AMK Mapping

One thing I think a lot of people don't quite realise is how incredibly small the Ukraine war information space truly is. And that's precisely why it's so easy to conduct narrative control in this war. Sure, you might see hundreds, or even thousands, of bloggers out there, each claiming to provide reporting and original analysis on the war, but in reality, things are much different. 99% of the maps you see are based on the same 10-or-so mappers. Obviously you have your two giants (Deepstate and ISW). Deepstate is affiliated by the Ukrainian MoD, and ISW is (most likely) funded by the U.S. government. Then there are the larger independent mappers (Me, Suriyak, Clement Molin, Divgen, Radov, Rybar, etc), and your smaller independent mappers (Playfra, Thorkill, and others). 95% of the geolocations you see are done by the same dozen-or-so geolocators (no, creamy caprice is not one of them, he just steals from the GeoConfirmed and Uacontrolmap volunteers on Twitter). Almost all of the trench and fortification mapping is done by two people (Playfra and Clement Molin). Pretty much all of the Russian KAB glide-bomb mapping is done by Clement. The majority of the Russian missile/drone strike mapping of actual targets being hit (not just copy/pasting what the Ukrainian officials say) is done by me and a few Russian channels. This is exactly why narrative control and the "informational silence" you see is so much easier in this war, especially considering most mappers and bloggers are ideologically affiliated with either Russia or Ukraine, and would like to use their influence to assist in their sides' respective campaigns. Ukraine's "Vilvaldi" Lyman counteroffensive is a good example of this, where the main dozen geolocators (all of whom are pro-Ukraine) stopped publishing geolocations to help maintain the informational silence. Obviously, most of this was part of an information warfare campaign by the Ukrainian command to help exaggerate the speed of Ukrainian advances by releasing updates all at once, and minimise reporting on heavy casualties throughout the nearly 6-month-long costly counteroffensive, while allowing a lot of room to avoid reporting on any failures in the operation through their total control over the free flow of information. There were real OPSEC concerns with this, however open-source information has not and will never negatively affect the actual on-the-ground operations for Ukraine. OPSEC is to do with your own personal contacts within the military. Russian mappers did the same with this. Hardly anyone from the Russian or pro-Russian side reported on the counteroffensive at all, because they were instructed to minimise the media effect of the territorial losses being suffered, buying time for the Russian command to react and try stop the Ukrainian advance. In the end, of course, this silence actually helped Ukraine's information OPSEC campaign, as the lack of reporting from the Russian side further decreased the overall media exposure, and allowed Ukraine to mask their losses even more effectively. This left the mapping almost entirely to three independent mappers (me & Thorkill, who are pro-Ukraine, and Suriyak, who is neutral, although none of us are attempting to assist either side in their operations). Out of all the bloggers and "reporters" you see, only a very small fraction actually do their own analysis and investigations, and have on-the-ground sources giving them information. Most just copy from the people putting in the work.