 Hello everyone and good afternoon or good morning depending on where you are or maybe I could I should say loaded in because that that covers the ampm perhaps a little bit better. That is the extent of the Russian I'll be using today because it's extremely rusty, I took it in a previous century studied some Russian, but I am Andres Martinez I'm the editorial director of future tense I'm a professor of practice at our Cronkite School of journalism and mass communication in Arizona State University. Welcome everyone future tense as you may know is a collaboration between Arizona State University, the new America think tank and slate magazine. And we're here to talk about an incredibly important timely topic, and I'm extremely grateful that we have experts who are incredibly busy who have taken the time to talk to us today. We've entitled this the special military operation on Russia's Internet and want really want to talk about, you know the current situation in terms of what is happening with Russians access to information. The state of, you know, Internet is a broad term we're really wanting to talk about how people are engaging with information and news and each other on social media, as well as more traditional media, and looking at this landscape. So we've, there are lots of people in New America doing fascinating work on on cyber warfare and looking at the situation in Ukraine and elsewhere, but today we really wanted to focus in on on what's happening within Russia and how this this this campaign these events are playing out on on the Russian digital space and and what lasting impacts. They might have. And so for that I can't think of a better group of people to talk to today. Taísia Beku Latova is the editor in chief of whole of media. And she also has experience as a correspondent with Medusa, another Russian outlet that some of you might be familiar with. Dana Pacheva is a good friend really I should I should say as a disclaimer for starters because she was a Humphrey fellow at our Cronkite School of journalism in 2020 to 2021 that cohort Humphrey Fellowship is a great program where people and talented journalists come to the Cronkite School from all over the world. And it's fantastic program and our school was was very much enriched by having Yana in our community. So, and Ben Dalton is and I should say Yana is a freelance journalist in Moscow now she's she's returned. Ben Dalton is a fellow at the Future Frontlines program at New America. He's done a lot of interesting work researching what's happening in the in this space and telegram, among other things and Ben also has a very extensive background in Russian studies and in addition to the subject. But I'll let the kind of biographical details come out in the conversation and you all can sort of introduce yourselves. But Taísia, I wanted to start with you. You could just sort of step back and tell us a little bit about colored media, the work that you do. And then also kind of how that fits into the pretty complex landscape of Russian media and and online information sources that you know, if we paint a picture of what that look like on the eve of this special military operation if we're going to call it that. In, you know, in quotation marks but because I think sometimes and we were talking a little bit about this before we came online. Americans might not appreciate the complexity of the sort of Russian information media landscape of recent years. I think we have, we have sort of a caricature notion of what it must have been like during this in this soviet times. Actually, I say caricature might have been pretty accurate. And then we have we know what, you know, our full blown version of Western democratic media ecosystems look like and I think sometimes people don't appreciate the nuance of Russia didn't have like a firewall in the same way that China has on its internet. You know, Russian public was pretty connected to a lot of information. You know that was coming from global sources and some of the tech giants, but obviously a very controlled state media as well and then a lot of, you know what would look like really interesting experiment experiments like Medusa and other forms of independent media. I want to talk a little bit about the tensions there in us in a in a country that might not have been sort of the totalitarian states of old but heavily authoritarian and, you know, so just introduce yourself in terms of your work and just maybe kind of explain this landscape a little bit for those of us on the, who might not be as familiar with the situation in Russia. Yeah, my name is Stacy, I'm a chief editor of whole magazine based in Russia. I started it on like two years ago and initially we were storytelling magazine. We focused on mostly true crime stories from different Russian region. And that was our like know how, because there's not a lot of media outlets in Russia who do this work, because it's like expensive to send genres in different places. And find stories that are like unique in some way. So that was our work. And it was pretty successful because people like stories, you know, they want to read some unique stories. And people in Russia, they often do not know much about their own country, because Russia is so big, you can sometimes only guess what is happening in other regions. So we did the work and collected like some people who enjoy our stories and