Burn to survive

In the spring of 2014, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians rushed to resist Russian aggression. Everyone did it as he knew how. Someone with weapons in their hands, someone with financial investments or the organization of material support of the army. But there was (and remains) another very important component of the hybrid war - the information front. It was also hastily to close him and also volunteer efforts.

On March 2, 2014, volunteers began fixing the first captures of military facilities in Crimea by Russian military. From this moment, the history of the Informnapalm project, a free international community of translators, journalists, military analysts and bloggers engaged in open sources (Open -Source Intelligence) began. Investigations are published in twenty languages ​​of the world, specialists from Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Syria, EU countries, the USA and even South Africa participate in them. This volunteer movement has repeatedly spoiled the nerves of the command of the Russian armed forces, publishing evidence of the presence of the Russian military not only in the Donbass, but also in Syria. Informnapalm investigations are also mentioned in the latest report by the Bellingcat research group by the crash of Boeing 777.

We are talking about the unique experience of successful information confrontation in the hybrid war with the founder and leader of the Informnapalm community, and in the past Crimean journalist Roman Burko .

- Initially, Informnapalm, as I understand it, is a volunteer answer to Russian aggression in Ukraine. But in a year and a half, the project grew to full intelligence. How are you working closely with the special services of Ukraine? And do special services of other countries offer cooperation?

• Our credo is "to meet not by clothes, but by the mind." Crimean events taught us caution and showed that the crust of an employee of the SBU is not a panacea or a document that guarantees devotion to Ukraine. We do not cooperate with organizations, but with people. It is every individual person, and not the structure is of value for us. This person can be an officer or an intelligence officer, security service or other power department, but he must first be a selfless patriot and be able to make independent decisions. We maintain ties with middle -level officers from different structures. But this is a purely friendly and informal contact. The level of cooperation is limited to the exchange of information. Often this is a one -sided data transfer from us to security forces to develop or confirm information. We do not receive any support in the form of financing or patronage.

The situation with foreign special services is different. None of the world intelligence organizations came to us directly, their representatives did not come in contact with our volunteers, but we record the IP addresses assigned to various structures of NATO and the USA, which will constantly monitor our resource. We see this in appeals to the articles of the site. But the Russian intelligence services stably hold the palm of the championship in the monitoring of our information and analytical portal. With the IP addresses of the FSB of the Russian Federation, an appeal to the RSS tape of the site goes every 5 minutes, sometimes we use this and redirect their requests to comic pages.

We do not sell or ware out the data we collected, our strategy is a public "information burning". We do this, operating only with facts from open sources, bringing the secret to the public sphere. Perhaps such a public intelligence tactics do not like special services, but it is very effective in modern information confrontation.

- I know that in your project, precautions are above all. How is the selection of volunteers? Do you have any internal security service?

• We are a free community, each of the volunteers independently determines the degree of involvement and anonymity in the project. Someone may openly speak in front of the camera, someone is limited to anonymous work or activity under the pseudonym. The community system and the security structure are operating on the principle of "bee swarm" or controlled chaos: the work of translators is checked in the community by other translators, information received is checked in other sources. Of course, there are other secrets, but it is the absence of a constant algorithm for actions and the principles of filtering in the team that disorients a potential enemy. We work situationally, and make decisions collegially.

- Volunteers are involved in the project not only from Ukraine, but also from many countries of the world. What is their interest to engage in intelligence activities against Russia?

• Most of the volunteers of the community are people with an aggravated sense of justice, people with an active life position who share the thought expressed by Edmund Birco: "All that is needed for the triumph of evil is so that good people do nothing." Now Russia has become the embodiment of the evil that occupies the territories of neighboring states, enslaves and kills people, aggressively affects their consciousness. The revanchist ambitions of the Russian Federation go far beyond the borders of the former USSR, and every free person in the world feels the danger of resuscitation of a totalitarian system. Therefore, volunteers from Sweden, Norway, Poland, Germany and other states joined our community.

- You wrote that the information published by Informnapalm has repeatedly influenced the course of hostilities. Can you tell some bright stories now?

• At the stage of active confrontation in the Donbass, the analytical reports and forecasts of the Informnapalm community have repeatedly influenced the course of events. We know for certain that the Informnapalm General Summary of November 1, 2014 created a serious commotion both at the headquarters of the Ukrainian troops and in the enemy camp. An analytical assessment with the forecast of the main directions of the impact in advance brought into a public plane forced the aggressor to urgently change plans.

The volunteers of the community also managed to seek the breakdown of individual divisions of the DPR gangs due to the initiative and operational lighting of the collected intelligence. An example of this is the disbandment of the 7th Brigade of the DPR a few days after the publication of a video with the commander of the 1st battalion of the 7th brigade Andrei Kozyrenko (call sign "trump card"), as well as the destruction of the Troy OSPN terrorists, which were cleared by the Russian special services. In both cases, Informnapalm played the role of an information catalyst, the first bottle with an “incendiary mixture”, which has reached a goal in a timely manner and led to an irreversible consequences for the enemy.

