Rumors of an “inevitable disaster” and the evacuation of people – the Kremlin is trying to intimidate Kharkiv residents / Article

“Russian terrorists have hit Kharkiv again – through the TV tower. Apparently, this is intimidation to make terror more visible in the city and to try to limit communication and access to information in Kharkiv. Currently, work is underway to restore the signal. Like Kharkiv – also for other cities and settlements protection is needed, they need Patriot (anti-aircraft defense systems). At the same time, it is necessary to strike the places that Russia uses as a base for terror and its war logistics,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

According to the US think tank “Institute for the Study of War” (ISW), Russia is trying to return the same feelings to Kharkiv residents – the same panic that was at the beginning of the full-scale invasion in the spring of 2022.

At that time, a large number of people left the city and many also left the country. Various tools are used for this purpose – not only regular, massive attacks on the city and its infrastructure, but also a concentrated disinformation campaign on social networks.

Russia is taking advantage of the fact that the Ukrainians have limited options in air defense, and the heightened attention to a possible Russian counterattack – that it could be directly on Kharkiv.

According to the opinion of the US think tank, the possibility of a new ground attack on Kharkiv is unlikely if Ukraine receives the new shipment of US military aid really quickly.

However, rumors about the capture of Kharkiv are purposefully multiplied. For example, that Ukrainian officials are leaving Kharkiv. Also such that civilians leave the city en masse.

Recently, Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security also reported that it had identified a Russian intelligence operation that claims Ukrainian officials are preventing people from leaving Kharkiv.

The purpose of the rumors is to spread panic over a possible counterattack on Kharkiv as some “imminent, inevitable disaster.”

Russian propagandists are threatening the complete destruction of Kharkiv, calling on people to leave it urgently and claiming that the situation in Kharkiv is even worse than in the devastated Bakhmut and Avdiyivka. In parallel with the damage caused by rockets and drones, which the officials of the Kharkiv region are constantly working on, they also have to fight in the field of information.

“The enemy is actively spreading or continuing to implement an information-psychological operation that looks like the official information of the state or services,” said Oleh Sinegubov, head of the military administration of the Kharkiv region.

“On the need to evacuate in connection with the threat of occupation of Kharkiv and the region. We are forced to react to it promptly and inform our people that it is necessary to use only our official means of mass information and, of course, the official information channels of the leadership,” he continued.

Intensive work is currently underway in the Kharkiv region to restore the television signal and the power supply facilities that can be repaired. It will not be possible to save all of them, because some large objects have been so badly destroyed that it will take years to restore them.

In addition, Kharkiv is working on the decentralization of electricity supply and heat supply. Assuming that the attacks will continue, this will allow services to be turned off only in those parts where Russia has once again hit with missiles, but to maintain services in other parts of the city and county.

Currently, a number of other Ukrainian cities and foreign partners, who are donating generators in large numbers, have come to the aid of Kharkiv residents.

CONTEXT:

Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked large-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, the Kremlin’s propaganda brazenly promised to capture Kyiv in three days, but the selfless and strong resistance of the Ukrainians prevented the Kremlin from realizing its plans.

After failures, the Kremlin withdrew the army from the Kyiv region, but in the fall of 2022, as a result of a successful counteroffensive, Ukraine managed to drive out the occupation forces from the Kharkiv region and the city of Kherson. In the summer of 2023, Ukraine launched a new counteroffensive, but it was unsuccessful.

On the other hand, in 2024, due to the lack of weapons, Ukraine mostly has to defend itself against Russian attacks, although the Ukrainian leadership emphasizes that it has not given up on the goal of expelling the occupation forces from the entire territory of Ukraine.