Crisis Communication Experts Ukraine: Olena Zelenska, Behavioral Change and Info Resilience

Crisis communication — the discipline of communicating effectively when stakes are high, information is uncertain, and audiences are stressed — operates at every level of Ukraine's wartime communication ecosystem. At the most visible level stands Olena Zelenska, Ukraine's First Lady, whose deliberate construction of a humanitarian communication brand distinct from her husband's military and political leadership created a complementary second channel for Ukrainian international advocacy. At the operational level, behavioral change communications specialists have worked to turn abstract safety guidance (take shelter during air raids; evacuate when ordered) into actually complied-with behaviors. At the national security level, information resilience — the capacity of Ukrainian society to resist, recognize, and reject Russian information operations — has been conceptualized and implemented as a security doctrine. These dimensions of crisis communication, operating simultaneously and in different registers, collectively constitute one of Ukraine's most important non-military strategic assets.

Olena Zelenska: The Humanitarian Brand

Olena Zelenska — architect by education, author by profession before the presidency, and Ukraine's First Lady since 2019 — made a deliberate and consequential decision in the early months of the war: to communicate in the humanitarian register (civilian victims, children, cultural destruction, healthcare, mental health) rather than the military and political register occupied by her husband. This brand differentiation was not accidental: different audiences respond to different types of appeals, and the emotional register of humanitarian communication (specific children, specific stories, specific communities) reaches audiences that military situation reports do not. Zelenska's formal communication activities included: addressing the G7 leaders' summit in Elmau (June 2022), speaking to parliaments including the Canadian Parliament and German Bundestag; coordinating the "First Ladies and Gentlemen" humanitarian format (bringing together spouses of heads of state for Ukraine-focused humanitarian summits in Kyiv); and launching the "Bring Kids Back UA" campaign about deported Ukrainian children that became one of the war's most resonant international advocacy themes. Her communication was consistently distinct from political messaging — focusing on universal humanitarian values rather than political analysis, reaching audiences (particularly in Europe and North America) who might be less engaged by geopolitical framing but deeply moved by specific humanitarian stories.

Crisis Communication Elements and Approaches

The Vogue Cover Controversy

In August 2022, Vogue magazine published a photographic feature on Olena Zelenska, including photographs taken in the presidential palace showing Zelenska in fashionable clothing. The publication — timed approximately six months into the full-scale war, with tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians killed — generated genuine controversy: some critics, both Ukrainian and international, argued the glamorous fashion photography was inappropriate to Ukraine's tragedy and sent mixed signals about the seriousness of the war. Defenders of the feature argued that it brought Ukraine's story to an audience — Vogue's primarily Western female readership — that is important for sustained international support but might not be reached by traditional war coverage, and that normalizing Ukrainian cultural life was itself a form of resistance to Russian attempts to destroy Ukrainian existence. The controversy encapsulated a real tension in crisis communications: the demand for tonal consistency (no luxury or glamour while people die) versus the strategic value of reaching different audiences through their existing media channels. Zelenska's team ultimately accepted the political risk of the Vogue feature as worth the audience access it provided, and the criticism, while real, did not significantly damage her overall communication effectiveness.

Behavioral Change Communications: Shelter Compliance

Getting Ukrainians to comply with air raid alerts — to move to shelter when air raid sirens sound rather than continuing their routines — is a behavioral change challenge with direct life-safety implications. The problem is classical in behavioral science: the cost of compliance (interrupting work, sleep, daily activities) is immediate and certain; the benefit of compliance (avoiding injury from a strike that may or may not occur, in your specific location) is probabilistic and uncertain. Both over-compliance (responding to every alert when the actual strike probability at any given location on most alerts is low) and under-compliance (habituating to alerts and ignoring them) create problems. Ukraine's behavioral change communications specialists (working within Ministry of Internal Affairs, Health Ministry, and local civil defense structures) worked through: consistent messaging that linked compliance to survival statistics (Ukrainian Air Force data showing that complying with warnings dramatically reduces casualties); social normalization campaigns making shelter-seeking the expected behavior of a responsible community member; fear-reduction messaging about shelter conditions (reassurance that shelters are available and reasonably comfortable); and specific behavioral guidance for workplaces, schools, and public spaces that reduced the decision friction involved in seeking shelter. Alert fatigue — the psychological habituation to repeated alerts that reduces compliance over time — was an ongoing challenge that required periodic refreshing of communication approaches and concrete reminders of the consequences of non-compliance through near-miss case stories.

