Recently, we published a report analysing the Russian narratives in six Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries over the course of a decade. In the case of Ukraine, the full-scale invasion seemed to have upended the traditional means and patterns of penetration and circulation of the Kremlin’s narratives and rendered many, if not all of them, irrelevant.
And yet, the entire Russian playbook — its pre-2022 edition — is now being recited by a sitting Ukrainian MP. Yuriy Boyko, a veteran of the (pro-)Russian arm of Ukraine’s body politic, seems to test how well the new algorithms work with the old narratives, thereby pitching in a wider social media vs democracy discourse.
Boyko’s Case Is Bigger Than One Man
Ukraine’s political figures have always been at the forefront of the new media trend. President Volodymyr Zelensky himself — starting with his presidential campaign and continuing with his daily facetime with the nation — has harnessed the power of social media platforms. But he is not the only one.
Yuriy Boyko, the chair of the Platform for Life and Peace (Платформа за життя та мир, OPZZh) faction in Verkhovna Rada (one of the reincarnations of the infamous Party of Regions), has begun conquering the new frontiers. Boyko runs a YouTube channel, with roughly 50k views per video, and a surprisingly less popular Telegram account. Yet, it is TikTok where Boyko has recently gained notoriety, only one month since registering a profile.
The most watched video on his channel attracted over 310 000 views, over 4 000 likes, and nearly 2 000 comments in 5 days. In it, Boyko managed to deliver nearly all talking points that the Russian propaganda has been using in and against Ukraine — all in under a minute. He recalled the historical narratives and the so-called ‘war on monuments,’ as well as the ‘discrimination of the Russian speakers and the Russian church.’ He lamented rampant violence and human rights abuse but avoided direct attribution, vaguely mentioning some “radicals.” The words “war” and “Russia” were notably missing throughout the 45 seconds of the video — an omission hardly lost on anybody.
It is not the first time that the Kremlin narratives have appeared on Boyko’s TikTok channel. In fact, the very first video was dedicated to the alleged oppression of Russian speakers. Boyko’s TikTok is a catalogue of Russian talking points. In an earlier clip, he invoked an old trope — “grant eaters,” the name by which the pro-Russian bloc used to label pro-Western and pro-EU civil society organisations, whom Boyko now blamed for Ukraine’s economic woes “of the last ten years.” He further claimed that “Ukraine was pushed to the brink of existence” by the government’s policies and corrupt foreign advisers who, in turn, imposed “enslaving financial agreements.” Russian full-scale invasion, as the primary reason why Ukraine’s economy is in survival mode, is again absent in this analysis.
All these are well-known elements of the ‘external governance’ narrative that denies Ukraine’s sovereignty and portrays it as a western puppet. Spread domestically and outwards to some of Moscow’s international allies, this narrative has evolved to justify the Russian aggression against Ukraine. It also conveniently explains any and all failures of the ‘three-day special military operation’ by insisting that it is not Ukraine but the ‘collective west,’ NATO, or the US against whom Russia is fighting.
Boyko predicts, however, that the practice will stop in January 2025, after the new Administration has settled in the White House. The “grant eaters” are thus “fussing around like cockroaches,” realising that their “trouble-free life” paid for by American and European money will soon end. This is a progression of the same Russian rhetoric that dehumanises Ukrainians — unless they admit to being ‘one single people’ with Russians, having been misled by the west, in the Kremlin’s nation-building mythology — thereby making Russia’s genocidal war possible and permissible.
According to Boyko, that money did not bring any prosperity to Ukrainians but was used to impose foreign, western, liberal values, or “the devils”, as he put it, on the Ukrainian nation. Boyko also specified that the “Soros-imposed” foreign “devils” and “dirt” that infect healthy Christian societies include “LGBT, transgenders, same-sex marriages, quadrobers” (Russia’s most recent scare).
With foreign liberal values, corruption, and economic exploitation, as well as conspiracy theorising, the Russian narratives bingo card is complete. Meanwhile, in Moscow, it took the Russian president much longer than 45 TikTok seconds to air his list of grievances. Nonetheless, Putin, too, dusted off his favourite old claims from the (seemingly) bygone era, when he again accused Kyiv of violating the Minsk Agreements and “destroying everything that is connected to Russia.”
Beyond Social Media
So, why has Yuriy Boyko, presumably on behalf of the OPZZh, begun rallying support? Could he and his allies sense an election season approaching? This might be one explanation: it has recently been reported that the Ukrainian political establishment has, in fact, begun gearing up for a race. (It, likewise, bears repeating that for the duration of the martial law, no national elections can be held.)
Was that TikTok clip just a low-budget campaign ad? There might be some merit to that. Boyko’s other most watched videos are the ones where he talks about rising food prices and economic hardships, especially those endured by internally displaced persons (IDPs). In a video addressing the IDPs’ “lost hopes,” he even calls out the occupant authorities for their crimes. As the self-proclaimed representatives of the Donbas, the OPZZh has long been capitalising on the issue of IDPs, trying to drive a wedge in Ukrainian society, thereby carving a chunk of the electorate for itself.
Experts caution that the opposition electorate in Ukraine might be 20-30% large. Even if so, political ratings — that is, their closest wartime equivalent — have little mercy on Yanukovych’s former partymen. Multiple polls have found that the OPZZh remains widely unpopular, while Yuriy Boyko is the least favoured among potential presidential candidates.[1] Yet, data also show that President Zelensky’s ratings have been steadily on the decline, while the demand for a reset/restart of the government (yet, only after the victory) is on the rise. Ukraine’s political scene has always been notoriously dynamic, with electoral upsets happening left and right. The ‘third-option’ card was masterfully played by then-deletant Zelensky and his party who knocked over the mastodonts. However, one must remember that the ‘third-way’ narrative — meaning a development path towards a prosperous future that would require neither a Euro-Atlantic integration nor a union with Russia — has long been exploited by Moscow through its proxies like oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk.