During the OSINT-investigations, on December 2, 2015, Informnapalm provided illustrated material with identified land formations of the RF Armed Forces, performing combat missions in Syria. Only a week later, on December 8, the Main Intelligence Department of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine made its report, which completely repeated the information previously published by the community. At the same time, the GUR report was less complete and did not take into account the information about a number of units, in particular about the 120th artillery brigade, identified under Latakia, soldiers of the 336th separate brigade of the marine corps, which we identified in the province of Eswave, and the heavy flamethrower systems (TOS) of the Solveski, which were with a high degree of probability to the 20th regiment of the RHBBZ RF. European media are only now starting to publish information about the Ground divisions of the Russian Federation in Syria, submitting it as a sensation, although for us it has not been secret data for a long time: we made it up at the end of last year.

Informnapalm continued the painstaking work on the identification of pilots of the Russian Air Force, participating in the bombing of the civilian population of Syria, and the publication of the relevant data. Our actions forced Russian propagandists to significantly reduce the number of materials in which the "exploits" of the Russian VKS were praised, and also led to the fact that Russian military personnel in Syria began to make disguise rooms of the sides. By our actions, we reduced the degree of Russian propaganda, forced the Russian media to hide the faces of their “heroes”, turned victorious plots into miserable materials of shy propagandists who are afraid to discard their own shadow so that their contour could not be calculated by their location. We have been so bombarded by the Russian authorities that they demanded that Canada block our resource (his hosting is in Quebec) - this became known from the article in the American magazine Vice News. You can read more about the results of the work of Informnapalm here .

But the main achievement of the community will be revealed when the trials against the Russian Federation begin. We have created the largest database today, which collects evidence of Russian aggression. There are evidence of the presence of the Russian personnel military in Ukraine, a list of military units and formations, the date and place of their stay in the Donbass. Methods of identifying the enemy are demonstrated: selfies for social networks, fixing in the propaganda videos "New Russia", expert analysis of weapons and equipment, etc.

This large -scale data array was presented in the form of infographics and translated into 14 languages.

- Recently, you wrote that "Russia began to bomb Syria not only to maintain Assad’s regime, - the pilots of the Russian Air Force on a rotational basis are preparing for more dynamic battles in Ukraine." You believe that the use of Russian aviation in Ukraine is quite possible. What can serve as an occasion for this?

• The military leadership of the Russian Federation understands that without the support of aviation it is impossible to achieve significant success in expanding the zone of influence and occupation of Ukraine. The Ukrainian army is well fixed, gradually modernized, gained combat experience. The idea of ​​the "Russian world" is cracking at the seams and without control over the entire Ukrainian territory will inevitably tolerate a crushing fiasco. The preparatory period of probing the reaction of the world community is coming to an end, the noble of sanctions is delayed. The agony of the Russian authorities is close, the culmination of which can be the most aggressive actions: from the use of aviation to the use of nuclear weapons. It is no accident that Western analysts are increasingly considering tragic scenarios.

For the escalation of aggression of the Russian Federation, he traditionally uses dirty provocations and false accusations in order to explain their “divine destiny” to their citizens first of all. By the way, in this process, Patriarch Kirill, who will call the flock to the new “crusade” can play an important role. But I hope that the apocalyptic scenario will still be avoided.

- It has long been clear that the Minsk agreements would not be met, starting from the first paragraph. Do you think there is an alternative to Minsk?

• As Churchill said, "if the country, choosing between the war and shame, chooses a shame, it gets war and shame." An alternative to Minsk is a victory of one of the parties. Russia showed that it is not going to return to their original positions and abandon its plans for the annexation of Ukrainian territories, so Minsk is only a temporary respite before the big war, an alternative to it is a complete victory.

- After the investigation published by the “Ukrainian truth” that people close to Viktor Medvedchuk sell Donbass coal to Ukraine under the guise of anthracite from South Africa, even more issues arose to negotiators in the tripartite contact group. Your volunteers were not interested in why exactly Medvedchuk and Kuchma represent Ukraine in these negotiations? And did you try to get information about what is happening there when the door of the negotiation room closes?

• Our resources are not unlimited, at this stage we concentrated on identifying the disclosure on a direct aggressor, which we extract from open sources. I doubt that Medvedchuk or Kuchma will place documents with secret agreements in their social profiles. I do not exclude that the best intelligence of the world is already breaking over these issues, we will leave Caesar Caesarean.

- The volunteer movement in Ukraine, aimed at the material assistance of the army, is now looking for reformatting paths. You have a different specificity, but nevertheless you have been "fighting" for a long time. What do you feel now, looking back at the work done? And how long are you planning to engage in volunteering?

• Looking back at how this war has changed and continues to change us, we can say for sure that we will never become the same. The search for information, the disclosure of secrets in the pursuit of justice and freedom is like a drug. Our guys, who in peacetime were simple programmers, engineers, worked in different areas, at one moment felt their calling. Due to the painstaking work, inquisitiveness and flexibility of the mind, they became professionals in intelligence, were able to do what is inaccessible to trained specialists, their experience is invaluable. Personally, I would like to later create the conditions for financial independence for them. This would allow them to completely and completely devote the time of effective activity, in which they have already established themselves as selfless volunteers. We will wage our struggle as much as it will be required before the complete liberation of Ukraine, Georgia, Syria, until the restoration of peace and justice. For the sake of this, we united and must reach the intended goal. If on our way we will face new challenges of peace and security, then we will respond to them in proportion to our forces. Informnapalm philosophy is based on the principle “do what it should, and what happens”, so we are not making plans for a distant future. We are the international community of free people.