Firing at Cyxymu With a Cannon

Firing at Cyxymu With a Cannon

By Yulia Latynina

Some actions invariably lead to the opposite result of the one intended. Pro-Kremlin PR agents recently waged a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against users of the Cyxymu blog, which promotes a pro-Georgian point of view on the Russia-Georgia war. In the process, the agents caused three major web sites to crash — Facebook, Twitter and LiveJournal.

While no more than a few hundred people had heard of the blogger before this incident, now he or she is known by millions, and those millions will spread Cyxymu’s views of the war far and wide. In any case, whatever Cyxymu might write about the war in Georgia, it is the opinion of a single individual. But the crash of three major Internet-based social networks is an event discussed around the world.

And the tone of that discussion is not very favorable toward Russia. This situation is the exact opposite of China’s Internet policy. Beijing restricts Internet access for its own citizens. By contrast, Moscow wants to manipulate the global Internet and is even prepared to bring down major web sites used by millions of people with one goal in mind — to eliminate a single, unwanted blogger. If this isn’t shooting pigeons with a cannon, I don’t know what is.

This, however, is not the first Internet war with Georgia. Another blog, Voice of the Soul, appeared on the Internet shortly before the war. It was supposedly authored by an Ossetian who had come to the region to defend Tskhinvali. His entries prior to Aug. 8 are particularly interesting.

On Aug. 7, 2008, at 12:38 a.m. — that is, nearly a full day before Georgia attacked Tskhinvali — Voice of the Soul logged the following entry, “Open warfare has already begun.” Six hours later, at 6:53 a.m., he again writes: “The war has started! They are firing machine guns in the city! … It seems that no peaceful dialogue of any kind has panned out!”

The web site Osradio.ru contains similar content. Here are a few posts from that blog dated Aug. 7, 2008: “Ossetians! Let’s turn the city of Gory into the biggest morgue in Europe!” “The Georgian fascists should experience their own Stalingrad, and Tbilisi should become like Berlin was in 1945.” “We haven’t bombed ‘peaceful Tbilisi’ yet. But soon we will.” “We should destroy Georgia with one salvo, and then the whole region would be peaceful.” “The 58th is already in the city!” “We should remove the enclaves at any price. There might not be another chance.”

Reading these entries, one would logically conclude that the war began on Aug. 7 and that the main aggressor, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, struck the sleeping residents of Tskhinvali on Aug. 8.

It would be difficult for any rational individual who had read the Osradio.ru or the Voice of the Soul blogs to believe that Georgia had started the war. It is difficult to believe that the people who were willing to bring down three major Internet social networks in order to silence a single, undesirable blogger really want to report the truth to the world.

The main point in this story is that those who authored Voice of the Soul or caused Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal to crash were not trying to serve the Kremlin’s long-term interests. They were operating as PR mercenaries, earning some dough while ostensibly battling the Georgian threat. And they couldn’t care less what harm their actions have caused to Russia’s image.