love them. So that was like what we did. And then a war started. So it was unexpected for us, we didn't believe it. And it was like shock when we woke up and saw news about Russia bombing Ukraine. It was terrible. And the thing is that we didn't have news on our website before the war. And back then it was our concept that we do flow journalism, not news. But when it all started, we realized that people really need a lot of information about what's going on. And not a lot of media outlets that can do this job and tell people about reality because we have a lot of propaganda media outlets in our country and most of publications are controlled by states. People don't get the true information. So we thought that we must do news. And we started news like on that day. And we were working for like 24 hours a day since then. So that's what we're trying to do right now to give people more information about what's going on. Because after the war started, heavy censorship began because we don't have freedom of speech in Russia, but it wasn't like that before war. And now we have like dozens of media outlets which are blocked or they just closed because they can't keep going on like that because of a law on faith, which is focused on journalists who want to call war, actually war, not a special operation. So some media outlets just decided to close and to stop working because they can't risk it because journalists can be put in jail because of it. And some of them decided not much of them decided to leave the country to keep going and keep telling the truth. So we are one of these media outlets. We needed to leave the country. We didn't want to, but that was only one option. And we evacuated our people, our correspondents and editors from Russia and now we don't have people in Russia because it's too dangerous for them. They can be put in jail for 15 years just for calling war. And I mean, it's remarkable this this law was enacted last Friday, right? I realized it was already censorship happening, but this very draconian new law went into effect that has even given pause to Western publications. I think the New York Times I saw had decided to pull people out. So it's quite remarkable. Now, if it can, can readers in Russia still access your, your stories or is, is, is your. Yes, they can because we are like, maybe we're just one or just few media outlets, which are not blocked yet by Russian state, but we can be any moment. So we told our readers that they need to install VPN and maybe we'll create some mirror website when we are blocked, but at least now readers can access us. So just, just, just to give us a flavor of the type of journalism that you're doing if, if I went to your site now, I mean, what are some of the stories that I might see that might be very different from what's coming from the state TV and Russia. Yeah, now we did the true crime stories most of the back then before war but now we are focusing on what is going on in Ukraine and in Russia actually, and some stories that we published are focused on people fleeing Ukraine and people fleeing Russia because it's like two processes going on at the one moment. People from Ukraine are going somewhere else because they can be bombed or something like that and people from Russia are leaving the country because they don't want to go to war with Ukraine. And they are afraid that's where they will be made to go there. And actually it's more about men because young men don't want to fight with Ukraine at all. And it's about independent journalists and activists who are afraid for being jailed. So there are two leading country and there are thousands and thousands of them. So yeah, we are focusing on those problems and there are a lot of them because when war started, a lot of social issues came out because it's not only about bombs, it's also about poor people which will be more poor in coming years. And it's about people who still are coming out to the streets in Moscow, despite that they can be beaten up. And we had a story about girls who were detained after protests in Moscow and there were beaten up in police station and police officers treated them like they were some animals. It was like beaten up and calling names and like trying to, there were mostly women in that police station so they're trying to, tried to humiliate them using some terms and calling names and so on. And that's how the state came out, which were made by one of the girls and it's horrific, it's terrible to listen. So yeah, we are focusing on people who are suffering from this war and it's about Ukrainian people and it's about also Russian people because Putin is bombing Ukraine but he also is beating up his own people in his own country. Right. Thank you. Yeah. Let me let me let me ask let me shift to you and ask you, you know, kind of building on what I was saying. You know, there's this very courageous type of journalism that's still being done under incredibly difficult circumstances. There are, I imagine, you know, international sources of information that are available. So there are a lot of people who, you know, and maybe more educated, more kind of globally connected people in large cities who might, you know, be very familiar with and comfortable using VPNs and are active on telegram. I mean, there are a lot of people who can find this information. But give us a sense of, you know, how deep this this kind