Ukraine has been suffering from the full-scale war for the third year now. Naturally, we have already developed some practices on how to respond to certain challenges; there are useful and harmful cases of how important internal communication is, especially in a crisis.
Internal communication in wartime is all about security and providing the population with timely updates. In peacetime, it facilitates meeting the information needs of the population as well as the ability to adequately keep up with current affairs, while in times of crisis, communication is an urgent need aimed at emergency response. Not entertainment but a basic need, which often affects the safety and even lives of the residents of municipalities.
This is the firm belief of Oksana Siliukova, Chair of the Communication Working Group of the U-LEAD Programme and Head of the Regional Office in the Kherson Oblast.
Why is internal communication important for municipalities?
Given the number of unpredictable changes we face every day, we must coordinate and prioritise. Therefore, it is essential for municipalities to build a dialogue with the public so that people know about any changes and can adapt to them in time. Communication should be in an open format, and communication channels should be systematic, accessible and active 24/7.
The experience of communicating with the public shows that even a simple lack of information very quickly leads to panic, anxiety and helplessness. We saw this in the first days of the full-scale invasion in the Kherson Oblast, when the defence efforts in the oblast were uncoordinated, and the residents implemented initiatives chaotically, without any support from the authorities. This was a glaring example of a complete lack of communication that led to long-term tragic consequences.
What about internal communication in municipalities now?
The situation in most municipalities is currently very different: by building effective communication even in adverse conditions, you can support people, take hold of the situation and form trust. We are talking both about official communication channels — public awareness of which has increased significantly in wartime — and about formal channels that communicate information to the public as quickly as possible.
What communication channels enjoy the most public trust in wartime?
This is the second year the U-LEAD with Europe Programme cooperates with Internews Ukraine, which professionally trains our officials to build effective communication within the municipality. This organisation continuously monitors Ukraine’s main communication trends.
According to Internews, trust in official sources of information has grown significantly in recent years: the public trusts information from the General Staff of the Armed Forces, territorial commands, the pages of the Commander-in-Chief, the Government, the Office of the President and local authorities, only then followed by television and radio. This trust poses a certain challenge for local self-government and military administrations (of which there are currently many in Ukraine, especially in “problem” territories), since now communication should be as up-to-date, high-quality and useful as possible. It cannot be just an exchange of information (remember the two-way communication process!). Communication must address the ever-changing current issues, whose range is now much more extensive compared to peacetime.
Internal communication in the regions: cases from the Kherson Oblast.
When it comes to the Kherson Oblast, it is affected on all fronts, having de-occupied municipalities and localities affected by active hostilities, as well as the tragically occupied Left Bank. Our people are scattered across Ukraine and abroad. The local authorities face quite a challenge — to determine the number of people that can potentially return after the war, the main needs of those who remain, the ways to rebuild what has been destroyed, the most urgent problems to be solved right now via communication... Of course, most senior officials in the oblasts are now focused on addressing issues like that; they provide rapid response.
In addition, in wartime, the situation with the population of municipalities has been changing a lot — people left many localities to escape from danger. Unfortunately, in my native Kherson Oblast, the population was low even before the war, especially in rural areas. Now we are talking about villages and towns that completely disappeared, both physically — many of them are simply completely destroyed — and demographically. There is little hope to see people returning.
The Kherson Oblast now has the so-called internal IDPs — residents of the oblast moving from the war zone to safer territories, or from the occupied parts to de-occupied municipalities. This is often associated with an inability to afford life in other regions or an unwillingness to move far from their homes in hopes of returning soon. Local authorities (in our case, the military administrations, as there are those in all 49 municipalities of the oblast) are attempting to offer these people comprehensive support and creating IDP councils in municipalities to speed up the process of integrating people in a new place. Obviously, these people need (at least at first) more involved communication and a careful study of their needs.
What can a municipality do to establish communication with the public in wartime?
The communication scope is quite extensive: prompt announcements of important changes, detailed explanations of decisions and actions (people in some municipalities currently misunderstand the renaming of streets during the war — they consider this issue a non-priority), reaching as many people who have moved outside the municipality as possible, informing about available help/support (visits of international organisations, mobile points). The format of public communication remains the same as before the war: offline meetings, social media, texts, photos, videos, news reporting, etc.
The priority is maximum personalisation and attention to everyone’s problems. Obviously, direct contact with people in the format of meetings will always be more effective. Still, the Internet offers many options for all kinds of discussion.
Since the beginning of the war, the Kherson Oblast has had grave problems with communication, as the Russian military used to regularly destroy mobile communication in the occupied territories (this is still the case in the municipalities on the left bank of the Dnipro River). At the time, messengers — mainly Viber and Telegram — came to the rescue as informal channels for the delivery of quick content for urgent announcements. Many of our municipalities also have active FB pages to inform the public of the activities of the municipality. Here, people can share what they think in the comments. De-occupied municipalities have started to use Facebook pages to get feedback from the public on urgent issues.
Little by little, local authorities popularise hubs for communication and assistance to the people of the Kherson Oblast in different cities of Ukraine. In the early days of the war, these hubs were created in Ivano-Frankivsk, Vinnytsia and Kryvyi Rih. Kherson communicates are currently growing in other cities as well. Of course, their activities have been primarily aimed at providing humanitarian aid to the residents of the oblast. However, in some regions (e.g., in Ivano-Frankivsk), they are real communication centres that organise training and workshops, provide psychological and legal assistance and deal with issues of retraining, employment and assistance to relocated businesses. In fact, most of us hardly expected the war to last this long, which is why our hubs are only now gaining traction.
How to communicate with the population of temporarily occupied territories (TOT)?
Communication with TOT is a separate issue entirely. The situation is, of course, tragic. Censorship and restriction of freedom of speech in order to control the information provided to the public is commonplace. This quickly devolves into the lack of objective picture and the spread of propaganda. The heads of our military administrations do their best to establish contacts and communication with people in the temporarily occupied territories on a personal level. This is usually about a high level of trust and emotional support for our people who are going through difficult times.
The TOT have a problem with a large number of psy-ops, which is difficult to counter. Therefore, the municipalities extensively work with people through personal contacts to reach them in an old-fashioned way, through offline communication with the people in the occupation, rather than via the Internet. Naturally, municipalities do this in compliance with certain rules of safe communication and upon agreement with military administrations.
Any emergencies can strengthen communication in the municipality, unite people around shared efforts aimed at bringing the Victory closer. Information vacuum can cause panic and helplessness, as was seen during the invasion of the Kherson Oblast and other regions of Ukraine, when the authorities failed to ensure proper coordination, resulting in tragedies. At the same time, given that news about safety, security and pressing issues now takes precedence over other news, any topics that can divide society should be handled with care. After all, we must always keep in mind that Russia, in addition to the military effort, invests huge resources in infowars, organising large-scale disinformation campaigns and involving public figures in them to spread fakes and influence the minds of Ukrainians.