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Russian Federation's Invasion of Ukraine

Provides resources related to the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine, initiated on 24 February 2022.

Further Reading / In the Library

Cyber Mercenaries: The State, Hackers, and Power

by Tim Mauter
ISBN: 9781316422724
Explores the secretive relationships between states and hackers. As cyberspace has emerged as the new frontier for geopolitics, states have become entrepreneurial in their sponsorship, deployment, and exploitation of hackers as proxies to project power. The post-Soviet space and Ukraine feature prominently in the analysis.

Overview

Russian cyber attacks began targeting government sites in the lead-up to the invasion. More recently, cultural heritage content has been hit too. Russia's state-run media is also carrying out a full-scale misinformation campaign about the invasion's motives and its impacts. Read more about the situation in the articles below, and in the subsequent section get information about specific projects working to combat data erasure.

Kenneth R. Rosen, "‘Kill Your Commanding Officer’: On the Front Lines of Putin’s Digital War With Ukraine," Politico, 15 February 2022.

Pavel Polityuk and Steve Holland, "Cyberattack Hits Ukraine as U.S. Warns Russia Could be Prepping for War," Reuters, 14 January 2022.

Josephine Wolff, "Why Russia Hasn't Launched Major Cyber Attacks Since the Invasion of Ukraine," Time, 2 March 2022.

Elahe Izadi and Sarah Ellison, "Russia’s Independent Media, Long Under Siege, Teeters Under New Putin Crackdown," Washington Post, 04 March 2022.

Anders Åslund, "Why Vladimir Putin Is Losing the Information War to Ukraine," Atlantic Council, 06 March 2022.

Data Rescue & Preservation Efforts

The peril cyber attacks pose to the important digital records hosted by Ukrainian government institutions and cultural heritage sites becomes much more urgent should Russian President Putin succeed in removing Ukraine's legitimate government and replacing it with a puppet power. European and American institutions such as libraries are working to crawl at-risk sites while they're still live in an effort to preserve them should they be taken down.

Claire Woodcock, "Ukrainian Websites Are Going Dark. Archivists Are Trying to Save Them," Vice, 25 February 2022.

Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO)
A group of cultural heritage professionals – librarians, archivists, researchers, programmers – working together to identify and archive at-risk sites, digital content, and data in Ukrainian cultural heritage institutions while the country is under attack.

  • Support the effort by submitting URLs for web archiving or volunteer to help identify and archive sites and content.


Library of Congress: archiving websites from Ukraine and the Russian-annexed areas.


Ivy Plus SEEES affinity group: adding endangered sites from the region (including Ukraine) to an IPLC digital collection called Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union (on Internet Archive).


UC Berkley: documenting Ukraine Crisis 2022 on Archive-IT; it is a continuation of their Crimean Crisis Web Archive. Contact is Liladhar Pendse.

 

Internet Archive Global Events: discussion is under way for a web archiving project on the war in Ukraine.


American Folklore Society: backups of research and collection data for folklorists, ethnologists, and heritage institutions in Ukraine. We welcome colleagues in need to complete this form.

Podcasts / Audio