Mykhailo Fedorov, said to be an expert in digital marketing, put it this way: “we are trying to protect our brand… Our brand as one of an honest nation and an honest people trying to tell the truth.” Later that spring, Fedorov declared, “We have already won the information war with Russia.”
United24, the “Official Fundraising Platform of Ukraine,” describes itself as “The initiative of the President of Ukraine,” but according to Wired magazine, Fedorov’s Ministry of Digital Transformation quickly raised millions of dollars in cryptocurrency donations after Russia’s invasion and subsequently “turned this into United24.”
“The main point of United 24 is not fundraising itself,” according to Fedorov, “but keeping people around the world aware of what is going on in Ukraine.”
During the summer of 2022, the Digital Transformation Ministry created United24 Media, an English-language outlet which immediately made use of the famous self-portrait of Dmytro Kozatsky, the neo-Nazi press officer of the Azov Regiment, standing in a beam of light in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. (“Orest made these powerful shots in Azovstal, so world can face the truth about the bravest people,” tweeted Fedorov, referring to Kozatsky by his Azov call sign.)
At the end of the year, United24 Media published the following video — in retrospect, an omen of what was to come in 2023.
In January 2023, Mykhailo Fedorov announced the “important news” that Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta agreed to remove the Azov Regiment (which is now the Azov Brigade) in the National Guard of Ukraine from its list of dangerous organizations. The Washington Post reported a couple days later:
In this case, Meta argues that the Azov Regiment is now separate from the far-right nationalist Azov Movement. It notes that the Ukrainian government has formal command and control over the unit. Meta said in a statement that other “elements on the Azov Movement, including the National Corp., and its founder Andriy Biletsky” are still on its list of dangerous individuals and organizations.
Events that happened today (August 25):
1916: Saburō Sakai, Axis naval aviator, was born.
1940: Berlin (barely) survived its first bombing by the British Royal Air Force.
1942: Second day of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons; an Axis naval transport convoy headed towards Guadalcanal was turned back by an Allied air attack. On the other hand, Axis marines assaulted Allied airfields Milne Bay, New Guinea (thereby initiating the Battle of Milne Bay).
1944: The Axis lost Paris to the Allies.
1945: The August Revolution ended as Axis Emperor Bảo Đại abdicated, ending the Nguyễn dynasty. (Coincidentally, ten days after the Empire of Japan announced its surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party killed U.S. intelligence officer John Birch, regarded by some antisocialists as the Cold War’s first victim.)
1967: A former member of the American Nazi Party murdered its leader, George Lincoln Rockwell.