When we met Kristina Melnichenko in the Winona County DFL office ^t to talk about the recent election, she was proudly wearing her Ukrainian flag pin.  As we have reported previously, Kristina was born in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union, and her family immigrated to the U.S. specifically because of our country’s democratic system.  She currently serves as the Winona County DFL’s Vice Chair and was recently working as Field Organizer for the DFL House Caucus, supporting Sarah Kruger’s campaign for Minnesota House District 26A.  Our first question to Kristina was to ask how she was feeling about the fact that it was day 1001 of Russia’s war against Ukraine.  She said, “Over the last four years, America has had Ukraine’s back, and that’s been comforting,” but she added that she’s “bummed out about the next four years,” given President Trump’s lack of support for President Zelensky or the Ukrainian people.   What is especially dispiriting, Kristina added, is how the US election reminds her of the disinformation and election interference used by Putin to try to take over Ukraine following the Revolution of Dignity in 2014.  In the wake of that movement, which was a massive democratic uprising against Russian attempts to subvert Ukraine’s sovereignty, Russian security forces began a decade-long effort to splinter the country by exploiting existing social conflicts and undermining the central government.  “Russia used the internet to convince the world that people in the Eastern and Southern Ukraine want to be Russian, and many people accepted that propaganda,” recalls Kristina.  “That is why I feel so committed to my read that propaganda played a role in this election in the US.”

Kristina’s main evidence is that “Five million people stayed home.”  That is, the Democratic coalition that repudiated Trump in 2020 and again in 2022 did not come out in force in the 2024 election.  “Trump increased his vote share by 3% nationally,” she says, but “Harris saw a drop of 9% in support” from likely democratic voters.  Why did this occur, when the risk of a Trump presidency was so clear, when the efforts on the Democratic side to get out the vote were massive and advertising spending the highest ever?  Kristina believes that a section of the Democratic electorate was “surgically targeted” with messages discouraging them from going to the poles: “Before the election loud warnings were coming from the FBI about the penetration of social media by foreign actors looking to interfere with the election.”  She adds, “Nine hundred and sixty-eight X accounts have been tied to Russia.  It is so easy and cheap for Russia to do this.”  Russia’s messages varied, exploiting the horrors of the war in Gaza, the suffering inflation was causing, and the perception that Kamala Harris was not progressive enough—or even perceptions that she was too progressive.  The point was to say anything that would get people to sit out the election. Kristina worries that Americans are especially vulnerable to this sort of cyber attack—a culture of American exceptionalism makes them doubt that America could be duped in this way: “It is hard for them to think that maybe they are like the rest of the world, that they are being targeted by disinformation.” Kristina also wonders whether public education about disinformation is sufficient.  She has started a committee to look further into this topic.  Anyone who is interested in learning more about the recent election and exploring how anti-democratic messaging affected it is welcome to join her Elections Committee.  She can be reached at winonadflvicechair@gmail.com.