The document provides a summary of the strategic communication, military, cyber, and economic aspects of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. It notes that Ukraine has gained the upper hand in strategic communication by portraying Zelensky as a heroic leader defending against Russian aggression. Militarily, Russian forces have encircled some Ukrainian cities but are facing stronger-than-expected resistance in urban areas. There has been a global uprising of cyber partisans attacking Russian targets, while Russian cyber operations have targeted Ukrainian infrastructure. Western sanctions are severely impacting the Russian economy. The outlook is that Russia will escalate violence in Ukrainian cities as its economy begins to collapse under sanctions.

1. Ukrainian Conflict Bulletin #2 2/03/2022 by Csaba Virág
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Ukrainian Conflict Bulletin #2 – 2/03/2022
Authors’ note:
A lot is happening parallel since Russia started its invasion of Ukraine on the 24th February 2022. In my
bulletin I aim to conclude and share the information what I have gathered either through the support of
the European Cyber Community or through my discussions with current and former members of armed
forces in Europe. As my main profession – raising cyber resilience for organizations and nations to resist
large scale cyber and hybrid incidents – requires me to holistically analyze the impact of multiple events
happening parallel, I will not only focus on the cyber space aspect, but on all aspects that I find
important to analyze and gain situational awareness with. For the strictly military movement timeline
and events or ongoing fights there are many trustworthy resources out there, hence I will not put focus
on that, same with each individual topics. This is not a study, I will not provide links and references.
Many of the information you can simply search for, some are relying on personal discussions with
subject matter experts.
Finally, everything written here is reflecting my own personal view.

2. Ukrainian Conflict Bulletin #2 2/03/2022 by Csaba Virág
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Strategical communication (STRATCOM)
As I have written in the #1 edition STRATCOM is clearly led by Ukraine, especially by its President
Zelenskyy. While he is pictured as the leader of the resistance against a large hostile occupying force,
Putin is starting to become the leader sitting behind ridiculously huge desks as he is afraid of Covid.
Ukrainian videos are showing what the Russian state media and official communication is trying to hide:
Russian Forces are performing large scale military actions within Ukraine, casualties are growing on both
sides and the effect of the war is already taking its toll on the Russian people through sanctions,
inflation, rise of mortgages and cutting off access to Western technology and services.
The Western community stopped listening to Russian explanations that start are reflecting the official
propaganda, UN representatives just simply walked out when Russian Minister of Defense explained the
need of military intervention because of the nuclear weapon goals of Ukraine or the genocide against
Russian community in Ukraine.
Social media channels are full with pro-Ukrainian messages, videos and pictures of the attacks against
civilians and also about the unpreparedness of the Russian Forces. All of these are strengthening the
moral of the Ukrainian and Allied Forces, while official Russian communication turns into a burlesque. To
counterfeit it Russia imposed ban on media channels not following communication guidelines and /or
giving opportunity for representing alternate views on the topic.
The current situation is especially interesting from the military doctrine point of view. As stated in a
NATO report on Russian Information Campaign1
: “from December 2014 the Russian military has
adopted a new doctrine that explicitly states that information superiority is essential to achieving victory
on the physical battleground in the modern war. Russia’s information activities have played a significant
role in the overall military operations carried out in the territory of East Ukraine since 2014. Information
operations were used at all levels starting with the political level (against the state of Ukraine, state
structures, politicians) up to the tactical level for justifying military actions initiated by pro-Russian
forces. Information confrontation and a variety of psychological operations continue to play a
substantial role in the current crisis in Ukraine.”
While escalating the situation Russian Forces followed their doctrine, but it seems ever since they
cannot gain the momentum back. While Mr. Zelenskyy appears as a hero, Putin is an oppressor in front
of the world. Russian media channels are being banned in the Western world, hence reaching the same
audience by the Russian propaganda became challenging. Without the comfortable superiority of
controlling the Russian broadcasting, Russian propogandists have to fight for the attention in the social
media and online space, where reaching the audience is challenging.
There are multiple reports on Russian controlled AI generated bloggers and vloggers accounts, where
the blogger claimed to be a dissatisfied and scared Ukrainian spreading Russian narrative. Telegram,
Twitter, social media outreach is still high for the Russian propaganda, however so are the news coming
from the Ukrainian side.
1
https://stratcomcoe.org/publications/russian-information-campaign-against-ukrainian-state-and-defence-
forces/174

