Russian intelligence services have launched a large-scale information operation against Ukraine under the codename 'Postman,' in which appeals and complaints are mass-sent to Ukrainian government and law-enforcement bodies in the name of supposedly ordinary citizens. According to an RBK-Ukraine investigation, the operation involves units of the Russian Armed Forces' information-psychological operations (IPO) directorate, the GRU, and the FSB. In June and July 2026 alone, Russian operatives organized the dispatch of more than 500 complaints and appeals, receiving just under a hundred official responses from Ukrainian institutions in return.
The Mechanics of Operation 'Postman'
The scheme is built on prior reconnaissance: Russian operatives collect personal data on Ukrainians, compile databases of both real and entirely fictitious citizens, and select contact details and email addresses. The appeals themselves are often based on real conflicts, tragedies, corruption scandals, mobilization problems, and other high-profile stories. Unverified details are added, along with an interpretation favorable to Russia, or causal links are deliberately distorted. In one of the letters reviewed by RBK-Ukraine, a supposed Ukrainian citizen was transmitting the coordinates of Russian military units on occupied territory — in this way, someone else's personal data is used to pass on fake information of a military nature.
Scale and Recipients
The recipients of the dispatch include Ukraine's Ministry of Defence, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the President's Office, the Cabinet of Ministers, law-enforcement and anti-corruption bodies, Members of Parliament, and regional administrations. According to the outlet's sources, Russian operatives separately track the reaction of Ukrainian institutions and plan to increase the number of appeals to precisely those bodies that have already responded to previous letters. An official response serves as an indicator for Moscow that a given scenario has worked and can be repeated or scaled up. One of the key objectives of the operation is to create additional bureaucratic load: Ukrainian government agencies are forced to spend resources processing artificially generated signals. The second goal is to imitate public discontent, with similar theses supposedly voiced independently by 'citizens' from different regions and social groups.
Strike Against Military Units
A separate and, according to experts, the most dangerous direction of the operation is activity against the defence forces. Russian appeals contain accusations of corruption among commanders, improper treatment of subordinates, illegal mobilization, and other violations. The enemy specifically singled out 17 Ukrainian units with a high moral-psychological state and concentrated its efforts on discrediting their command. As Major General Ilya Pavlenko explained, the Russians identify a military unit with high morale, effective commanders, and combat successes, and then search for the personal data of servicemembers or their relatives; if they cannot find it, they use fake documents and send complaints to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), the Special Investigation Service (SIS), and the prosecutor's office of the GUR MoD. In Russian military terminology, this tactic is called diverting resources to a 'worthless target': even if the violation described in the complaint is not confirmed, an inspection still comes to the unit, the unit is distracted from its main activities, and the command is discredited. Sometimes, during such inspections, a real but different case of violation is found, which is then used for propaganda purposes.
Expert Assessment and Legal Nuances
Andrii Kovalenko, head of the Disinformation Counteraction Center, noted that a significant portion of the fake appeals are legally unsophisticated and do not create an obligation for government agencies to respond to them. 'These fake requests do come in to the inboxes, but they are, as a rule, written in a legally unsophisticated way. And, honestly, a number of them do not comply with any legislation that could oblige a response to such things. So in this case, this story is ineffective,' Kovalenko stated. Nevertheless, even appeals that are legally ineffective generate information noise and force agencies to spend time on the initial sorting and verification of each signal.
Contradictory Data
In Russian internal [sources], some of these complaints were linked to the start of inspections against Ukrainian commanders, however RBK-Ukraine did not independently confirm this causal link. Thus, the claim that fake appeals directly trigger official investigations remains at the level of statements by the Russian side and has not received independent verification. On the other hand, the very fact of receiving around a hundred responses to 500+ appeals confirms that some of the signals do reach their recipients and are processed, although this does not necessarily lead to full-scale inspections.
