Horizontal versus Vertical Power and the Fight Against Russian Disinformation - with Olga Tokariuk

Propaganda and Information warfare have been at the forefront of  Russia’s efforts to control, dominate and coerce the people of Ukraine.  Disinformation is as much part their offensive arsenal as missiles and  artillery. But Ukraine has been fighting this information assault since  2014, and so has become an expert in developing techniques to counter  Russian propaganda narratives and methods. A whole community of Digital  and news media innovators are fighting back, and Open-Source  Intelligence has evolved rapidly in response to the threat from Russian  aggression.   

Olga Tokariuk is an independent journalist and non-resident fellow at  CEPA (Center for European Policy Analysis) based in Ukraine. Her  professional interests include international relations and  disinformation research.  Olga has vast experience working with Ukrainian and international media.  Her reports were published and aired by TIME, The Washington Post, The  Daily Beast, NPR, New Lines Mag (USA), Monocle (UK), EFE (Spain), Il  Foglio, ANSA (Italy). She is a former head of foreign news desk at the  independent Ukrainian Hromadske TV.  

Olga worked on several disinformation research projects and was the lead  author of Mythos Labs' reports on Russian disinformation/propaganda  related to invasion of Ukraine, which were featured on BBC, Le Monde,  Huffington Post, Newsweek and other major outlets. She is a former  scholar of the Digital Sherlocks program at the Atlantic Council’s DFR  Lab.  Olga Tokariuk holds an MA in political science and international  relations from the University of Bologna (Italy) and an MA in journalism  from the Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv (Ukraine).