Igor Kurayan was abducted and tortured by Russian soldiers
Igor Kurayan was abducted and tortured by Russian soldiers
Updated on August 17, 2022 18:10 PM by Dhinesh
Igor Kurayan, 55
Igor Kurayan, 55, from Kherson, Ukraine, posted gardening updates before the conflict. Near the Black Sea, he grew palms, pomegranate trees, marigolds, bamboo, and avocados. His "fairytale garden"
A day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kurayan posted a photo on Instagram with a gun declaring he had enlisted to fight in Ukraine's reserve forces. Soon after, Kherson surrendered to Russian soldiers, and in early April, Kurayan was taken. He was watering plants at his shoe business when Russian troops took him outside and into a vehicle. Soon after Kurayan's captivity, his Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok accounts began posting out-of-character statements for the proud Ukrainian, activist, and gardener. Kurayan's kidnappers first portrayed him as a patriot by uploading old images of him delivering supplies to Ukrainian forces in Donbas, where Russia-backed rebels have battled Ukraine's government since 2014.
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Ukraine's leadership was attacked
Strange videos emerged. In one, Kurayan looked haggard and ashen, accompanied by two armed, masked men brandishing the Ukrainian flag and a nationalist banner. Kherson is captured, thus protests are meaningless, and the territorial defence has dissolved. In another, he attacked Ukraine's leadership and urged for capitulation.
"I think further resistance is futile," Kurayan stated in the film carried on Russian state TV. He stated he was part of a conspiracy to assault Russian forces and liberate activists but had given up, adding, "I advise all Territorial Defense fighters surrender their guns." "My dad's social media was used. They spotted his Facebook activity. My dad doesn't know what TikTok is "Karyna, 23, a journalist who fled Ukraine following the war, said CNN. "They made him a puppet."
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Kremlin's propaganda
Kurayan was liberated in a prisoner swap in late April after nearly a month of incarceration. He is one of the numerous Ukrainians taken from the occupied southeast in recent months and drawn into the Kremlin's propaganda machine. Some of their social media profiles promoted pro-Kremlin talking points, and others appeared in manufactured TV interviews supporting Putin's war. Karayan told the media in a video chat that Russian forces alternated between torturing him for information (twisting his fingers with pliers and striking him with a truncheon) and using his iPhone to access his social media profiles and depict him as a hero-turned-traitor. "They started utilizing these images to play their game," Kurayan claimed. His kidnappers taunted him by hijacking his accounts. "They utilized my Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to make a page."
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Russians offer
"Russians offered to betray Ukraine and work with them. First, they sought to present a patriot who betrayed his nation." Kurayan said his kidnappers outlined their social media approach. "They said, 'You're renowned in Kherson, we want to appoint you mayor.'" The struggle for hearts and minds in Ukraine is entering a new phase. Moscow is altering its tactics from national to local to win over Ukrainians in seized territory. After trying to attract collaborators, it's tried various techniques. "In the blitzkrieg phase, Russia's propaganda machine was working on a national level. Now, they're trying to convince local people, especially in occupied areas, that Ukraine has abandoned you," said Mykola Balaban, deputy head of Ukraine's Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security (Stratcom Centre UA).
Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia
"In the case of Igor and others, they utilize this information inside of Russia to say, 'see this Ukrainian was an activist, pro-Ukrainian, but now he knows, we show him the true reality, and he is pro-Russian and understands what we are fighting for.'" The Kremlin has often accused the West of spreading lies, with Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia stating in May that a "community of democracies" was constructing a "cyber-totalitarianism" and labeling any contrary position as "propaganda."
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The Internet Research Agency (IRA)
Tech giants like Facebook and Twitter have stepped up efforts to crack down on coordinated inauthentic activity. The Internet Research Agency (IRA), the notorious Kremlin-linked troll factory, used Ukraine as a testbed for its tactics for years. Against this backdrop, Russia is having to find fresh strategies. At least five abducted Ukrainians have been used to spread messages in support of Russia's war, according to reports. "All the information from the Russian media is 100% a lie," Kurayan says.
The cases, while concerning, do not appear to constitute a trend, Meta, which monitors social media activity in Ukraine. Before the war began, the United States government warned in a letter to the United Nations that it had "credible information" Russian forces had compiled a list of Ukrainian citizens, including activists and journalists, to be kidnapped and tortured, or killed. "If they can grab ahold of me, they would use me for the same purposes, to disseminate propaganda," he says. But this time around, Ukrainians have become hardened to these tactics — ready to call them out or even counter them online. "Russian military try to get control over devices (of activists, local influencers, public figures), to check their social media accounts, they see the value of that ... to see what people are publishing, to see how influential he or she might be, but also to check identity," Yavneh Fedchenko, co-founder and editor-in-chief of prominent Ukrainian fact-checking organization StopFake, told media.
A;so visit; factswow.com