Russia Received a Ready-Made Script: Why the Events in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka Are Dangerous and Why Ukraine Is Losing the Cognitive Defense

The shameful incident near the National Guard’s temporary deployment site, which took place on November 2 in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka near Kyiv, exposed many serious problems not only in Ukrainian society but also within law enforcement agencies.

The “popular uprising,” hastily staged by outright provocateurs, resonated with the sentiments of a significant number of citizens and escalated the incident – one that Russian intelligence agencies will undoubtedly study in great detail.

Apart from the fact that the majority of the population believes the story about the “TCC torture chamber” without a shred of doubt, and that a certain proportion of people is ready to confront the police (including of their own free will), the events in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka revealed yet another aspect of the problem: the relevant government agencies are completely unprepared for such provocations, while social tensions are rising exponentially.

Read the report by 24 Channel to find out why a small, paid “action” in a village near Kyiv escalated into large-scale clashes, and why similar situations could recur on a much larger scale.

The Russians have fueled public distrust of the authorities and are capitalizing on the consequences

Much has already been written about the fact that what occurred in the Kyiv region was not a Russian-orchestrated special influence operation, but a simple attempt to extract certain military personnel from their temporary deployment sites for money.

Unfortunately, the Russian intelligence officers responsible for the cognitive domain of warfare literally arrived to find everything already set up and only activated their information influence networks after the fact. Had the provocation been planned in advance, and had the Russians understood the impact it would have, the scale of the event would have been significantly greater. After all, it is extremely advantageous for the Kremlin if the Ukrainian population does not trust either the law enforcement system or the current government.

Moscow is consistently working to deepen any rift in Ukrainian society, as a lack of unity weakens the state and renders it incapable of resistance. In this context, the Russians’ long-standing attempts to escalate public hatred toward the TCC are entirely understandable.

The mobilization process is what enables the Defense Forces to resist the enemy in one way or another. Therefore, the occupiers spare neither money nor time in their efforts to disrupt it: active campaigns to counter the recruitment of Ukrainians into the military have been ongoing since the start of the full-scale aggression. However, while all of the enemy’s attempts to disrupt these processes in 2022 proved futile, its subsequent actions can be considered entirely successful.

Unfortunately, the Russians took advantage of the most important rule of conducting psychological information operations: one should not invent non-existent facts, but rather exaggerate an existing problem, spread the truth mixed with fabrications, and give maximum publicity to high-profile events. This is largely due to the fact that Ukraine’s current mobilization system is, in reality, extremely flawed. And since the government has effectively distanced itself from addressing unpopular issues, the enemy didn’t even have to look far to find a weak spot.

Incidents such as deaths at the TCC, illegal mobilization of individuals unfit or reserved from service, as well as causing traffic accidents to detain people – though in reality isolated cases compared to the lawful conscription of men into the military – have played very much into the enemy’s hands in every respect.

Not only did such incidents actually reduce the number of people willing to join the nation’s defense, but they also gave the Russians enormous leverage over the masses. The invaders have, in fact, been striking at a single painful point in society for years, and this large-scale special operation has made it extremely easy for thousands of people to believe in the existence of the “TCC torture chamber” – not only without any evidence.

At the same time, it must be acknowledged that, despite all these years of active cognitive influence by the Russians, the state has not come any closer to depriving the enemy of a pretext to divide society. Instead of solving the problem, the responsible agencies often merely repeated the same communication mistake, attributing viral videos to hostile PsyOps or content taken out of context. Furthermore, the actions of the organizers and perpetrators of these provocations – which were, in fact, acts of sabotage, given that they took place under martial law – were often not subject to proper legal assessment. This fostered impunity and only served to escalate new provocations.

As evidenced by new revelations in Operation "Carthage," conducted by NABU and the SAPO, some law enforcement officials, instead of preventing enemy sabotage, not only engage in their own illegal enrichment but also enlist those very same Russian provocateurs and agents of influence to facilitate their “shady schemes.”

