"While Helsingin Sanomat and foreign independent media are blocked in Russia, online games are currently not banned," Antero Mukka, editor-in-chief of a Finnish newspaper, told AFP. ingenious to inform the Russians about the war in Ukraine. While censorship around information about the neighboring country is intractable, this medium has managed to conceal elements of reports in the online game Counter-Strike, which some four million Russians play.
While most games in the Counter-Strike shooter take place on official levels and maps released by publisher Valve, players can create custom maps that anyone can download and use. "So we built a Slavic city, called Voyna, which means war in Russian," Antero Mukka explained.
In the basement of one of the buildings in the city, the technicians of Helsingin Sanomat have hidden a room where players can find reports in Russian made by the war correspondents of the newspaper in Ukraine. The walls of the digital room are covered with articles and photos chronicling events such as the massacres in the Ukrainian towns of Boutcha and Irpin.
On one of the walls, players can find a map of Ukraine where attacks on the civilian population are reported, while a recording in Russian reads articles from the Helsingin Sanomat. This is "information that is not available in Russian state propaganda outlets," Antero Mukka added.
Since its publication on Monday, the map has already been downloaded more than two thousand times. "It shows that any attempt to prevent the flow of information and to mislead the public is doomed to failure in our modern world," the editor added.
