  The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen an intensification in the use
of social media by governmental actors in cyber warfare. Wartime communication
via memes has been a successful strategy used not only by independent accounts
such as @uamemesforces, but also-for the first time in a full-scale interstate
war-by official Ukrainian government accounts such as @Ukraine and @DefenceU.
We study this prominent example of memetic warfare through the lens of its
narratives, and find them to be a key component of success: tweets with a
'victim' narrative garner twice as many retweets. However, malevolent
narratives focusing on the enemy resonate more than those about heroism or
victims with countries providing more assistance to Ukraine. Our findings
present a nuanced examination of Ukraine's influence operations and of the
worldwide response to it, thus contributing new insights into the evolution of
socio-technical systems in times of war.
