According to the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, the decision to start the campaign was made personally by the President of the Russian Federation, while the coordination of officials’ actions and the immediate “response” by Russian media is overseen by one of the first deputies of the head of the Russian presidential administration. The goal of the campaign is clear — to provoke outrage among Ukrainian society (especially military personnel and their families) over the actions of the Ukrainian authorities, to demoralize society, and simultaneously to discredit Ukraine before the international community as a party that does not fulfill its obligations.
The campaign in the Russian-speaking information space fully involves the entire pool of pro-Kremlin resources — from Margarita Simonyan and Vladimir Solovyov to various war correspondents and bloggers. They constantly produce emotionally charged content, manipulate statistical data, and any technical delays in the exchange process are immediately and unequivocally interpreted as deliberate actions by the Ukrainian authorities and a refusal to return their citizens.
Pro-Russian proxies have also joined the campaign — marginal European information outlets such as the Hungarian publications Magyar Nemzet and Magyar Hírlap, the Czech CZ24.news, the Slovak Jednotné Slovensko, and the French-language Réseau International. Their task is to spread Russian narratives and impose Russian interpretations of the ongoing exchange. Among these narratives are: “Ukraine refuses to accept the bodies of its dead,” “the bodies of almost six thousand soldiers have not yet been returned to Ukraine,” and “relatives of the deceased will have to wait longer due to the inaction of the Ukrainian authorities.”
The climax of the campaign is planned for the last days of the exchange (tentatively June 20). The final part of this will be the deliberate release into the media of distorted (false) lists allegedly identifying Ukrainian military personnel and civilians killed, as identified by the Russians. In this way, Russia hopes to provoke a wave of panic and outrage in Ukrainian society and shift responsibility for committed crimes onto the Ukrainian authorities.
