For six months,  people in occupied Ukrainian cities have lived under the gloom of Russian rule. Across the south and east of Ukraine, Vladimir Putinâ

Shadowy Russian Cell Phone Companies Are Cropping Up in Ukraine

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2022-09-23 03:30:11

For six months, people in occupied Ukrainian cities have lived under the gloom of Russian rule. Across the south and east of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s forces have tried to legitimize makeshift administrations: Newly announced referendums would see occupied areas officially join the Russian Federation; citizens have been previously handed Russian passports; and troops have tried taking over the internet, potentially submitting people to the Kremlin’s powerful censorship machine.

As part of these efforts, in recent months two new Russian mobile and internet companies have appeared seemingly from nowhere in occupied Ukraine—claiming to provide cell phone coverage across “liberated territories.” At the same time, existing Russian internet companies in the separatist areas of the Donbas claimed to have expanded their mobile coverage, experts say. These are some of the latest efforts to convert areas of Ukraine to Russian infrastructure and control, with the actions mimicking a playbook similar to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

“All this seems to be so obviously priming customers for taking away this impression that they’re bringing connection and peace and liberation to these areas,” says Olena Lennon, a national security practitioner in residence at the University of New Haven who has looked at the new mobile companies. “The language is very propagandist and manipulative,” says Lennon, who is from eastern Ukraine. She compares the actions to an act of “soft power.”

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