Thursday 04 May 2023
Where the Kremlin does not censor Newspaper informs Russians about war with Counter-Strike
In a secret room in the Counter-Strike virtual world, users will find information about Russia’s war in Ukraine.
(Photo: via REUTERS)
Many pages of Western and independent domestic media have long been blocked in Russia. Finland’s largest newspaper is trying to inform people in the neighboring country about the war in Ukraine in unconventional ways. For this she uses the video game classic Counter-Strike.
A Finnish newspaper hides information and reports about the war in Ukraine in the worldwide popular online game Counter-Strike. So she found a way to bypass media censorship in Russia, declared the newspaper “Helsingin Sanomat”. Around four million people play Counter-Strike in Russia. According to the newspaper, the classic game is particularly widespread in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
“While Helsingin Sanomat and other foreign independent media outlets are blocked in Russia, online gaming is not banned for the time being,” said Antero Mukka, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief. Tactical shooter players can create custom maps that anyone can download and use. “So we built a Slavic town called Vojna, which means war in Russian,” Mukka said.
In the basement of one of the city’s buildings, the technicians of “Helsingin Sanomat” hid a room where players can find reports in Russian made by the newspaper’s war correspondents in Ukraine. They covered the walls of the digital space with articles and photos documenting events such as the massacres in the Ukrainian cities of Bucha and Irpin. It is “information that is not available in the Russian state’s propaganda apparatus,” said Mukka.
Since its release on Monday, the map has been downloaded more than two thousand times. “This shows that any attempt to prevent the flow of information and mislead the public is doomed to failure in our modern world,” said the editor-in-chief of Finland’s largest daily newspaper.
Source: ntv.de
ino/AFP
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