of breaks through, because on the other hand, you know, I think, again, for those of us outside of Russia, we're probably probably a hard time understanding how pervasive and the, and maybe effective. I don't know you tell you tell me the official story is that's coming down from from the authorities and that's on my TV and my radio and so if I'm a high school teacher, or you know, a businessman and I, you know, sell electric equipment and a regular size Russian city and I'm you know 24 seven online trying to seek out information from from outside. You know who's kind of winning this contest of, of, you know, to define what's fake news right and what and what the official, you know the story is on the other hand if I'm one of these, you know, people in Russia. I mean, to refer to our are hurting tremendously I mean the, the, this type of war seemed like unfathomable a couple weeks ago, but the reaction to it in terms of the sanctions, and, and sort of the economic coordination among Western countries and and has been pretty breathtaking to and so I'm very mindful that you know what's happening the ruble what's happening to people savings. The pulling out of all these Western brands, you know, we all heard about McDonald's and Coca Cola and, and now suddenly you know Russia can't even compete to play in the in the World Cup and that's a signal I suppose to people about perhaps the judgment that's rendered on this stuff by, by people on the outside but again if I'm getting a different message from the government like just talk a little bit about how you see this, this contest and your sense of whether the, the courageous journalism that's happening that's independent can break through the sort of strong government controlled media. Sure, first of all, I wanted to say that I didn't know that ties here and all the whole of stuff, a way created that's that explains their fearless coverage because me and my friends, we were wondering, how come they're so fearless. Many people really read all it now and they're sharing posts on Instagram from them, talking about other news sources. There have been a lot of state propaganda here and now it is even more dominating because there are less and less sources of information independent sources and people who probably were lazy. I just didn't want to know this other side of propaganda now have even less options to know this site and of course Russian government wins in this situation, because now they can broadcast their official position from everywhere. I watched state TV couple of days ago I forced myself to do this because it is kind of a torture and because of the amount of propaganda there, and it is surprising every time you watch this. And it creativity surprises you. So, for example, we have our first channel, it is one of their major state propaganda channels and just to give the context, all TV is state sponsored in Russia so we don't have any dependent TV channels. This is the most popular source of information for Russians, especially for Russians who live in regions in rural areas. They would broadcast Putin lives, probably like 10 minutes long, without cutting anything. Him saying that everything is going according to a plan, so like this plan was never revealed to the public so at any point you can say that this was the plan. Then they would not mention any disadvantages of sanctions and how Russians suffer from them, but they would tell that Western world, Europe suffers more from sanctions that they imposed rather than Russians. They would not cover any protests against military operation, but they would cover some demonstrations supporting Putin. And I guess these demonstrations, they really take place, but they're probably quite staged and people are I get paid for this and those people will work for states so they're, I guess they are forced to organize some kind of kind of these demonstrations in support of Russian military. Yeah, and they would say that refugees are not grateful, they require swimming pools and free restaurant food. So yeah, and nothing critical about situations in which Russians are appears now. And I guess it might be hard to gauge but do you think that those messages are effective and that people are definitely. Sometimes I think that the situation probably revealed a lot, even for me and for many of my friends who are liberal and progressive. And because we also live in quite a bubble on our Facebook and we think that people are against the military operation and nobody wants like shell and of this residential buildings and people dying. And how anybody can be willing to kill somebody like who's probably your relative here because Russia and Ukraine have so many ties. Then you would go, even on Instagram, and you would think that people there are progressive, but there would be so many hate comments and comments who support Putin and this operation. And it seems that they're brainwashed because they repeat all the arguments they show on TV, like the most popular argument. I would tell you, well, when were you eight years ago when Ukraine started to bomb Donbass? Why were you not worried about those people who were killed and why you shout and now that war is something bad. And we're certainly familiar with that phenomenon of having your own particular bubble on social media and then being surprised or stunned that there are other worlds out there. And Ben, maybe