In Ukraine, cool calm may prevent a hot war

The country’s experience in how to react to cyberattacks provides lessons for avoiding the kind of panic that Russia seeks.

The Monitor's View

According to officials in Ukraine, a large-scale attack on their country has already begun – only it is not a land invasion by Russia. On Feb. 15, the country experienced a cyberoffensive on the military and two banks that was the largest denial-of-service attack in Ukraine’s history. Yet just as noteworthy was how swiftly those vital institutions recovered – and how officials calmly told the public the real purpose of the attack.

“It is clear,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, minister of digital transformation in a televised briefing, “that ... the key goal of this attack is to destabilize, sow panic, do everything so that a certain chaos arises in our country.”

Preventing fear has become central to Ukraine’s strategy against Russia since early last year when the frequency of cyberattacks began to escalate. “The No. 1 task for Russia is to undermine us from inside,” Oleksiy Danilov, national security adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told The Wall Street Journal.

Last month, President Zelenskyy called on President Joe Biden and other Western leaders to be careful about creating panic in Ukraine with their warnings about Russian troops amassed on the border. Russia, in other words, could achieve its goal of destabilizing Ukraine’s economy and government without a hot war.

Or as Mr. Zelenskyy told Ukrainians in an address: “It is not our land that is being actively attacked, but your nerves. So that you have a constant sense of anxiety. And also the emotions of investors and the business environment.”

Since Russia took Crimea in 2014 and backed an armed rebellion in Ukraine’s eastern region, the country has prepared itself for cyberattacks with the help of many countries in NATO. In the city of Lviv, for example, engineers have found ways to deliver drinking water without electricity, according to The Globe and Mail, and the city has generators that can run for months.

“Resilience is a trait Ukrainians have developed over the past seven years in the face of Russia’s overt and covert aggression,” according to the France 24 television network.

Russia’s war against Ukraine is not only soldiers and weapons, said Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in a Facebook post. “It has many dimensions: the gas crisis in Europe, the destabilization of the hryvnia exchange rate, cyber-attacks, mass bomb hoaxes at infrastructure facilities, paid rallies, and pseudo-rallies. All these are elements of a hybrid war. And the most dangerous of them is disinformation and the fueling of panic.”

In a world where digital information travels quickly, said the prime minister, “panic sentiments are a gift to the enemy. Panic destroys states better than tanks and assault rifles.”

The government’s calls for calm appear to be working. Journalists report many Ukrainians going about their business while still quietly preparing for any sort of attack by Russia. For now, Moscow is losing on the mental war front. The only reason to panic, said President Zelenskyy in an echo of a famous quote by Franklin Roosevelt about fearing fear itself, could be if Ukrainians succumb to panic.