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Telegram as a Battlefield: Kremlin-related Communications during the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Apaar Bawa, Ugur Kursuncu, Dilshod Achilov, Valerie L. Shalin, Nitin Agarwal, Esra Akbas

TL;DR

This paper delivers the first comprehensive dataset of Telegram channels spanning pro-Kremlin and anti-Kremlin perspectives within the Russia–Ukraine conflict, capturing over 4 million pro posts and 1 million anti posts across 430 days. Data were collected from public channels using Telethon, labeled for stance, and enriched with multimodal content, views, forwards, emoji reactions, and replies, enabling longitudinal, cross-perspective analyses. The authors perform multimodal, engagement, and content analyses (including $n$-gram mining and lemmatization) and provide key reliability metrics under a FAIR framework, with the dataset openly available for replication and further study. The work supports cross-disciplinary investigations into online political discourse, propaganda, and information operations, and offers a foundation for monitoring disinformation and narrative strategies across encrypted, semi-private platforms like Telegram.

Abstract

Telegram emerged as a crucial platform for both parties during the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Per its minimal policies for content moderation, Pro-Kremlin narratives and potential misinformation were spread on Telegram, while anti-Kremlin narratives with related content were also propagated, such as war footage, troop movements, maps of bomb shelters, and air raid warnings. This paper presents a dataset of posts from both pro-Kremlin and anti-Kremlin Telegram channels, collected over a period spanning a year before and a year after the Russian invasion. The dataset comprises 404 pro-Kremlin channels with 4,109,645 posts and 114 anti-Kremlin channels with 1,117,768 posts. We provide details on the data collection process, processing methods, and dataset characterization. Lastly, we discuss the potential research opportunities this dataset may enable researchers across various disciplines.

Telegram as a Battlefield: Kremlin-related Communications during the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

TL;DR

This paper delivers the first comprehensive dataset of Telegram channels spanning pro-Kremlin and anti-Kremlin perspectives within the Russia–Ukraine conflict, capturing over 4 million pro posts and 1 million anti posts across 430 days. Data were collected from public channels using Telethon, labeled for stance, and enriched with multimodal content, views, forwards, emoji reactions, and replies, enabling longitudinal, cross-perspective analyses. The authors perform multimodal, engagement, and content analyses (including -gram mining and lemmatization) and provide key reliability metrics under a FAIR framework, with the dataset openly available for replication and further study. The work supports cross-disciplinary investigations into online political discourse, propaganda, and information operations, and offers a foundation for monitoring disinformation and narrative strategies across encrypted, semi-private platforms like Telegram.

Abstract

Telegram emerged as a crucial platform for both parties during the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Per its minimal policies for content moderation, Pro-Kremlin narratives and potential misinformation were spread on Telegram, while anti-Kremlin narratives with related content were also propagated, such as war footage, troop movements, maps of bomb shelters, and air raid warnings. This paper presents a dataset of posts from both pro-Kremlin and anti-Kremlin Telegram channels, collected over a period spanning a year before and a year after the Russian invasion. The dataset comprises 404 pro-Kremlin channels with 4,109,645 posts and 114 anti-Kremlin channels with 1,117,768 posts. We provide details on the data collection process, processing methods, and dataset characterization. Lastly, we discuss the potential research opportunities this dataset may enable researchers across various disciplines.
Paper Structure (18 sections, 1 figure, 4 tables)

This paper contains 18 sections, 1 figure, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Russian Invasion of Ukraine Portrayed in Online Communications
  3. Telegram as an Essential Propaganda Medium
  4. Related Work
  5. The Current Study
  6. Methods
  7. Data Collection and Annotation
  8. Data Description
  9. Data Records
  10. Multimodality and Views
  11. Post Forwarding
  12. Reactions and Replies
  13. Content Analysis
  14. Data Quality and Qualitative Differences
  15. Usage Notes
  16. ...and 3 more sections

Figures (1)

  • Figure 1: Comparison of Anti-Kremlin and Pro-Kremlin post volumes across different modalities (Only Text, Text Image, Text Video, and Text Image Video) during the Pre-Invasion and Post-Invasion phases.