this kind of ties into the work that you do and that your program in New America does. As you're listening to all of this, what are some of your reactions and what do you think are some of the things that we ought to keep an eye on in the coming sort of weeks and months in terms of how this informational contest, if we can call it that, might play out. Yeah, so I work with Candice Rondo on the Future Frontlines program, which really focuses on the intersection of technology and basically like information war, which is what we're talking about. And we really focus on a relatively narrow slice of the Russian media ecosystem, which is telegram channels and VK groups, and in particular those that are associated with these Russian mercenary groups. And people have likely heard of the Wagner group, which is really more so than a single entity it's a collection or a network of, you know, private military contingents that have been a big part of Russia's military strategy for four years now. And, you know, these groups played a key role back when war broke out in 2014. They would create these sort of like homegrown impromptu social channels where they would post things like, you know, their actual atrocities that they were committing. And in the years since then they've evolved into quite large, pretty like professionally run, essentially media sources where they push out, you know, pro-war propaganda essentially. And part of why I think it's worth looking at these is because a lot of the narratives that we're hearing pop up on Russian state media seem to get kind of incubated here. And, you know, oftentimes I will see a narrative, and particularly one that you can on telegram you can see which posts get the most engagement or the most impressions, the ones that are that are more popular often pop up shortly thereafter on more sort of official media. So yeah, I thought I could just sort of talk about some of the sort of hot narratives with the moment that we're seeing on these channels, which I'm sure we're going to hear a lot more of in days to come. The first is just the basically excusing away or explaining away very evident war crimes or crimes against humanity by arguing, either that, you know, actually, they were, it was a strike on fascists like the Isof battalion or, or alternately that the images that we're seeing are like crisis that there are people who were fabricated by the Ukrainian side. And this is very reminiscent of what we saw throughout Syria, where basically any time that there was a strike on civilian infrastructure. It was explained as, you know, there were jihadis hiding there. I'm seeing a lot of rumblings about WMD is in Ukraine so a lot of chatter about, you know, the presence of, you know, US bio weapons facilities as a way of sort of like, you know, retroactively justifying the invasion. One big narrative I'm seeing just in the last three, four days is that Ukraine is like deliberately forcing civilians to stay in harm's way as a way of inflating and inflicting civilian casualties. So, you know, if there's a strike, you know, and this is particularly around Mariupol in the south of Ukraine which is essentially surrounded by Russian forces. And there's, they're arguing that, you know, Ukrainians are not allowing them out of the city. And so therefore it is their fault, once Russia then proceeds to shell the city. So this is the main trend of like fake fact checks. And this reminds me a lot of back in 2016. Once you know there was about there was a media started using this phrase fake news and about like half a second later Donald Trump just sort of like appropriated it and used it for his own purposes. It's like a way of copying what like Oakland source researchers have been doing for a long time on this conflict of right, you know, saying this or that images decontextualized it's, you know, from years earlier it's from an entirely different country in some cases. And now you see a lot of that happening on the Russian side as well. I'm glad you bring up the fact checking and because because this is the, and we're all familiar with this debate in the states to about the, you know, we these the tech platforms. You know, they're, they're, they take it from both sides if they do too much moderate, you know, moderate content moderation if they do too little and it sort of kind of depends who they're moderating, and and who's being you know flagged for for misinformation, you know, platforms kind of stepped up a little bit during the during COVID, because if you know there was sort of a consensus that okay, the hands off approach maybe has a higher cost when you're talking about people's health and obviously around the last couple of cycles. So when you when you when you migrate this, these kind of difficult trade offs that the Twitters and YouTube and Facebook to the world face into this Russian context now, obviously it's the stakes are even higher. And, and the difficulties that these platforms often faces they're trying to have universal standards. And, you know, what's what fast, one of the things that fascinates me in the in the context of Russia. And I'm curious what the three of you think about this is, you know, Facebook has now been blocked right as of last week I take it. And there's, there's been a lot of criticism of YouTube which barely has huge audiences in Russia and the way in which they might kind of just