Transformation of Ukraine’s Strategic Media Communications amid the Full-Scale War: Digital Practices, International Media Visibility, and Security Partnerships

Abstract

The article examines the transformation of Ukraine’s strategic media communications in the context of the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war, focusing on the digitalization of state communication, changes in news consumption, international media visibility, and the formation of security partnerships. The empirical basis of the study includes recent data from Internews Ukraine for 2025, monitoring conducted by the Institute of Mass Information in 2024, the Brand Ukraine study on Ukraine’s global perception, as well as official communication materials produced by the President of Ukraine and state institutions. The study finds that in 2025, 86% of Ukrainians received news through social media, while for 37% social media constituted their only source of news; Telegram was used for news consumption by 72% of respondents. At the same time, in July 2024, social media accounted for 26.6% of the sources used in news published by ten major Ukrainian online media outlets, with more than half of these references leading to Telegram. At the international level, the opposite trend was observed: the number of publications about Ukraine in global media decreased by 2.5 times in 2024 compared with 2023. This indicates that the intensity of a state’s digital presence does not automatically translate into a corresponding level of international media influence. The study demonstrates that the full-scale war has accelerated Ukraine’s transition toward a rapid, personalized, networked, and audience-adaptive model of state communication. An original five-level framework for assessing strategic media communications is proposed, encompassing institutional, communicative, reputational, political, and security dimensions.