This explains the poor military planning. The imagined ‘regime’ in Kyiv would quickly fall and the Ukrainians would greet the Russian soldiers as liberators. It has become clear that he thought of the ‘special operation’ as a non-military operation. Vladimir Putin seems to have made the mistake only an authoritarian leader can make, or American neocons just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Diia app was quickly tailored towards the war and allows ordinary Ukrainians to submit location-tagged photos and videos of Russian military sightings. Not only does information spread instantly via Telegram, Twitter or WhatsApp, the Diia App (“Action”) made by the Ministry of Digital Transformation in 2020 helped the Ukrainian army target the enemy. Who can forget the green blurry images of the night vision cameras as the first artillery hit Bagdad? The 2022 Russian war against Ukraine is the first true social media war. The Vietnam War was the first war broadcast on television while the Gulf War of 1991 was the first war being live broadcast.
Just three days after the start of the war I agreed to be a back-up driver for the first transport, and maybe more to come, so I cancelled my plans for my springtime holiday. We bought calorie dense food for fighters on the front and as many night vision goggles we could possibly buy. We also crowdfunded money for a first transport to the Polish-Ukrainian border. Within a week we decided to donate the profits of the webshop of the month March to Giro555. Donation of money for humanitarian aid was a no-brainer. The owners of the company I work for immediately thought of ways to help Ukraine.