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War successes are still lacking, especially given the amount of weaponry already deployed by the
Russian Forces. Meanwhile the West is blamed for the rapid isolation of the Russian economy and
population from Western technology, services, currency, travel destination or supplies. Propaganda has
to explain why Apple is not supplying more shine toys and BMWs will lack repair parts.
Meanwhile Ukraine has achieved to sign an Association Agreement between the European Union and
Ukraine and leads the narrative that the war in Ukraine is the war of free Europe’s against dictatorship
and the comeback of the Soviet era, while Russia is claiming to execute its right to protect itself as
Ukraine planned to attack Russia.
From military power point of view Russia can win, but has lost the STRATCOM battle so far.
Armed Forces
Military experts are still puzzled to see how the Russian Forces and technology is performing so far. The
communication of the superiority and capability of Russian Forces have been really convincing for the
last years, yet their actual performance in real situation came as a surprise. Nobody argues the
capability of the pure sheer force available, but Russia should have already led the war by technological
superiority. Quite controversially the world is still experiencing confused troops, failing equipment,
effective resistance by outnumbered and under-equipped Ukrainian population.
Sign of Russian determination and lack of military successes shifts the war towards the use of bigger and
more powerful weapons. Cities are getting encircled by Russian Forces, hindering Ukrainian Forces
access to supplies like weapons, ammunition, medication, food or water. Meanwhile Russian Forces are
bombarding them both from air and with artillery guns, meaning the targeting is less precise and direct,
already leading up to higher civilian casualties.
Ukrainian Forces and population is preparing for urban fighting. While artillery, missile and airstrike
superiority favors Russian Forces, the urban terrain shall favor Ukrainian Forces. Tanks are hard to utilize
in urban terrain, especially if there are a lot of debris on the streets from earlier bombardments. Russia’s
military culture focuses on fighting in open terrain, Ukrainian Forces are preparing to fight in urban
terrain.
Each action by the Russian Forces that amplifies the violence and mass destruction will eventually turn
the world more against Russia and justification of the war according to the Russian narrative will
become even more hard to maintain. The cost on both sides are potentially to be enormous.
Some highlights of recent events:
• Kiev is about to be encircled, the 60 km log convoy is still en route
• Maripol and Kharkiv is still held by Ukrainian forces despite of heavy bombardments and
pressure by the Russian Forces
• Chechnian leader Kadirov acknowledged to suffer losses and asks Moscow to turn to more
brutal tactics
• Many officers of the Russian Forces have Ukrainian roots, lowering the will to cause large civilian
casualties
• Belarus forces have crossed the Ukrainian border
• More and more Western countries provide military, humanitarian and financial aid to Kiev

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• Russian military contractor Wagner Group troops have been reported on Ukrainian ground
Electronic Warfare (EW)
Main events:
- Russian Forces’ radio frequency seems to use unencrypted channels
- Russian Forces targeted Ukrainian physical broadcasting infrastructure
- Starlink terminals arrived to Ukraine
- It seems Russian Forces are relying on civilian radios and mobile phones
- Radio jammers on both sides are constantly trying to interrupt communications
Cyber Electro-Magnetic Activities (CEMA)
Main events:
- Physical attacks against main infrastructure by Russian Forces
Cyber space activities
Cyber space activities became intense on both sides. Hacktivist groups are fully engaged with Russian
targets, from defacement, through data leaks and generating business disruption in services. Russia is
infamous of its cyber offensive capabilities, it seems their defensive measures are low.
Russian APTs are targeting Ukrainian infrastructures along with Western, mainly US targets. These can
lead to disruption of services, however the impact is significantly lower than what Russia is experiencing
now. The cyber attacks in Russia can lead to similar effects as the Russian cyber attack against Estonia in
2007.
Short list of activities from the last days:
- Ukrainian forces launch chatbot service on Telegram asking for civilian input on Russian cyber/IT
targets
- Several cyber hacktivist groups carry on attacking Russian targets
- Russian groups attack US and Western targets
- Publishing several data dumbs from Russian targets:
o governmental institutions data
o regional databases
o critical infrastructure data
o hacker group forum data
o Russian military personnel data
o Russian intelligence personnel data
o Russian radio frequencies
o Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense data
o Account Chamber of Russia data
o Russian steel company data
o PromEngineering company data
o Economy.gov.ru data
o OJSC Ak Bars Holding data