echo some of the state media. You see, like Zelensky in the Ukraine in Ukraine asking a lot of these US and other Western tech companies to pull out, you know, as a way to sanction Russia in the same way that you know there was pressure on McDonald's and Coca Cola to pull out. And I wonder what you all think about. Is it preferable for the Twitter and Instagram. Again, meta has Facebook which has been blocked but apparently people can still access Instagram and what's up. Is it, should we think about these, these companies that are in the communication business as some somehow distinct from the Coca Cola's and McDonald's in other in that like maybe it's better. There's something interesting about both Putin and Zelensky wanting to take them out of Russia for different reasons right I think it's the lens in his mind. It's a sanction just like nobody should be doing business with Russia. But on the other hand, you know, Putin agrees with Zelensky on that if nothing else because he doesn't want this, you know, these potentially more independent sources of information. So that's just something that kind of I've been wrestling with. I don't know and Ben, I mean, John, all of you, I'm just curious how you sort of react to this understanding that, you know, these platforms which are very easy to second guess what they do. They're just also navigating really tough trade offs right. It's a very terrible measure to make Twitter and Facebook and all these companies leave Russia because it's not about giving people like food or, or I don't know clothes. Giving people information and access to free information. And it would be even worse if they less Russia and people will be just left without any access to independent media and independent like sources and people won't be able to express themselves on like more or less safe platforms. And I don't think it is some measure against Putin at all because Putin wants them to leave maybe even more than Zelensky so I don't think it's a better thing to do. Yeah, and I can also add that independent media outlets like all of the media are getting most of their readers from social platforms like Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. And if we are left without these platforms and our readers are left without these platforms, it would be much more difficult for them to get the information from media outlets like us. So, I don't think it's a good thing to do. Ben mentioned vk groups. I just want to make sure like that doesn't get lost and that that's, that's be contact here right it's the, it's a, I mean, maybe describe that it's sort of like the Russian analog to Twitter is that it is essentially an almost direct Facebook clone many years ago but it has kind of evolved into its own thing. And it unlike telegram which has adopted like a pretty significant like broadcasting role almost like you know there are public channels that people will monitor for like cutting edge news a little bit like Twitter I guess in some VK seems to incubate more sort of like a closer more intimate community I would say that you know I would defer to Deanna Tasia for more of the sort of nuances of how it works within the Russian social media ecosystem. Well, I can say that, for example, Facebook has more users that are pro western and that probably like Western culture and they're more liberal and in vk people pro Russian. There are more patriotic people there. And I know that now they have a lot of groups that support Russian military in Ukraine at vk. So, so it isn't necessarily that the, or maybe there's some differences in terms of like the censoring of the platform but you're I think you're suggesting there's also like a certain amount of self selection. That occurs in terms of the people who sign up for the different platforms, right. Yeah, I can also add that we K is actually dangerous for people who uses it, who use it because they state controls and they give out people who like posted something on vk, and they give all the information about the person to say so that they will be profited on it. I see so so yeah. I mean that that's, that's the ideal type of social media for the regime in the sense that it is fully under its control and then that that's why these having these offshore international platforms can be in convenient and I know even when I started this conflict there was, there's been a long standing effort on the part of the government to have the Twitters and Facebook to have more of a physical presence in Russia to be able to have exert that, that pressure. In terms of, you know, we were talking about what's dangerous to people and, you know, in times like this people are courageous in different ways and but also assess risk in different ways and one of the things that I think totally that that that has struck me just watching this from from the US far far away. But being old enough to have, you know, remembered watching the Soviet Union from far away is, you know, we have. We have watched us newscasts like broadcast TV newscasts like NBC nightly news in Moscow and again this is changing in recent days but once you know between the time that the conflict started on February 24 and the the law passing Friday, there was still, you know, this nightly newscast was reporting from Moscow, and they were in someone's kitchen in Moscow and they had a woman and her young child and the Russian woman was