Russia’s National Day on 12 June became an important talking point on Telegram channels used by Russian propaganda machine in the occupied regions across the southeast of Ukraine. Every fourth post that day contained either the word “holiday” or the phrase “Russia Day”.

As soon as the Russian troops launched their offensive on February 24, another offensive took place in the media. Within a few days after the full-scale invasion, Russian propagandists created dozens of information channels on Telegram – one of the most popular messaging services in Ukraine – to prepare the population of southern Ukraine for Russian occupation. Using the already available pro-Russian media resources, they broadcasted a message of hatred for Ukraine and gratitude to Russia. In cooperation with the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security, we launched a research series studying the use of Telegram channels in the newly occupied territories of Ukraine.

This is a painful question for those who remained in the occupied towns and villages.Is putting out a fire, rescuing people, assisting with childbirth or teaching children mathematics considered betrayal if you live in occupied Berdiansk?We talked to a firefighter, a teacher and a doctor from Berdiansk who love Ukraine and are awaiting the arrival of the Ukrainian military. Two of them did not leave Berdiansk that was captured by the Russian army in the first days of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Warfare expert Mykola Bielieskov explores Ukraine’s military strategy, which has allowed the country to successfully fight off Russia for the second week in a row, despite being written off by western experts as doomed by default, and finds it is similar to Finland’s Winter War.

We have analyzed news on Russian websites for February 24 to 27 and reviewed what the enemy was telling its population about the attack on Ukraine. To do this, we have rearranged our model of disinformation monitoring and analyzed almost 11,000 news items from Russian state media and manipulative websites that purposefully spread Russian disinformation.

On February 24 I woke up in the night suddenly. I felt some strange pressure in my heart. I never felt like that in my life. It was a peaceful and quiet night in London, only some fox barked in the distance. I checked the time on my phone. Five in the morning. Instinctively I opened Facebook and saw awful news. “Russia launches rockets on Ukraine”. The whole country was on fire. I've read it many times but couldn't grasp any sense of it.Antonina Maliei, London

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 spurred calls for an internationally-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine.Martin Fornusek

We have made a visualization that allows you to monitor Russian military equipment around Ukraine and in the occupied territories. It will be constantly updated as new images appear.