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o Russian Facebook Database including Names, City's and Phone numbers + Job Titles
o Scanex.ru data
o Tomsk State University data
o Government of the Sverdlovsk Region data
o Belarus state media documents
o Russian railways data
o Russian hosting companies
o Rosatom data
o Oblgazeta, the state-media of the Sverdlovsk region data
o Russia Power & NLMK Group data
o Joint-stock Internet Exchange data
- Databases from Chinese infrastructure are being published along with Russian targets
- Attacks against Russian SCADA systems are ongoing
- Russian TV and media organizations have been hacked to show pro-Ukrainian messages
- Gas station pumps have been hacked highlighting pro-Ukrainian messages
- Russian hacker organizations are being hacked, those who have not been yet are sending out
messages asking not to be hacked, claiming they are not targeting Ukrainian civilian
infrastructures and are against Putin
- Russian groups leak personal data of approx. 80K of American officials
- Russian military tracking system has been hacked
- Russian banks have been breached
- Russian CCTV feeds have been breached and used to monitor Russian movements
- Yandex development server has been breached
- WaterKotte systems have been breached
- Infamous Russian Conti group internal messaging have been published along with internal
materials
- Russian plane tracking flyrf.ru has been breached
- Russian actors are spreading weaponized documents in forums
- Nuclear reactor control systems have been breached
- There were new on Signal Russia breach confuted by Signal
Cyber partisans
As mentioned already in #1 it seems there is a so far unprecedented moment of global cyber partisans,
where the world’s hacktivist, hacker and offensive cyber capability turned against Russia and Belorussia.
This type of asymmetric warfare shall serve as a lessons learned for the future military doctrines.
Recent events:
- There is an internal fight among certain hacktivist groups about the efforts and fame, who did
what, however the work is ongoing
- Fake Anonymous profiles arise on Twitter, probably under Russian control
- Partisan groups ask for targeting data from the community and constantly publish their next
targets

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- Targeting of personal data, especially of high value targets like Putin, Russian political and
military leaders, oligarchs is on the rise
Hybrid and economy
Recent events:
- Ukraine has been granted EU candidate status
- Pro-Putin politicians try to switch rhetoric and tactics
- Economical sanctions hit Russia hard
- Western companies are cutting providing services and products to Russia
- Logistic companies are not delivering to Russia
- Import ban on Russian products are being put in place
- Russia faces the cost and effect of the SWIFT ban
- Russian government seizes 80% of foreign currency available in banks
- Russians are protesting against the war in Russia
- Russian energy sector faces the challenges of Western companies withdrawing their technology
from the country
- China urges peace discussions between the parties
- Russian airplanes are banned from Western airspace
- Russian ships are banned from Western ports
- Switzerland announces to freeze Russian assets along with Western allies’ sanctions
- Nord Stream 2 company files bankruptcy
- Sberbank in Hungary files bankruptcy
- Hungarian government votes against usage of Russian nuclear technology
- Hungarian government votes to support the transportation of military equipment to Ukraine,
but prohibits transportation across Hungary
- Hungarian government votes to support banning the Russian controlled International
Investment Bank (IIB) headquartered in Budapest, Hungary, often dubbed as the Russian
Spybank
- Russian citizens face devaluating ruble, doubled interest rate on mortgages, ongoing system
disruptions
- Putin demands Ukraine to disarm and stay neutral outside NATO, the formal recognition of
Crimea as Russian along with Donbas and Luhansk region
- Turkey closes of the Bosporus from Russian ships
- Unitedness of Member States of the EU and members of NATO came to an all time peak,
allowing both organizations to make quick and effective decisions.
- Analyst predict that Russian economy might crack if the war and the sanctions are still ongoing
after 14 days

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Outlook
Ukraine faces an escalation of war with raising civilian and military casualties. If the moral is maintained
among Ukrainians each loss will add to their commitment to withstand Russian oppression. Meanwhile
Russian Forces are enclosing on the larger cities and seemingly preparing for amplifying disruption,
eventually aiming to eliminate Ukrainian leadership and force Ukrainian forces to stand down.
Meanwhile Russian economy starts to collapse as Western sanctions are taking effect, forcing Russian
leadership to deal with internal issues and rising dissatisfaction
About the author
Csaba Virág has more than a decade of experience in strategic, technical and administrative layers of the IT and
cybersecurity sector. He is well known for his capacity building activities along with his contribution to raising cyber
resilience in the EU and globally.
Csaba is born in Hungary, currently residing in Estonia and is the Director of Capacity Building at Talgen
Cybersecurity , focusing on developing and delivering high impact cyber resilience at large via enabling
organizations and governments to leverage on digital transformation at their maximum potential.
For more information, please visit Csaba Virág’s LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/csabavirag/