Russian agent of influence Shariy is mentioned in a new batch of recordings from NABU and the SAPO exposing a criminal group consisting of Russian criminals and active special services officers / NABU screenshot

So it’s no surprise at all that a large number of Ukrainians believed the neatly packaged tale about “a courageous doctor who is trying to save the lives of torture victims.”

Unfortunately, the public’s distrust of the police, the TCC, and government officials is grounded in reality, though it has been greatly amplified by the enemy. And the biggest problem is that, as practice has shown, none of the law enforcement agencies has proven capable of effectively countering challenges, taking preventive action, or averting such “riots.”

Telegram and TikTok – the foundation of cognitive influence against Ukraine

If we analyze exclusively the events of November 2, 2026, in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka, as well as all manner of Russian attempts to influence the Ukrainian population in the context of disrupting mobilization, it is easy to conclude that the enemy’s primary points of entry into our information space are TikTok and Telegram.

In any information-psychological or cognitive operation, the key action is the delivery of information to the target.

No matter how effective the material to be disseminated may be, or how resonant the topic it addresses, if the delivery process fails, the operation will be completely ineffective. And this is precisely where the Russians have their greatest advantage over us on the cognitive front: they have countless entry points into our information space: pro-Russian media, bloggers with millions of followers like Shariy, and Telegram channels masquerading as pro-Ukrainian ones – the enemy has access to every possible means of delivering messages to the masses.

In their attempts to change the behavior of a large portion of the population – to provoke men into refusing to join the military and to resist the military or police – the enemy’s primary goal is to influence a large number of people. After all, the success of such an operation depends not on targeted influence on each individual, but on the extent to which Russian intelligence services manage to amplify the publicity surrounding a particular event.

At the same time, the best outcome for any specialist in information and psychological operations is precisely when the very targets of influence themselves participate in spreading the message. In other words, if a hypothetical FSB agent named Dmitry manages to arrange with a Telegram channel to publish a “busification” video, and this is subsequently picked up by other channels, bloggers, and media outlets, the information and psychological operation can be considered extremely successful.

How and by whom was the “treason” story about the “TCC torture chamber” spread?

If we analyze the information noise surrounding the clashes in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka, it is easy to trace exactly how and through which channels the “activists” gained publicity. Russian intelligence officers and any other specialists commissioned to carry out an influence operation operate in a similar manner.

Valentina Moloda’s team launched the “campaign” across all popular social media platforms. The event can be considered to have begun with a live stream on TikTok at 11:00 a.m. on November 2. A little over half an hour later, various bloggers on Threads began referencing this stream.

The streams, which likely would have gone unnoticed, lasted an hour and a half until a major campaign to spread information about the incident began.

The first to speak out on Telegram were the administrators of the “Real Kyiv” channel, who at 1:16 p.m. published a message purportedly from a reader about the unlawful detention of a person.

By 1:49 p.m., two other major channels – Times of Ukraine and “NOVINA” – had picked up the story. Their reports already mentioned “40 people being held by armed men,” citing unidentified local media outlets as their sources. The first wave of coverage ended at 2:09 p.m. with posts on the “Real War” and “Ukraine Now” channels.

During two hours of “silence,” numerous bots stoked the news in the comments sections of published posts and live streams. At 4:14 p.m., the intensive campaign began.

A post about the “torture chamber” on the UNIAN Telegram channel was viewed by 180,000 people. Later, the channel changed the “tone” of its coverage, but the “first shot” had already been fired / Screenshot

Staggered 5 to 7 minutes apart, the channels “Shvidshe za vseh,” UNIAN, “Ukraine Online,” Times, “News: Ukraine,” and “Kyiv INFO” wrote highly emotional posts about the incident in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka.

Each of the reports on these channels differed from one another, as administrators added their own details about what was allegedly happening: about a “dead man,” a “doctor” begging the police on her knees to let her inside, and TCC servicemen who were supposedly “torturing people.”

The posts on these channels were so widespread that any casual reader could have gotten the impression that the channels’ correspondents were reporting live from the scene of rapidly unfolding events.

