Russian propaganda is infiltrating the world of video games.
In Minecraft, the popular game owned by Microsoft, Russian players have recreated the battle for Soledar, a city in Ukraine that was captured by Russian forces in January. They posted a video of the game on VKontakte, Russia’s most popular social media network.
On World of Tanks, a multiplayer warfare game, a channel commemorated the 78th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in May by recreating the Soviet Union’s parade of tanks in Moscow in 1945. In June, a user on the popular gaming platform Roblox created an array of Interior Ministry forces to celebrate Russia Day, the national holiday.
These games, along with discussion sites like Discord and Steam, are becoming online platforms for Russian propaganda. They are spreading a torrent of propaganda to new, mostly younger audiences, which the Kremlin has used to justify the war in Ukraine.
In this virtual world, players have adopted the letter Z as a symbol of the Russian troops who invaded Ukraine last year. They have also embraced legally questionable Russian territorial claims in Crimea and other places, and echoed President Vladimir V. Putin’s efforts to denigrate Ukrainians as Nazis and blame the West for the conflict.
A video tutorial on Minecraft declared, “Glory to Russia,” while showing a Russian flag over a cityscape labeled Luhansk, one of the Ukrainian provinces that Russia has illegally annexed.
Tanya Bekker, a researcher at cybersecurity company ActiveFence, which identified several examples of Russian propaganda on Minecraft, said, “The gaming world is really a platform that can impact public opinion, to reach an audience, especially young populations.”
In April, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, revealed that the company’s security teams had identified recent Russian efforts to infiltrate gaming communities, including Minecraft and Discord discussion groups. He stated that Microsoft had informed governments about these efforts, but downplayed their significance.
Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft’s threat analysis team, informed researchers at New York University’s Stern School of Business that the Russian paramilitary force known as the Wagner Group promoted “malign narratives” on Discord and Steam to support the Kremlin’s views. It may have also aimed to encourage enlistments during a time of high Russian combat casualties.
Mr. Watts told the researchers, who were studying extremism, that “The propaganda mainly seeks to make Wagner and the Russian military look cool and menacing.”
2023-07-30 04:00:33
Link from www.nytimes.com
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