Augmented Reality
So, why would the OPZZh, against all the polling odds, envision a different reality where they could redeem their political careers? Does this scenario imply a deal or, as Boyko calls it, a “peace negotiation” that will likely favour Russia and disadvantage Ukraine, weakening its current government? Donald Trump promised to end years of war in one day, while his team has recently unveiled what that plan could entail. Nearly half (45%) of Ukrainians now seem to believe that Trump’s presidency moves Ukraine closer to peace. The so-called ‘fatigue with the Ukraine war’ — a phrase that could not be more unfair to Ukraine — appears to be true, nonetheless. It is being exploited by Russian and pro-Russian forces alike through disinformation campaigns. Both the Ukrainian government and the until-recently-dormant pro-Russian opposition forces must see that the reality is changing at home and abroad.
Therefore, the awakening of the (pro)Russian voices is shocking and sickening but hardly surprising in the current climate. We must ask ourselves whether that video message was intended not for an average, prospective Ukrainian voter but was rather simultaneously targeting two very different audiences: one in the Kremlin and the other one in the White House. If Yuriy Boyko was competing for Moscow’s attention and ‘governing mandate,’ the word-by-word recital of Russian propaganda would make much more sense. The Ukrainian people know who perpetrates violence. Nor do they, amidst constant Russian missile and rocket attacks on Ukrainian cities, bother themselves with the fate of Columbus monuments in the US. Boyko’s allusion to American identity politics and allegedly misappropriated American money, as well as his reference to the January 2025 deadline, hint at an attempt to win favours from Washington and profit from Zelensky’s troubled relationship with the first Trump Administration. It is worth mentioning that Boyko’s TikTok account was created in November 2024, after Donald Trump had won the presidential election. Since then, the Boyko-led forces appear to have activated and could be hustling to position themselves as an alternative to Ukraine’s current leadership in the eyes and ears of both Washington and Moscow.
A Resilience Test
This TikTok implosion might have been a good stress test. As a simulation experiment, it helps see whether the old narratives still resonate and whether the old tricks would still be tolerated. In that sense, the first reactions by both the state and the society were reassuring.
In connection to the spreading of Russian narratives, Yuriy Boyko was called in for questioning by the State Security Service (and soon recorded a follow-up video to explain himself). Meanwhile, Verkhovna Rada stripped Boyko of his membership in the Committee On Human Rights, Deoccupation, and Reintegration of Temporary Occupied Territories.
There is also solid polling data suggesting that Ukraine has become more resilient to these Russian narratives and that their polarising power has dwindled significantly. For instance, the language does not divide but unites: 84% of Ukrainians in general and, in particular, 81% of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine say there is no oppression of the Russian speakers in the country. As to the state language policies, before the Russian aggression in 2013, 19% believed that Russian should be “removed from official communication”; by 2024, 81% wanted it removed from official communication throughout Ukraine or were “against its use in their region.” Only 3% think Russian should be the second state language (against 28% in 2013).
Another survey found that for over 52% of respondents, the full-scale invasion was a stimulus to re-evaluate how they viewed Ukraine’s history. Close to 73% approve of the formal “condemnation of the USSR as a communist regime that carried out a policy of state terror” — this opinion is prevalent nationwide. As to de-Russification, a vast majority of Ukrainians (approx. 59%) support replacing the toponyms connected to Russia, the USSR, or the Russian Empire; 13.2% disapprove of the renaming campaign, and 18.6% are indifferent.
Finally, almost 600 congregations have voluntarily switched to the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine since the beginning of the big war; meanwhile, well over 8 000 churches of the Moscow Patriarchate continue to operate freely.
Time to Learn from Mistakes
Hoping that the Atlantic winds of change will blow in their favour, old and new Russian agents of influence appear to have been reinvigorated by Moscow’s successes across the battlefields. There are eerily similarities — if not 100% matches — between the rhetoric of the Kremlin stooges in Kyiv in the years 2014-22 and now.
Last time, all those narratives allowed for blaming Ukraine for ‘provocative behaviour’ towards Russia and unwillingness or inability to negotiate a diplomatic solution, as well as blurred the line between the victim of aggression and the aggressor. Replace ‘provocative’ with ‘escalatory,’ and this time, all these narratives may still be viable, if not in Ukraine than in certain segments of foreign publics. Last time, it produced hesitation in military support to Kyiv. This time, the danger has not disappeared.
In Ukraine, Boyko’s case highlights the topicality of our research. This development is not to be taken in isolation. The near-complete takeover of Georgia by the pro-Russian oligarch and the success of the Russia sympathising forces in Moldova exemplify that the Kremlin’s revanche is still possible, even in nations traumatised by its occupation. The weaponisation of TikTok during the elections in Romania illustrates how.
Pro-action rather than re-action is needed. Prebuttal by the western governments and intelligence services proved the correct strategy in 2021-22, allowing Ukraine and its allies to win the initial battle of narratives, yet not the war. Time is tik-toking for the EU to confront the spread of Russian propaganda, close the gaps and loopholes through which its poisonous narratives penetrate the European information space, and build psychological resilience to Russian foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). These efforts should complement continued conventional military support to Ukraine. That is, to defend itself at home and abroad, especially in the countries that aspire to become EU members.
[1] See the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology ; Razumkov Center; the Social Monitoring Centre
Read also: Narratives of External Norm Contenders Across the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood