In the fourth year of the war, when the front line has stabilized in a bloody stalemate and public attention is focused on diplomatic maneuvers and energy issues, a quiet but extremely dangerous process is taking place in the information space. Reports from deep within the occupied territories are disappearing from the headlines of both Ukrainian and Western news services. Donetsk, Luhansk, but also Mariupol, Berdyansk, and Melitopol are slowly becoming “blank spots” in the collective consciousness. This is the result of a strategy precisely implemented by the Kremlin, which for the purposes of this analysis can be called an “operation of psychological amputation.”
The goal of Russian actions in the cognitive sphere is no longer just to legitimize the conquest for internal use. The main vector is to create a belief among the inhabitants of free Ukraine and Western societies that the changes are irreversible. Moscow wants Kyiv to recognize these lands not as “temporarily occupied territories” but as a foreign entity, permanently lost and incompatible with the rest of the state.
This mechanism is based on two pillars. The first is a total information blockade, creating a “digital concentration camp.” In the territories occupied by Russia, access to Ukrainian media, mobile networks, and independent internet has been eliminated. The flow of information is strictly controlled, and possession of a Ukrainian SIM card or use of a VPN is punishable by repression. The result is a hermetic bubble. Residents of the occupied territories do not know what is happening in Kyiv, and—more importantly for this analysis—Kyiv no longer receives a daily stream of information about the fate of its citizens. The lack of ongoing reports about resistance or repression causes emotional bonds to fade. What we do not see ceases to hurt.
The second pillar is the creation of an alternative reality, or “Potemkin villages 2.0.” The Russian propaganda machine has stopped dazzling with images of war from these areas. It has replaced them with a narrative of “return to normality.” Social media, also aimed at Western audiences, are circulating images of theaters being rebuilt in Mariupol, new roads, and youth festivals in Melitopol. The message is clear: “There is no more war here, this is Russia, it is stable.”
This strategy is intended to lead to a phenomenon known in psychology as habituation – getting used to a stimulus. Russia wants us to look at a map of Ukraine and subconsciously treat the front line as a new state border.
The greatest threat resulting from this process is a change in the perception of the population living in these areas. In Ukrainian (and Polish) public debate, voices are increasingly – though still timidly – suggesting that the people who remained there have been “Russified,” that they have accepted the new authorities, or that they have been “contaminated” by hostile propaganda. This is exactly the effect the Kremlin is counting on. If we stop thinking of the residents of Berdyansk as hostages waiting to be liberated and start thinking of them as the “Russian-speaking population of the buffer zone,” the political cost of abandoning these lands will drop dramatically.
For Western politicians looking for an exit strategy from the conflict, this process is convenient. It allows them to rationalize possible territorial concessions. The narrative of “realism” and “compromise” gains strength when the subject of negotiations—i.e., territory and people—becomes abstract and distant in the public consciousness.
It should be emphasized that the “severed limb syndrome” is a trap. Acceptance of the status quo in the occupied territories does not lead to stabilization, but to the sanctioning of the fait accompli method. Silence about what is happening in the basements of the occupied territories is a form of consent to these actions. Russia is exploiting the media silence to carry out its ultimate social engineering: population replacement, indoctrination of children, and physical elimination of disloyal individuals.
The analytical conclusions are clear: combating this narrative requires actively “keeping alive” the topic of occupation in the information space. These territories cannot be allowed to become a black hole. Every report of repression, every reminder of the Ukrainian roots of these cities, is a counterintelligence measure against the Russian influence operation. If we allow these lands to be mentally cut off, their physical separation at the negotiating table will be a mere formality.
PB
