Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is one of the most important conflicts of the twenty-first century. With the start of military hostilities in 2014 also came an onslaught of propaganda, to both convince and confuse audiences worldwide about the war’s historical and ideological underpinnings. In this talk, Jon Roozenbeek discusses his new book, Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian-Ukrainian War (2024, Cambridge University Press). Based on extensive research drawing on tens of thousands of news articles and hundreds of pages of legal documents and internal correspondence, he tackles the question of group identity in Ukraine before and during Putin’s war. Despite investing an astounding amount of time, effort and resources, Russia’s propaganda campaign failed and even backfired, serving to sow the seeds of unity instead of division.

Jon Roozenbeek is the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. His research focuses on misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, online extremism and inoculation theory.