The wave of publicity, which was artificially created by the organizers of the “protest,” proved so powerful that even the serious media outlets couldn't help but react to it. The TikTok video, the livestream itself, and any other materials about the events on Soniachna Street on the evening of November 2 reached millions of views. Russian bots, which quickly joined the fray, also helped amplify the events.

Once again, the Chinese social media platform and the Russian messaging app proved to be key tools for spreading hostile narratives into the Ukrainian information space. Similar conclusions can easily be drawn by tracking any hostile cognitive influence operation.

Why Ukraine Is Losing the Battle in Cognitive Defense

People’s Deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak, who analyzed the informational activity of Telegram channels, openly categorized them based on whether they were affiliated with the SBU or the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR).

Post by MP Zheleznyak:

It’s hardly possible to say that one channel or another is directly subordinate to a particular intelligence agency, but the claim that the Security Service is acquainted with the administrators of the largest Ukrainian public channels is 100% true.

So a perfectly logical question arises: why did individuals who “drop by for coffee” with SBU operatives – whether for money or for the hype – publish blatantly fake messages featuring Valentina Moloda’s narrative?

It turns out that domestic anonymous Telegram channels – which, according to People’s Deputy Zheleznyak and many others, operate with or under the “supervision” of domestic special services – are themselves capable of spreading anti-Ukrainian information that has nothing to do with the real fight against law enforcement abuses.

Of course, it’s good that the police, the SBU, the National Security and Defense Council, and the Center for Countering Disinformation reconstructed the events of November 2 and analyzed how the attack unfolded. However, the fact that law enforcement agencies allowed such a “protest” to take place in the first place is very regrettable. More precisely – it is shameful.

As is the blatant confusion of the police officers, who were unable to calm the crowd until a large number of young provocateurs appeared, and the unwillingness of all those in charge to de-escalate the situation as quickly as possible. The need for Kyrylo Budanov himself to arrive on the scene – who acted as a sort of mediator in the conflict – clearly demonstrates the lack of established protocols for such cases.

Why didn’t any of the administrators of the Telegram channels – which the pseudo-activists contacted with a request or order to post – report this to their supervisor? The question is rhetorical. It is unknown whether the Service’s operatives had information about Moloda and her accomplices’ preparations for the riots.

This is especially true given that the female organizer of the protest, pro-Russian figure Oleksandr Todorov, Ostap Stakhiv's associate Andriy Rachok, and Viktor Yena had already come to the attention of law enforcement on multiple occasions for organizing various anti-Ukrainian protests. Judging by the fact that the entire group mentioned above was freely planning to remove the soldier – who had been detained for AWOL – from his base of deployment, none of the law enforcement officers were monitoring their activities or attempting to prevent the crime preemptively.

And that is precisely why MP Dubinsky, who was detained on charges of treason, is freely posting anti-Ukrainian messages on social media while in pretrial detention. Entire networks for the emergency evacuation of conscripts from military registration and enlistment offices are in operation, and Telegram channels are happily publishing anti-state posts – and Ukraine is losing the cognitive defense battle during this actual war.

The information war that the Russians launched long before the invasion requires not only debunking disinformation and identifying those responsible for these crimes, but also cutting off the enemy’s ability to act. Until the state regulates the operation of Telegram channels and recognizes TikTok as a social media platform that poses a threat to national security, and until law enforcement begins to hold “activists” like Moloda or Stakhiv himself accountable at the very outset of their activities, the chances of preserving national unity will continue to diminish.

Because Russia will not stop methodically striking at the vulnerable points of our society, and the occupying special services will continue to exploit any social conflict for their own ends. And who knows when the FSB will decide not just to seize the opportunity to escalate any conflict, but to orchestrate its “own Petropavlivska Borshchahivka” – only on a much larger and bloodier scale.

As experience shows, our enemies are quite capable of secretly recruiting young men – unbeknownst to Ukrainian intelligence agencies – who are ready for more serious actions than just throwing eggs, and the Ukrainian population is indeed in an extremely difficult and far from united situation.