telling the American reporter. This war is crazy. Putin should stop it. And again this is not this in a million years you never would have seen this in the Soviet days like there was no TV correspondence getting into someone's home and someone feeling uncomfortable speaking out against the regime right. And again this is a fast changing stories and a lot of people are being arrested protesting this. And so I now I want to talk a little bit about kind of how how is that playing out I know that, you know, I think you launched a social campaign about the I'm a violent campaign that Yana wrote for about for future tense. Thank you, Yana. But you know, we've talked about the courage of journalists but talk a little bit about the ability of people to continue to organize and and engage in these types of protests and how that, you know how that is kind of unfolding as we speak and how that might change a lot. You know I think it's very easy sitting in the states to feel like well, people should come together and and put a stop to this and, you know the regime shouldn't get away with it. If everybody went out into the street, but that, you know, is easier said than done and very easy to save from across the ocean but give us a sense of that dynamic there. Actually, I'm really impressed by people who are still coming out to protest against this war, because it has been, it has been like heavy sort of state in Russia. I'm sorry. But now you can easily call it dictatorship I think because it's like unfolding very, very fast. And people are really risking their health and their life coming out because they can be easily put in jail. And a lot of evidence how people were treated in Russian police stations. It's terrible. And a lot of people are still coming out and it's really impressive. And a lot of these people are very young and a lot of them are women. And that kind of, it's like unusual. And when this war started, a lot of people who were like, I'm not like into politics, they finally realized that politics came into their houses. And it's like a moral catastrophe, catastrophic for going on and they, they don't want to be silent anymore. But anyway, they're not very like they're not a lot of people who are fearless enough to come out because I don't think that enough of like independent people who think independently to even try to change the regime and to try to like win because they can't expect people to like stop putting with their bare hands because they're not like they don't have anything to stop him just their mind. And they're like they can't fight. They're like intelligent people who just coming out on the streets to feel like they did something to stop it, but they can't actually do it. So I think people need to understand that there's Russians who are coming out. Okay, they're fearless and they are great and it's very impressive what they are doing but they can stop putting and you can expect them to stop putting so that's all I want to say. Yeah, now we had a we had a question from someone in the audience related to this, asking if, if, if you feel that you put yourself in danger, even by doing things like participating in, in this conversation with us. It's a question that puts you on the spot I know. Well, I think I feel a little bit in danger. But every time I feel this, I am asking myself, what illegal activity I'm doing, I'm just sharing what I see here, what I witness and how can I be punished for this and if I'm just used to live with my hands tight and my mouse, shut. What life is this so I'm trying to continue my normal life. And you have so I'm curious, I'm curious just in terms of like you referenced your, your, your bubble. And, you know, I'm sure you have a lot of, a lot of people you've worked with and and and friends have a similar worldview to to yours as is true for all of us. But I'm just wondering how overlapping these bubbles might be do you have you know I'm thinking back to conversations with like progressive friends in the states who might say like I didn't know anybody. I don't know anybody who voted for Trump or you might have like the reverse right so do you have like relatives who are putting on the denotification of Ukraine and have a completely different view on this than anything we might be reading, you know, outside of Russia or is that kind of bubble just so far removed from from yours like how, how much do people like have different worldviews on this coming into contact with each other on an everyday basis. My family is all against their military operation, but I know there are a lot of cases so when there are fights inside families right now, and between friends and I was very surprised to find even one subscriber on one on my Instagram, who supports military operation, and I caught myself getting really upset and angry with this, and I was like really a little bit ashamed by my reaction, because there was, I was at the school with or to the driving school and yes but she is a student in her twenties at one of the most liberal universities in Russia, high school of economics so I didn't expect something like this from her. And yeah and I was at the protest and I posted videos from the protest but protest here now look just like peaceful walk. People do not chant they do not carry any banners for their own safety, and even these do not help them. And she wrote to me. Oh, so is it really a protest. Yeah, and