When Russian troops flooded into Ukraine last year, an army of propagandists followed them.
Within hours, Kremlin-backed media were reporting that President Zelenskyy had fled the country.
Weeks later, a fake video of Zelenskyy purportedly surrendering went viral.
But almost as soon as they emerged, the lies were disproven.
Government campaigns had prepared Ukrainians for digital disinformation.
The incident became a symbol of the wider information war.
Analysts had expected Russias propaganda weapons to wreak havoc, but Ukraine was learning to disarm them.
Those lessons are now fostering a new sector for startups: counter-disinformation.
Like much of Ukrainian society, the countrys tech workers has adopted aspects of military ethos.
Some have enlisted in theIT Armyof volunteer hackers or applied their skills to defencetechnologies.
Others have joined the information war.
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In the latter group are the women who foundedDattalion.
All media is classified as official, trusted, or not verified.
By preserving and authenticating the material, the platform aims to disprove false narratives and propaganda.
Dattalions data collection team leader, Olha Lykova, was an early member of the team.
She joined as the fighting reached the outskirts of her hometown of Kyiv.
In the news, it was not possible to see the reality of what was happening in Ukraine.
An emerging sector
Counter-disinformation is not an obvious magnet for consumer cash.
Nonetheless, the sector is attracting unusual investor interest.
In addition, thesocial mediagiant has splashed cash on startups in the space.
Alarmed by the controversies, brands have fled the platform in their droves.
As X grapples with the concerns of advertisers, a wave of tech firms are offering solutions.
Two of them have raised over $100mn each: San Francisco-based Primer and Tel Avivs ActiveFace.
Both companies develop AI tools that can identify disinformation campaigns.
Ukrainian startups are also starting to raise funding and there are signs that the investments could soon surge.
Ukraine has been waging an informational struggle for more than 10 years.
If they dont, they face fines of up to 6% of their annual global revenue.
Xs DSA obligations have received particular attention.
In June, the company received the first stress test of the regulatory requirements.
Breton emphasised a threat that Ukraine recognises all too well.
Historians have traced the very word disinformation to the Russian neologism dezinformatsiya.
Defector Ion Mihai Pacepa claimed the term was coined by none other thanJoseph Stalin.
The Soviet ruler reputedly chose a French-sounding name to insinuate a Western origin.
Yet all of these origin stories are disputed.
In a world of deception, even etymology is fraught with mistruths.
What isnt disputed is Russias expertise in the field.
After the USSR collapsed, old strategies were embedded in new tools.
Ukraine is all too familiar with the tactics.
Gursky is a driving force behind Ukraines emergingcounter-disinformation industry.
In January, he co-organised the1991 Hackathon: Media, which sought digital solutions to information security challenges.
One of the judging criteria was commercial potential.
MindMap, which provides Q&A translations of English-language news reports, envisions a tiered membership model.
Then there isOsavul, which won the hackathon.
The problem is big enough to solve.
A term popularisedby Facebook, CIB involves multiple fake accounts collaborating to manipulate people for political or financial ends.
A key component of the system is a cross-platform approach.
This enables Osavu to track CIB across various social networks, online media, and messenger apps.
A single campaign can, therefore, be followed from Telegram through X and then into news reports.
One such campaign claimed that NATO had donated infected blood to Ukraine.
At the centre of the conspiracy theory was a fake document that purportedly proved the claim.
According to Osavul, the CIB was detected before the campaign gained momentum.
Ukrainian government agencies then used the findings to refute the canard.
The software targets businesses that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns, such as pharmaceutical companies.
Osavuls founders, Dmytro Bilash and Dmitry Pleshakov, compare it to conventional cyber security products.
With multilingual capabilities and the infrastructure to integrate new data sources, the platform is built to scale.
An early investment suggests their plan has promise.
In May, Osavul raised $1mn in a funding round led by SMRK, a Ukrainian VC firm.
The cash will finance a move into the international market.
ABC didnt retract the claim until after markets closed.
At that point, the losses were down to only $51bn (47bn) for the day.
Health misinformation, meanwhile, causes annual losses of around $9bn (8.4bn).
The researchers said all their estimates were conservative.
A divisive business
Despite the risks to corporations, the anti-disinformation sector still depends on government backing.
That foundation creates both support and frailty.
Government links are also a prevailing concern about anti-disinformation.
Outside of Ukraine, politicians have been accused of exploiting the issue to suppress dissent and control narratives.
In addition, the units reportedly facilitated censorship of legal content on social media.
Critics have also been unsettled by tech firms acting as arbiters of truth.
But there are now paradoxical concerns about Silicon Valley retreating from these roles.
X, Meta, and YouTube have all been recentlyaccusedof reducing efforts to tackle disinformation.
In tough economic times, these investments appear to have slipped down the list of priorities.
That raises another barrier for Ukraines nascent startups: access to capital.
Nonetheless, there are grounds for optimism.
Sector insiders believe this combination is a powerful launchpad for startups.
She envisions the cottage industry evolving into a global powerhouse.
In an economy devastated by war, the commercial potential of counter-disinformation is a powerful attraction.
But its a peripheral motive for many Ukrainians in the sector.
Of course, we hope that Ukraine will win, she said.
But in any case, it will be harder to rewrite history because we have the proof.
Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he e(show all)Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse).
