Russia’s blocking of Facebook is a symptom of its broader effort to cut itself off from sources of information that could imperil its internationally condemned invasion of Ukraine, experts say. The often-criticized social network is part of a web of information sources that can challenge the Kremlin’s preferred perspective that its assault on Ukraine is righteous and necessary. Blocking of Facebook and restricting of Twitter on Friday came the same day Moscow backed the imposition of jail terms on media publishing “false information” about the military. Russia’s motivation “is to …

Formed in a fury to counter Russia’s blitzkrieg attack, Ukraine’s hundreds-strong volunteer “hacker” corps is much more than a paramilitary cyberattack force in Europe’s first major war of the internet age. It is crucial to information combat and to crowdsourcing intelligence. “We are really a swarm. A self-organizing swarm,” said Roman Zakharov, a 37-year-old IT executive at the center of Ukraine’s bootstrap digital army. Inventions of the volunteer hackers range from software tools that let smartphone and computer owners anywhere participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks on official Russian websites to …