National Information Resilience as Security Doctrine

Ukraine's conceptualization of information resilience — the capacity of Ukrainian institutions and society to detect, resist, and rapidly recover from Russian information operations — has evolved from a pre-war concern into a codified national security doctrine element. The National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) incorporated information security as an explicit pillar of national security strategy alongside military, economic, and energy security. The doctrine's elements include: institutional resilience (government systems hardened against the kind of catastrophic cyberattack that Kyivstar experienced in December 2023 — attributed to Russian GRU Sandworm group, which temporarily disrupted approximately 24 million users' telecommunications); media ecosystem resilience (supporting a diverse, professional, and financially sustainable independent media sector that can provide reliable information even during information operations); citizen resilience (media literacy education, particularly in populations most exposed to Russian information operations — eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russian-language and Russian-origin media had stronger penetration pre-war); and cross-sector coordination (intelligence, civil society, media, and technology sector cooperation to identify and respond to information operation campaigns). The Ministry of Digital Transformation (Fedorov's ministry) played a central role in digitalizing this resilience infrastructure — the Diia app (Ukraine's digital government platform), Starlink provisions, and coordination with technology companies (Meta, Google, Twitter/X) on content moderation of Russian information operations all flowed through or connected to this digital resilience work.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the "First Ladies and Gentlemen" format and what did it achieve?

The "First Ladies and Gentlemen" format — convened by Olena Zelenska and held in Kyiv in July 2022 — was a summit of spouses and partners of heads of state and government, focused specifically on Ukraine's humanitarian situation and reconstruction needs. The format was designed to achieve several distinct communication objectives simultaneously: it brought global media attention to Kyiv at a moment when the world's interest needed to be sustained; it created a specific agenda for humanitarian pledging and coordination among participant countries; it provided a politically accessible entry point for continued engagement by leaders whose spouses attended, creating personal connections to Ukraine's situation at the highest political levels; and it demonstrated that Kyiv was functional and accessible to international visitors — a statement of normalization and confidence in direct contrast to Russian objectives of isolating and destabilizing the capital. The format generated humanitarian commitments totaling hundreds of millions of dollars in additional pledges beyond existing programs, and established a communication model (First Lady-led humanitarian diplomacy distinct from presidential security and political diplomacy) that Ukraine subsequently maintained through multiple subsequent summits and international visits.

How do behavioral change campaigns work differently in wartime versus peacetime?

Behavioral change communication in wartime faces several features distinct from peacetime health and safety campaigns. Urgency: the consequences of non-compliance (missile strike during air raid; failure to evacuate before military advance) can be lethal at specific moments, creating life-safety urgency that peacetime campaigns for wellness behaviors (exercise, vaccination) do not share. Uncertainty: wartime behavioral guidance changes rapidly as situations develop — evacuation routes that were safe become dangerous; air raid alert patterns change as Russian tactics evolve — requiring communication flexibility that long-running peacetime campaigns do not need. Stress context: audiences are already under extreme psychological stress, which affects both their cognitive capacity to process new information and their behavioral willingness to add more disruption to already-disrupted lives. Trust context: government communication credibility is simultaneously higher (emergency conditions increase government communication authority) and more fragile (government that makes wrong safety predictions damages trust in ways with immediate consequences). Ukraine's wartime behavioral change campaigns adapted by: keeping guidance simple and concrete (specific, immediate actions rather than complex multi-step processes); using trusted community messengers (local officials, neighborhood volunteers, widely trusted media personalities) rather than relying exclusively on central government channels; and acknowledging uncertainty honestly ("the threat level in this area is currently X, and we recommend Y, but stay connected to official channels for updates").

How does media literacy contribute to information resilience?

