While fierce battles continue at the front, an equally fierce war is being waged on another battlefield, the information one. Its main target is our memory. History in the hands of the aggressor is not just an ideology, but a weapon of mass destruction.
On September 16, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency hosted a panel discussion titled “History as a Weapon in the Context of Modern Aggression and Challenges for Ukraine and Europe.” The event brought together leading experts in the fields of history, security, politics, and defense – those who are well aware of the value of historical truth and the power of historical lies.
The panel discussion was an attempt to provide a professional answer to the question: How does the Kremlin create and impose false historical constructs? How do these narratives work in Poland, Germany, and even in the occupied territories of Ukraine? And what can and should we-as a state, as a society, as individual citizens-opposition?
The event was organized by the Ukrainian Security Club, the Conservative Platform and the InfoLight.UA analytical group with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Ukraine.
Yuriy Honcharenko: “History is a battlefield for consciousness, not archival dust”
Opening the discussion, Yuriy Honcharenko, Chairman of the Ukrainian Security Club, noted that in the context of hybrid warfare, history has ceased to be just a science. It has become a weapon. Moreover, it is a highly accurate and systematic tool of aggression.
“We can no longer treat history as something aloof. It is not just memories. It is a battlefield. Against Ukraine, against Europe, against the very idea of civilizational stability,” he said.
According to Honcharenko, the most dangerous form of this war is the manipulation of history in children’s education. He cited the example of Buryatia, where Russia is testing a new model of education: “We are talking about ‘seamless education’ where history is presented not as a science, but as programming. This model is already working, and it will soon be scaled up across the rf. It is based on a systematic distortion of facts, a complete loss of critical thinking, and the ideological formation of a “good citizen. This is total control over the child’s mind. They are told: if you want to live a good life, accept the official myth. Give up your identity”.
Goncharenko emphasized that such a “story” is not just a danger, but a form of aggression that has consequences no less than missiles. “We must include historical policy in the concept of national security. Because information is also a weapon. History is another front where it is decided whose future will be.”
Oleksiy Ivashyn: “The Kremlin is not only attacking the frontline – it is breaking historical trust”
Oleksiy Ivashyn, a veteran, researcher of the liberation movement, and analyst, speaks about history not as an academic but as a fighter. Indeed, he fought both on the physical front and on the informational front, where the enemy fires not bullets but fakes, archival fakes, and distorted narratives. “Working with historical issues is also an information operation. And if you take it on without understanding the consequences, you are already playing on the side of the enemy,” Ivashyn emphasized.
That is why he recalled the words of the Chief of the Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense, Kyrylo Budanov, which every historian, journalist, or teacher should remember as a principle: “Information is also a weapon. And if you unknowingly play along with the enemy, you should think about it.”
This thesis was central to Ivashyn’s entire report. He showed in detail how the Kremlin uses painful historical topics – Volhynia, Operation Vistula, interwar pacification – to destroy the strategic alliance between Ukraine and Poland. “This is a systematic campaign. Everything has been thought out to the last detail: fake news, activation of botnets, pseudo-scientific articles, YouTube documentaries, even diplomatic provocations. And all this is to drive a wedge between nations fighting the same enemy.”
Ivashyn emphasizes that this is no longer just “information noise,” but a multi-level information and psychological special operation with a budget, plan, and goals. “рossia wants Ukraine to be left alone. Without trust, without partners, without a common history with Europe. And if we do not have our own historical policy, we will lose on this front.”
Yuriy Oliynyk: “Defense is not enough. We must create our own historical weapons”
Yuriy Oliynyk , PhD in Political Science, an officer of the Armed Forces ofUkraineand director of theUkrainian Strategic Studies, speaks about history as an instrument of power, not just a field of humanitarian studies. His message is active and uncompromising: For too long, Ukraine has been playing a reactive game, refuting other people’s fakes and justifying itself within someone else’s framework. It is time to go on the offensive. “We should not allow anyone to teach us our history. On the contrary, we should expose theirs: colonization, deportations, broken identities, stolen narratives.”.
Oliynyk presents a collective book about the enslaved peoples of Russia-the voices of Buryats, Tatars, Caucasian and Siberian communities who have lived the Russian “order” for centuries as repression rather than a “civilizing mission.” The publication has been translated into English and is being distributed to diplomats, journalists, and universities to change the West ‘s perspective on the nature of Russian statehood. “This is not just about Ukraine. When Europe hears how the empire broke other nations, the imperial myth cracks. The facade of “great culture” falls, exposing the mechanics of violence.”.
