Newspaper uses Counter-Strike to dodge Russian censorship on Ukraine

KYIV -- Counter-Strike, one of the world's most popular first-person shooter video games, now includes a downloadable map that leads to a bunker filled with information about Russian soldiers' war crimes in Ukraine.

The competitive online game, in which "terrorists" and "counter-terrorists" battle against each other in timed matches, has many fans in Russia.

With Russia's information space becoming increasingly isolated, press freedom advocates and gamers say the video game is an innovative avenue to reach the Russian public.

Reaching behind the 'iron curtain'

In 2022 alone, Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin's agency responsible for overseeing the media, blocked 247,000 internet resources, according to Roskomsvoboda, a Russian NGO that protects digital rights and expands digital opportunities in the Russian Federation.

Those blocked include almost all foreign media, as well as independent Russian publications that publish accurate information about the war in Ukraine. Popular social networks such as Facebook and Instagram are also banned.

Despite the new "iron curtain" the Russian regime uses to separate its citizens from the truth, breaking through to ordinary Russians is still possible.

On May 1, Helsingin Sanomat, a Finnish newspaper that also happens to be blocked in Russia, released a special Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) map where gamers can find a secret bunker filled with news about the Kremlin's war.

While the game has a few dozen official maps, players can create their own maps using tools that are available free of charge.

The newspaper's map is of an unspecified war-torn Slavic city named "de_voyna", the Russian word for "war", the use of which is banned in Russia in reference to the war in Ukraine.

The map leads to a room that allows gamers to see, among other things, photos of Russian soldiers' atrocities in Bucha and Irpin, a map of missile strikes on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, and other information highly censored in Russia.

A Russian-language recording reading Helsingin Sanomat articles aloud plays in the background.

"In the room, you will find our documentation of what the reality of the war in Ukraine is," Antero Mukka, editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat, told AFP on May 3.

This is "information that is not available from Russian state propaganda sources", he explained.

Just two days after the map was released, it had already been downloaded over 2,000 times, although the newspaper cannot currently track downloads geographically.

"This definitely underlines the fact that every attempt to obstruct the flow of information and blind the eyes of the public is doomed to fail in today's world," Mukka said.

An estimated four million Russians play the game, he said, adding, "These people may often be in the mobilisation or drafting age."

'A crazy idea'

The newspaper commissioned the creation of the map by two specialists with previous experience in developing maps for the game, according to Helsingin Sanomat executive editor Esa Mäkinen.

The newspaper, realising that a significant percentage of Russians lack the opportunity to discover what is really happening in Ukraine, "came up with a crazy idea" to create reality in Counter-Strike, where gamers in Russia "would bump into the real truth", he wrote May 3.

The map has proven to be popular.

"I wasn't able to access it right away because so many people are trying to download it. I had to wait about 20 minutes to get into the game," said Steven "St1vS" McNeil Kenneth, a Ukrainian semi-professional CS:GO player and member of the Counter-Strike team at the European University in Ukraine.

Having played Counter-Strike for over 10 years, Kenneth has awards from the Ukrainian Esports Federation.

"I went into the map. I looked at its main premise," he said. "The Finns are using this map to try to convey that the terrorists are Russia. They are the occupiers. And the Ukrainians are the defenders."

"They added Ukrainian warehouses to the map and added monuments of Ukrainian independence to the map. That is, the monuments, which symbolise independence, located at Kharkov and Kherson," he said.

"It's all very symbolic because the terrorists want to plant a bomb precisely there -- on the monuments that symbolise the country's freedom."

"Using this map, you can understand what is happening in Ukraine now and what the Russians are trying to do," Kenneth said. "They just want to destroy everything."

The main advantage of the map is that it is available to absolutely everyone.

"I think that the idea may affect some Russians. I've also talked with gamers from Russia and they do not support the war. But most don't even know what's really going on," Kenneth said. "Conveying information through the game is a very good idea."

A 'powerful tool'

The information wave triggered by the appearance of the map is having a positive effect, said Gennadiy Veselkov, owner of gameinside.ua, the oldest esports portal in Ukraine, who organises Ukrainian Professional Esports Association tournaments.

"A game's huge community has itself already written about this map, and that's a community of millions," he said.

"The Finns have come up with a pretty cool PR move, but most people will want to see it for themselves, and of course they will sign in and take a look," he said.

However, Veselkov said it will be very difficult to penetrate Russian society, which is inundated with propaganda.

"Our esports [portal] has [made] many attempts to open the eyes of the Russians," he said. "Our bloggers and esports influencers made appeals at the beginning of the war. They tried to reach out on social media. At best, there was silence. At worst, the response they heard was 'Russia will win'."

Nonetheless, analysts say, the gaming community has become a powerful audience that should not be underestimated.

"Games are another tool in the information war," said Oleksandr Kraiyev, a Kyiv-based analyst with Foreign Policy Council Ukrainian Prism. "First, they can transfer information. They can influence people, because it is quite difficult for the authorities to block games."

While Kraiyev said he does not believe that the new CS:GO map will drastically influence Russian society, he thinks such projects should still be implemented.

"Even just 10, 20, 30 people, maybe a hundred, maybe several thousand, could be persuaded," he said. "That already weakens [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's influence."

Even if Russian gamers do not trust the facts embedded in Counter-Strike, they may have doubts about the Kremlin's strength.

"Here the key message to Russians is that you cannot trust this government, because it cannot guarantee your security, even information security," Kraiyev said.