that's that really made me frustrated and I talked back and I was not proud of myself. Well, sometimes it's hard to hold back. Then we had another question. I do want to be mindful of there was a. Could you speak a question from the audience could you speak a bit more about the role of Wagner slash PMC is in the battle for information dominance on on social media. You, you talked a little bit about this before but can you speak a little bit more and as you said like some in some ways that these have been sort of the leading indicators right of like the larger themes that then get taken up by by social media. I mean do you talk a little bit more about that but also as you look, look ahead. Do you see any way in which the, you know, as much as the Kremlin is trying to assert more and more control. And, you know, there's already a lot of pulling out by other other voices. But do you see any scenarios where the the official control over the messaging might might be weakened. Despite what we're seeing or if you had to kind of play this out. I realize this is very speculative. Yeah well so it's true that these these these PMC social channels really seem to play an outsized role in spreading messaging, especially relative to their actual numbers on the battlefield right so like we've heard reports of Wagner affiliated groups, you know, a few days ago, the Ukrainian government posted a dog tag from from one of these groups, hunting down Zelensky in Kiev, participating in some other fighting around Kharkiv. So, in terms of absolute numbers of people on like the battlefield it's it's you know a fraction of the, you know the regular Russian forces who are in the country. Right, but despite that like, you know they have very consciously built a mystique around themselves. And it's, to some extent become like a popular cultural movement, where you know you can buy t shirts or mugs. You know, and the the telegram channel that is probably most closely associated with with Wagner has hundreds of thousands of subscribers so it's you know, a significant portion I think of how Russian speaking, people are getting their news about this conflict. I love I have to, I love how I can only see the little ears ties yet. Speaking of information wars, you might have to introduce. I know, I'm very jealous I wish I had a kid, but then sorry God. Oh sure well as far as the other thing that you mentioned of you know any hope of like breaking this open a little bit or signs of like the criminal I don't really see that if anything so like, you know, part of what we've heard in this conversation is, you know, there was a Russian state media television which is honestly has been dominant, you know that's how a large majority of Russians get their there were these like small and influential and very important independent media Echo of Moscow TV rain. Nobody gets yet to Medusa things like that, which are essential but we're relatively small compared to to the media impact and then there was social media, which despite the Russian Internet being one of the most prevailed in the world for years, you know, there weren't it seemed like there weren't necessarily people didn't have to fear repercussions, just for like commenting, you know, their, their opinion, but now you're hearing reports of like ramping up people being paid to sort of like, you know, report dissenting opinions even in like social media channels so no I if anything I see it all militating in the in the direction of more and more and more control. And a question for all of you do you think that this these changes, including the one that you just mentioned been about like the, the, the shrinking of space for independent thought and expression online, and that had sort of generally been my impression and and there are, there are, you know, not a small number of countries where the, the governments are mostly preoccupied with the old kind of broadcast right that the mass media and often stay controlled, you know, TV and radio that is as you point out you know, going to be the primary source of information for 90 plus percentage of the population. And if there's going to be some, you know, small elite bubble, you know where Yana and habits that, you know, where you know people can can can have independent it's if it's a publication a magazine that's going to be read by, you know, maybe 10s of thousands of people, and it's social media for people very global connected like maybe you know, my regime isn't going to be that obsessed over controlling I really what I care about is what 98% of the people are going to be digesting. And so, in a weird way there's like this, these two coexisting spheres I think that's not there. They're probably quite a number of quite a few countries we could point to where that is sort of the situation. And perhaps Russia had had been one of those. Now, rapidly changing and it turns out that no we're going to exert control and be vigilant across all media, even if it's just a few thousand, you know, cosmopolitan people that we thought before could could not really do much amount to much collectively. But if God willing, the situation comes to an end and the conflict comes to an end and there's some resolution in the short term. Do you think that, you know, do you imagine that six months from now, you know, things could be back to the normal of 2019 2020, which again was not ideal and