His approach is strategic and systematic. First, history should become a part of the national security doctrine: from audits of textbooks and education standards to the creation of state mechanisms for rapid response to historical fakes. Secondly, we need export historiography: translations of key Ukrainian studies into German, French, Polish, and English; scholarships for Western researchers of Ukraine; and support for joint courses at European universities.
“History should work like diplomacy: with briefs for politicians, analytics for the media, curatorial programs for museums. This is a front where we need to act every day, not from anniversary to anniversary.”.
Thirdly, Oliynyk insists on deconstructing the empire not only through criticism of Russian myths, but also through the backlog of facts: genocides, deportations, confiscations, elimination of languages and institutions, religious oppression, and colonial wars on the margins. When these cases become visible, the “normalized” imperial picture of the world loses its legitimacy. “We cannot stop at refuting the ‘great Russian culture’. It is necessary to show the price of this greatness-the lists of those expelled, shot, and assimilated. Then it becomes clear that we are facing an empire, not a cultural beacon.”.
A separate line is working with partners. In the Polish-Ukrainian dialogue, Oliynyk proposes a symmetry of memory: to speak honestly about our losses and theirs; to jointly counter Russian fakes; to prepare educational materials and museum projects together that translate the complex past into the language of common interests today. “The goal is not to compete with pain, but to remove mines from the field of memory. When we look into each other’s eyes and not into a Russian telegram, there is no room for provocation.”.
Oliynyk talks about mass culture as a carrier of historical truth: documentaries, TV series, podcasts, interactive maps, games, TikTok formats, and multimedia museums. It is through these channels that history becomes a habit of mind for young audiences and ceases to be an easy prey for propaganda. “History is not just an academy. It is a field of influence and security. Without one’s own historical strategy, there will be no political subjectivity.”.
In summary, his prescription sounds simple and tough: go from defense to offense, speak to Europe in its languages, support the narrative with facts and cases, build coalitions of memory, and make history popular so that there are no more cracks or audiences for Russian lies.
Mykola Posivnych: “If you want to know the state’s policy, read textbooks of the 5th-6th grade”
Historian Mykola Posivnych reminds us that the current war is not a “system failure” but a regularity of Russian statehood. The Kremlin is reproducing methods proven over the centuries, from colonial thinking to the sacralization of power. “Putin thinks in terms of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Stalin. It’s not an allegory, it’s a scheme. For рor Russia, history is not a humanitarian discipline, but a working tool of hybrid warfare: through textbooks, church rhetoric, political statements, and “scientific-like” texts, the state is trying to monopolize the past and, consequently, the future. Our main historical enemy… has always thought in terms of history and used history as a political weapon to start conflicts.”.
Posivnych emphasizes a separate front that is hardly noticeable to laymen: the church. Here, “soft power” merges with political control: institutions of faith turn into a repeater of state narratives. “The affiliated structures of the FSB, before that the KGB, the NKVD, have always controlled the church, and the hierarchs have been implementing the Russian program.”.
Another indicator of the policy is school textbooks. They show what the state is trying to “sew” into children’s heads as the only correct history. If you want to know the state’s policy, read textbooks for grades 5-6.”.
The aggressor builds long “historical series” – from the myth of the “one nation” to border revision – and imposes on its neighbors the obligation to watch them without pausing. Hence, the systematic undermining of Ukraine’s partnership with European countries through memorial topics, fakes, and “joint commissions” that shift the discussion into a direction favorable to Moscow.
“History as an instrument of information and psychological wars in Russia is a constant. It has survived tsarism and the USSR and remains the core of today’s politics”.
Along with the diagnosis, Posivnych also gives a prescription for action.
First, Ukraine needs historical security as part of national security: textbook audits, systematic work with archives, state mechanisms for verifying fakes and responsibility for their dissemination.
Secondly, a horizontal foreign policy of memory is needed-a direct dialogue between elites, academia, and cultural institutions with Poland, Hungary, and Romania to reduce the space for manipulation.
Third, it is worth relying on allies who have similar historical experience and sensitivity to Russian narratives. “Our only natural ally here should be Lithuania, as it shares the same geopolitical logic and experience of confronting imperial history.”.
Yaroslav Bozhko: “Нnarrative can also shoot”
Political scientist Yaroslav Bozhko raises the question: what image of Ukraine do we construct for ourselves, and are we not stuck in the role of “eternal victim”? His thesis is simple: history is politics, a tool of influence and mobilization, not an “academic supplement” to reality. “History has been, is, and will be one of the most politicized sciences.”.
Hence the fundamental framework about the nature of the nation: “A nation is a narrative, that is, a nation is a story, a nation is a narrative.”.
