The Russian forces swept into their neighbour’s territory and steamrollered their way to the outskirts of the capital, only to be sent into retreat by a tactically ingenious counter-offensive and ultimately forced to sue for peace.
This was not Kyiv in 2022 but Warsaw in 1920, when the Red Army was beaten back in what Lenin himself described as an “enormous defeat” for his young Soviet state.
Now a group of Polish-led hackers are trying to revive the spirit of the “miracle on the Vistula” in defence of Ukraine. This time their tools of choice are WhatsApp and Gmail.
In its efforts to keep the Russian population from turning against the invasion, the Kremlin has brought down what some analysts describe as a “digital iron curtain”, blocking ready access to a number of western news websites and social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The security services also scour communications channels for evidence of dissent and have been known to arrest Russians on their way to anti-war protests. There are, however, still several gaps in the firewall, including messaging services and email.
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Squad 303, which takes its name from the squadron of Polish fighter pilots who fought with the RAF in the Battle of Britain, is trying to exploit these cracks.
Its hackers, associated with the international Anonymous movement, claim to have amassed a database of 140 million Russian email addresses and 20 million phone numbers.
On its website, 1920.in — a reference to the Battle of Warsaw — it encourages members of the public to use these contact details to bombard ordinary Russians with calls, messages and emails intended to counter Moscow’s propaganda about the war in Ukraine.
It offers a range of Russian-language templates, including the text of a statement from Russian scientists disowning the invasion as a “fatal” mistake that “undermines the foundations of the established international security order”.
Another of the suggested texts says: “International humanitarian law is clear: military operations must be conducted in such a way as to protect women, children and the elderly. Putin is attacking cities and defenceless people. He’s lying. Let’s talk about it.”
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In a promotional video borrowing a clip of stormtroopers from one of the Star Wars films, the group says: “We have a message for the citizens of the free world ... Ukraine needs you.
“You are the largest army in the history of the world. You don’t need any weapons or ammunition. Your weapons are smartphones and your ammo is messages sent to Russian citizens. One hundred years of communist and despotic propaganda has made the Russian people blind and deaf. Let’s help them wake up.”
Not all of the Russian people appear to be interested, though. The Times used the website to email 20 randomly selected Russians and politely inquire whether they were interested in discussing the “special military operation” in Ukraine. Six of the email addresses turned out to be defunct; the other 14 remained silent.
However, others have had more success. One American programmer said he had sent more than 200 messages to Russian mobile phones through the website. Some of the recipients have expressed opposition to the war.
Squad 303, which likens itself to Radio Free Europe, a US organisation that began broadcasting western news into the eastern bloc in the early years of the Cold War, claims that more than 20 million texts have been sent through its website.
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The Anonymous collective, a leaderless and ideologically disparate movement that has previously gone after targets as various as the Chinese government, the Church of Scientology and the New York Stock Exchange, declared “cyberwar” on Russia hours after the start of the invasion.
Since then it has hijacked Russian state television channels, replacing their news programmes with clips of the devastation the Russian military has inflicted on Ukraine, as well as briefly paralysing several government websites.
Other independent groups are trying to get accurate information directly to the Russian population. The Call Russia initiative, launched by Lithuanians, has appealed for Russian speakers around the world to ring around a database of 40 million numbers.
It says volunteers from 116 countries, including Britain, Poland, Germany and the US, have already made 102,000 such calls.
