 minutes from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Parnas said that his news was not partisan and that he was getting information directly from reputable sources in the country, such as his family members there, local Ukrainian journalists and Ukrainian television. “I love my father, but I am not my father,” he said.

Jules Suzdaltsev, a Ukrainian-born journalist who operates the popular TikTok news channel Good Morning Bad News, said that he thought the overall tone of the briefing was too soft and that officials dodged hard questions. “The energy of the call felt like a press briefing for kindergartners,” he said.

Within hours of the briefing’s conclusion, the influencers began blasting out messaging to their millions of followers. A video posted by Marcus DiPaola, a news creator on TikTok, offered key takeaways from the meeting in a video that has been viewed more than 300,000 times. Greene also posted a recap, adding his own critical analysis at the end, calling out the Biden administration for not “acknowledging its role in other occupations and invasions around the world.”

Ellie Zeiler, an 18-year-old TikTok star with more than 10.5 million followers, said she hopes to remain in communication with the White House and continue to press officials there about key issues. She sees herself as a voice for young people and the growing contingent of news consumers getting information primarily through social media platforms.

“I’m here to relay the information in a more digestible manner to my followers,” she said. “I would consider myself a White House correspondent for Gen Z.”