Bozhko analyzes our usual optics, which stems from Hrushevsky’s nationalist school: society is brought up in the logic of “betrayal of the elites” and endless suffering, which demobilizes, destroys trust in institutions, and blocks strategic thinking.
“The Ukrainian statehood school of historiography…has not taken root in modern Ukraine, while the optics initiated by Hrushevsky…remains dominant. This is a social history: first we were trampled by Polovtsians, then Poles, then our own, then Muscovites… This does not look like a history that forms a geopolitical vision.”.
At the same time, Russia is rewriting the “dictionary” of the past to oust Ukraine from the sources of statehood and legitimize its imperial view. “One of the main changes is the replacement of the term “Kievan Rus” with “Ancient Russian State” in Russian history textbooks”.
At the same time, Russia itself is facing a crisis of “common glue.” “Putin and his entourage are trying to test different models of national ideology… but neither Orthodoxy nor Eurasianism have gained a final status.”.
The story of the “eternal victim” cannot be the foundation of either identity or politics. What is needed is a state narrative in which Ukraine is an actor, building interests, alliances, and responsibilities. “History reduced to ‘we were all oppressed’ cannot be the subject of a qualitative understanding of foreign policy… We need a narrative with strategic significance.”.
Bozhko’s position is to move beyond trauma therapy to a strategy of subjectivity: to talk about ourselves as a state that acts, not just experiences; and to do so in a language that the world can hear, from textbooks to Netflix.
Oleksandr Antoniuk: “We must speak the language of the generation that will live after the war”
Military man and political strategist Oleksandr Antoniuk turns the conversation into a practical plane: how to make history heard by young people. If we do not enter the mass culture, the enemy will. “In 2023-2025 in the the Russian Federation history textbooks are being updated by Medinsky, where the invasion of Ukraine is described as a defense against the New Nazis and puppets of the West.”.
Antoniuk emphasizes that this mythologization of textbooks does not exist in a vacuum; it is complemented by the forced “re-education” and abduction of Ukrainian children, as well as large-scale social media activity:
“The Kremlin has been planting this seed of hatred for Ukrainians for generations. A separate area is social media, in particular TikTok. The Russian Federation is present there, actively promoting propaganda: footage taken out of context, “historical lectures,” fakes, entertainment content.”.
Therefore, it is dangerous to leave history in the format of “boring textbooks.” It should be made lively, emotional, and adapted to the habits of content consumption. There are positive examples that are already working for Ukraine: “We need to have appropriate media directions… We can take the movie 20 Days in Mariupol as a basis – this is a step that shapes the perceptions of millions of audiences around the world.”.
The key is to scale our voice with simple and powerful formats: short videos, animation, music, games, comics, localization into other languages (with the help of AI, if necessary). Historical politics should become a daily communication, not a one-time event for specific dates:
“A mass product needs simplicity and an emotional component… We need to pay attention to the creative industries and use it as a tool. Comics, TikTok, music trends… This allows us to break through… and shape the world’s knowledge of Ukraine. Let’s not forget about gaming projects – we have to integrate Ukrainian stories into global gaming.”.
Antoniuk also adds an institutional dimension: we need systematic mechanisms for monitoring and verifying hostile narratives, opening archives, digitizing documents, and supporting English-language resources and partnerships. “Countering information aggression is our own voice. Opening archives, digitizing documents about the crimes of the USSR is what should be the default”.
His conclusion is simple and tough: history is also a front, and we must be no less convincing on it than on the battlefield.
Yuriy Honcharenko: “Children’s consciousness is the last line we have no right to give away”
In his closing remarks, Yuriy Goncharenko returns the focus to the most vulnerable – children. It is not only about abductions, but also about the systemic “rewiring” of consciousness in the occupied territories and in Russia itself.
“We are almost completing a study on what Russia is doing with the Ukrainian children it has abducted… the element of historical mindset change is a very important element of indoctrination. This is a seamless education: from kindergarten onwards, if you want to be successful and live a good life, you have to believe in these narratives, give up your own identity and become a “typical Russian citizen.” They are conducting an experiment in Buryatia… they plan to extend it to the whole of Russia and the occupied Ukrainian territories.”.
Goncharenko emphasizes that we are talking about total digital control and years of indoctrination from kindergarten to retirement. Therefore, Ukraine’s response should be not only about weapons at the front, but also about the weapon of truth in schools, culture, and media.
“If we don’t work with this, we allow the enemy to militarize children’s minds. Tanks do not work against this. Truth, education and a strong historical policy work.”.