It's remarkable. Between the myriad international and domestic crowdsourcing events (eg, Bayrakter TB2s [0][1], a Tank [2], lots of Drones [3], First Aid kits [4], etc), the postage stamp [5] and the Foreign Minister doing international late night talk shows[6], they've set the bar for Global PR tactics of an invaded country.
It's possible they literally have a top-tier PR firm working on it. Maybe more than one.
Not to discount the possibility that they've simply knocked this out of the park themselves, but the "West" sure seems to be providing them a lot of soft support in addition to equipment, and some of that might be that kind of thing (I'm assuming Ukraine wouldn't be paying such a bill themselves, under these circumstances). The US government has been known to engage Madison Avenue & co. themselves, including for war-propaganda purposes, and not in the distant past.
Zelenskyy's political party is essentially a PR firm: he became famous by starring in the _Servant of the People_ TV show playing the Ukrainian president, and then after the show ended the production company Kvartal 95 [1] became the Servant of the People party [2]. I bet this is a big reason they're so amazing at communications - the party was literally born out of a hit TV studio!
No question Zelenskyy and his team have been killing it (uh, so to speak). Outside help or no—if I had to put money on it, I'd bet on "yes, world-class PR and/or marketing firms were engaged, probably before the most recent invasion started"—he and his team have been incredible from hour 1 day 1.
Not necessarily US firms. And making it feel authentic could just mean they didn't fuck up.
Again, I'm not saying the Ukrainians didn't do this themselves. They may have. Or there may be some obscure books few people read in 30 years that tell the story of the companies NATO paid to prep the Ukrainians to win the propaganda war.
I'm pro-Ukraine (of course?) but I doubt there's anyone who's dipped more than a toe into poli sci and international studies who's not had this through cross their mind, on seeing how fast, consistent, excellent, and on-all-fronts Ukraine's public information warfare has been. It's not exactly a way-out-there possibility. And if they did it's not like that's necessarily a bad thing. Just... don't be surprised if there are some pieces about how much more there was behind the scenes to make that happen, in Foreign Affairs or something, that only politics nerds will ever read, in a few years.
Whats confounding to me is how disciplined they are with media coverage. Early in the war, you could follow Ukrainian retreat, Russian "misfires" into civilian habitations, russian frontline advance etc. I thought to myself that any counteroffensive couldn't be done secretly and that the war would be fought inch by inch. I was obviously very wrong (i'm not remotely educated on this questions, i just really like planes).
They still upload combat footage to diverse repo, but nowadays its less accessible and more delayed, sometime 5 days "late".
Not only that but I think it was prepared for in advanced, similar to the training they got. They knew what could happen and were ready on multiple fronts.
Right, if this is what's happening that's exactly what I expect is the case. They prepped and gamed out the messaging strategy, who does what, tone, et c., ahead of time.
I'm sadly lost the link (and never found it again despite checking all my browsing history), but there was an article on how some guys literally waited for the war to start to make needed calls and arrange firms to work on it.
If you want - you can try your luck finding it, it was here, on HN.
You're absolutely right. There are probably plenty of foreign ministers who would love a late night talk show segment with Stephen Colbert but convincing the show producers would be an impossibly tough sell without high powered connections.
I'd put the likelihood well over "everything is possible theoretically" territory. Though of course it's also possible that it was 100% home-grown and Ukraine's schooling the whole world on how this should be done, before a live studio audience.
Not to discount the possibility that they've simply knocked this out of the park themselves, but the "West" sure seems to be providing them a lot of soft support in addition to equipment, and some of that might be that kind of thing (I'm assuming Ukraine wouldn't be paying such a bill themselves, under these circumstances). The US government has been known to engage Madison Avenue & co. themselves, including for war-propaganda purposes, and not in the distant past.