Live Information War and the Russian‑Ukrainian War of 2022 on the Media Base

The urgency of the study is ensured by the urgent public response to the Russian-Ukrainian crisis of 2022, which unfolded on the media bridgehead before the beginning of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Currently, all popular Ukrainian publications and many foreign ones regularly publish materials on this issue. Such excitement around the Russian-Ukrainian military escalation attracts the attention of researchers of information wars. Based on the potential and development of modern mass media in the study, this confrontation was identified as the first war “live”. The peculiarity of this information war is that it is immediately attended by representatives of several countries. On the one hand, Ukraine, the United States, Great Britain, the EU, NATO, and other indifferent allies, on the other, Russia, and indirectly Belarus. The main scientific issue in the context of the study of this information war is the live mode of its operation and its features. The study identified the confrontational elements of the information war against the background of the Russian-Ukrainian military crisis of 2022 and identified the actual signs of Russia’s implementation of the “4D” strategy and “4F” formula in the information war against Ukraine. The study of the peculiarities of the first war “live” is a tool for assessing the specifics of the destructive impact on public consciousness. The purpose of the study is to determine the specifics of the pre-war (before the full-scale invasion) Russian Ukrainian military crisis on the media bridgehead. In the process of work methods of comparison and synthesis were used. The first is used in the context of parallels between the Cold War and the modern information confrontation, as well as in characterizing the confrontational elements of its functioning. The method of synthesis highlights the actual signs of Russia’s implementation of powerful media tools of hybrid warfare. The results of the study of the Kremlin's propaganda information strategy implemented before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in comparison with the data of other related studies of the subsequent periods of the Russian-Ukrainian information war, can serve as guidelines for researchers to better understand the features of the spread of Russian destructive information influence