I realized it was far from from ideal and it was a very difficult environment for people who wanted to do serious hard hitting with them. But the normal where you know, I average Russian citizen might be able to go online and and say whatever I want and access stuff that perhaps people in China can't write there wasn't this all pervasive firewall, or do you think that as a result of this moment and changing laws that even if the conflict gets resolved, it's things are going to be very different permanently and perhaps more like the control of information and China that in some of these more hybrid authoritarian regimes. You know, I won't be surprised if Internet and Russia will be shut down. I don't think that it can be like changed in six months or even maybe six years. I don't know. Because these things that they were happening long before this war started, and people, you said, get back to the times and people can like go to the Internet and why so whatever they want, but that time are long. We didn't have that opportunity for like maybe 10 or more years, like they started to put people in jail for like reports or tweets, tweets or like something like that. Long before this war, as there is a man come demonstration in Moscow who is currently in jail for five years for just posting a one tweet one tweet about policemen or something like that. And I don't think it will be like back to normal ever again with this regime. I don't think so. I think what is happening now is a problem for Putin too, because people are not happy with what is going on. There is a lot of people who still support him, but they will think about what's going on, because they will see that not only they left without like Western brands and like more stable or mobile or something like that but they also will see that this army, which was supposed to get into Kiev, like for five days, didn't manage to do it. And we see like video tapes from Ukraine where Russian soldiers who got nothing to eat or just they seem like not happy at all. And this is not the army that people were expecting to see, even if they even if they are putting supporters. They thought we can like win and we will be like strong country, strong imperialistic regime but what they can see now if they will be a bit hungry for information they can see that the Russian army is not as strong as we were told, because we were told all these years that our army is the strongest in the world and we have like everything that we need to even win the war with the USA if it will be happening, but now we see that it was not true. So, I mean, Putin supporters, they will see one way or another that these all were alive. It will be too late, of course, because something terrible already happened and we can't just stop it, but they will see. So that's what's going on. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I mean that if Putin don't have that if Putin will see that his support is getting less and less and he will need to control media more and more because if something independent comes out, it will be not good for him. So, he will need to create a picture of himself for public. Yeah, yeah. Yana, you get the final word. Anything you want to add a react to that. I wish that ties here was true, but I don't know. I just see that everything is getting worse and worse, and I'm getting disappointed, I think in in Russians as well, and I think that our population is used to tolerate everything and I'm afraid that even seeing prices go up, and all these consequences, they will still justify the violence, and they will still repeat what they see on TV, because Taysia now says that those like things about Russian army, but what I saw from those reports on TV, they take, for example, the interview of an American expert on at Fox News, who probably like the only American who told that Russian army is successful and everything is according to plan. And so they broadcast to this and people believe this and they, I hope that they will understand something, but right now I don't see any signs. Yeah. Well, as both of you were talking about that and how people interpret how the campaign is going. Of course, there's, there's a precedent in terms of, you know, the war in Afghanistan. There's a certain era, but similarly, you know, at a certain point, you can't totally obscure the fact that things might not be going according to plan, I mean, you can only pretend that the plan was to not, you know, need for so long right. And in that context, I mean the legitimacy and the credibility of the then Soviet era government was very much questioned but of course that took that took years, you know, we're, we're week three, but and it's it's not, it's still nothing. There's a lot of optimistic scenario here and that you know that the amount of suffering and tragedy involved in that trend transforming of public opinion, the cost is horrendous but this has been a heavy subject that's a heavy moment. And hopefully that will, there'll be more surprises down the line that that might be positive but for now I just want to really thank the three of you for taking the time and sharing your thoughts and wisdom and, and for all the great work that you're doing and thank you to all of the people who connected with us and we'll keep keep an eye on on the situation and keep reading all of you and, and just thanks a lot for being here. Thank you.