Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Well, I never thought I’d find myself saying this, but thank you, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Thank you, Ukraine. Apparently, somebody finally figured out that the best way to deal with Russian propaganda might be to interrupt the machinery producing it.

For years, we’ve been subjected to an endless fire hose of disinformation, conspiracy theories, bot accounts, troll farms, and enough political garbage to make a landfill look like a recycling center. And a considerable amount of that digital sewage has been attributed to Russian influence operations designed to divide Americans against one another. Nothing says international friendship quite like a foreign government spending money to convince your neighbors that you’re the enemy.

And where does all this crap come from? Among other places, the troll farms and propaganda operations associated with Putin’s Russia. Factories of manufactured outrage, staffed by people whose job description apparently reads: Make Americans hate each other before lunch.

So, if Ukraine is bombing Russian military and strategic infrastructure, including facilities alleged to support those operations, forgive me if I’m tempted to send a thank-you card.

Of course, there’s a difference between a confirmed military target and a building we’ve merely decided looks suspicious on the internet. We should probably establish what was actually hit before handing out medals for digital housekeeping. But the broader irony is delicious.

Vladimir Putin has spent years trying to weaken Western democracies, exploit our divisions, and turn our own freedoms into weapons against us. His information operations have benefited from a particularly American weakness: our willingness to believe almost anything that confirms what we already think about the people we don’t like.

Why bother invading every American household when you can simply convince half the country that the other half is plotting its destruction? Why waste ammunition when outrage is practically free, spreads faster than the flu, and requires absolutely no cleanup crew?

And the best part? We provide the distribution network ourselves. No Russian passport required. No foreign agent training necessary. Just a smartphone, an internet connection, and an alarming willingness to share something because the headline made us angry.

Putin’s propagandists don’t have to convince everybody. They only have to convince enough people to keep us fighting among ourselves while Russia watches from a safe distance.

Which brings us back to Ukraine.

For more than four years, Ukrainians have been defending their country against Russia’s full-scale invasion, paying for Putin’s ambitions with lives, homes, cities, and generations of consequences. Meanwhile, the rest of us have been arguing online about whether facts are facts, whether elections count when our preferred candidate loses, and whether every ridiculous meme from an anonymous account deserves to be treated as breaking news.

Ukraine has had to fight a real war. We’ve been fighting a war of memes, manufactured grievances, and people who believe a Facebook post constitutes a doctoral degree in geopolitics.

So yes, there’s a certain satisfaction in the possibility that some of the infrastructure supporting Russian propaganda might be disrupted by the very country Putin thought he could conquer.

But let’s not get carried away. Destroying a building doesn’t automatically delete a propaganda network. Servers can be replaced, personnel can relocate, and misinformation can be generated from somewhere else. The internet is a remarkably resilient sewer.

Still, I appreciate the sentiment.

Thank you, Zelenskyy. Thank you, Ukraine, for reminding us that Putin’s operations aren’t invulnerable, that the people running them don’t get to operate without consequences, and that defending a country sometimes means confronting the machinery being used to undermine it.

And to my fellow Americans, here’s a modest suggestion: the next time a suspiciously inflammatory post appears in your feed, take a breath before sharing it. Check the source. Look for independent confirmation. Ask yourself who benefits if you become furious at your fellow citizens.

Because even if Ukraine manages to knock a few Russian propaganda facilities offline, the most important piece of equipment in Putin’s disinformation arsenal remains operational right here.

It’s called our willingness to believe whatever makes us angry.

And unlike a Russian military installation, it doesn’t require a missile to destroy.

We’re doing a perfectly adequate job of wrecking it ourselves.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to enjoy the possibility of a little less Russian-generated nonsense in my feed.

I realize that’s optimistic. But after years of scrolling through digital garbage, a man is entitled to a little hope.

Slava Ukraini.

And if anybody knows how to take down a few conspiracy-theory Facebook groups while they’re at it, I’m sure the rest of us would appreciate the assistance.