Media literacy — the skills and habits of critical evaluation that enable information consumers to assess source credibility, identify manipulation techniques, recognize logical fallacies, and understand how media framing shapes meaning — is increasingly recognized as a security asset in states facing hostile information operations. Ukraine's position — with a significant portion of its population historically consuming Russian-language media (including Russian state media with significant presence in eastern and southern Ukraine) and with Russia conducting systematic information operations targeting Ukrainian domestic opinion — makes media literacy a national security priority. Ukraine's media literacy programs, implemented through schools, libraries, civil society organizations, and digital platforms, teach: source evaluation (how to assess whether a media organization is credible, independent, and applying journalistic standards); content analysis (how to identify framing, omission, and emotional manipulation techniques); verification tools (how to use reverse image search, fact-checking sites, and cross-referencing to verify claims before sharing); and information hygiene (practices for personal information consumption that reduce exposure to manipulated content). The effectiveness of these programs — difficult to measure precisely — is evidenced by Ukrainian society's notable resistance to Russian information operations throughout the war: despite intensive attempts to undermine Ukrainian morale, confidence in government leadership, and willingness to resist, Ukrainian public opinion has remained consistently pro-resistance and supportive of continued defense.

How has Olena Zelenska's communication evolved across the war's phases?

Olena Zelenska's communication evolved through distinct phases corresponding to the war's political and humanitarian dynamics. Phase 1 (spring 2022): establishing presence and legitimacy — demonstrating that Ukrainian leadership's family remained in Ukraine (unlike the families of many officials who evacuated); providing a female and civilian voice alongside the predominantly male military and political communication. Phase 2 (summer-autumn 2022): expanding international advocacy — the G7 summit appearance, Vogue feature, parliamentary speeches, food security and children's welfare specific campaigns. Phase 3 (2023): sustaining attention against war fatigue — the challenge of maintaining international engagement when media coverage had declined from peak 2022 levels; more targeted campaigns for specific outcomes (deported children, civilian infrastructure protection). Phase 4 (2024): reconstruction and mental health framing — beginning to communicate about recovery, psychological rehabilitation, and the society Ukraine intends to build after the war — maintaining the forward-looking hope that sustains both international support and Ukrainian domestic morale. Throughout, Zelenska's team demonstrated sophisticated audience segmentation: specific messages for specific national audiences, delivered in the formats and through the channels most appropriate for each.

What is Ukraine's approach to information security in the digital domain?

Ukraine's information security in the digital domain encompasses both offensive and defensive dimensions. Defensive: the hardening of critical government and infrastructure systems against cyberattack (the Kyivstar attack's scale prompted significant investment in backup telecommunications and critical system redundancy); collaboration with Western cybersecurity agencies (US CISA, UK NCSC, NATO CCDCOE) on threat intelligence and incident response; and the accelerated migration of government data and services to cloud infrastructure (including international cloud providers' facilities outside Ukraine, making them less vulnerable to physical infrastructure attack). Defensive also includes the counter-information operation dimension: systematic identification and takedown of Russian fake social media accounts, bot networks, and coordinated inauthentic behavior on Ukrainian-accessible platforms, conducted with technology companies' cooperation. Ukraine's engagement with major technology platforms (Meta, Google/YouTube, Twitter/X, TikTok) on content moderation of Russian state propaganda and information operations has been one of the war's more novel communication security developments — establishing that platforms have responsibilities to their users in conflict-zone information environments that are distinct from their peacetime content moderation frameworks.

Sources

1. Office of the First Lady of Ukraine (Olena Zelenska). Official Communications and Program Reports. president.gov.ua, 2022–2024.
2. Ukraine National Security and Defense Council (NSDC). National Information Security Doctrine and CCD Reports. rnbo.gov.ua, 2022–2024.
3. Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine (Mykhailo Fedorov). Digital Resilience and Cybersecurity Reports. diia.gov.ua, 2022–2024.
4. NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (StratCom COE). Ukraine Information Environment: Annual Analyses. stratcomcoe.org, 2022–2024.
5. EU DisinfoLab / EEAS EUvsDisinfo. Russian Disinformation Operations Targeting Ukraine — Monitoring Reports. euvsdisinfo.eu, 2022–2024.