Putin’s Speech: Fireworks of disinformation

In his speech, Russian President Putin once again repeated the Russian disinformation of the past months. He even addressed the topic of LGBTQI rights – in order to rail against the West.

Whether it’s the alleged “denazification” of Ukraine or the West’s alleged guilt for the war: in his more than hour-long state of the nation address, Russian President Vladimir Putin brought up many of the Russian conspiracy myths to legitimize his actions. Most of his allegations have long since been refuted.

“In general, it looked like Putin was preparing the Russians for a long war,” Julia Smirnova, senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue Germany (ISD). “And he also repeated numerous false claims that both Russian propaganda and he himself had previously used to justify aggressive war.”

False claim of genocide

Thus, Putin again repeated the narrative of the alleged neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine. In the last parliamentary elections in Ukraine, not one right-wing extremist party reached the five percent mark. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who is himself a Jew and whose relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, said shortly after the war began:

In addition, Russia itself tolerates right-wing extremists in its own ranks and maintains close ties to right-wing populist and right-wing extremist parties in Europe. Nevertheless, Putin drew many parallels to World War II and compared the war against Ukraine with the fight against fascism. “It’s a strategy that Russian propaganda has been repeating for years,” says Smirnova. In this way, Putin created a connection between the women and men who are currently fighting in Ukraine and the women and men who fought against Nazi Germany in World War II.

Putin also repeated the false claim that there was a genocide against Russian people in eastern Ukraine. According to the OSCE and the United Nations (UN), there is still no evidence of this. In addition Russia’s 2014 war in eastern Ukraine itself with kindled. According to the UN, there were human rights violations such as torture and rape of prisoners on both sides in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The ceasefire agreed as part of the Minsk II agreement had also been repeatedly broken by both sides. According to the UN, up to 13,200 people died in the conflict by the beginning of 2020, including 3,350 civilians.

The West as an enemy

Although Russia began the large-scale attack on Ukraine almost a year ago, Putin again blamed the West for the escalation in his speech. “Putin presented the aggressive war as a defensive war,” says Smirnova. In doing so, he repeated the false threat scenario that Ukraine was about to be attacked. Before the start of the Russian invasion, there were allegedly fake attacks on Russia by the Russian secret service FSB. “Putin falsely claimed that Ukraine was preparing an attack on eastern Ukraine with the help of the West.”

According to Smirnova, the Russian state media has consistently built up the West as an enemy for years and has therefore found fertile ground among the population: “It has been repeatedly claimed that the West is interested in damaging Russia, humiliating Russia, weakening Russia economically. ”

Among other things, Putin spoke again of the biological laboratories in Ukraine, which, however, only serve to research pathogens and not to develop biological weapons. He also repeated the narrative of an alleged threat to Russia – although of the approximately 20,000 kilometers of Russia’s land borders, only just under 1200 kilometers include NATO member countries.

Putin calls Ukraine ‘our historic territories’

Putin also indirectly denied that Ukraine is a separate nation. As early as the 19th century, the West would have tried to “take away from Russia the historical areas that are now called Ukraine”. According to Smirnova, the fact that he repeatedly speaks of “our historical areas” when it comes to Ukraine shows that Ukraine belongs to Russia in Putin’s eyes.

There were Ukrainian independence efforts as early as the time of the Cossacks in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, for a long time it was not possible to found a separate state. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine gained independence in its present form, whose territorial sovereignty was violated by Russia, first through the illegal annexation of Crimea, later through the illegal, large-scale attack and the other illegal annexations in eastern Ukraine.

Putin again used these sham referendums in his speech to legitimize the war of aggression. The people in eastern Ukraine “determined their fate, together with their homeland [Russland] The sham referendums were anything but free elections. In addition, the sham referendums violated international law. From the point of view of international law, their results are void anyway.

“Pedophilia is declared a norm”

Putin also used the speech to attack Western values ​​- especially with regard to LGBTIQ rights. He accused the West of wanting to manipulate the young generation in Russia. In the West, “pedophilia is being declared a norm.” Ministers would be compelled to bless same-sex marriages. In any case, the “holy scriptures” of the church would be questioned in the West.

A typical narrative, says Smirnova: “The West is presented not only as an enemy of Russia, but as a perverted world. The LGBTIQ rights play a central role in anti-Western propaganda in Russia. Putin presents himself as a defender of the traditional values ​​of the Church there.” The rights of queer people in Russia have been restricted for years, and violations can result in heavy fines.

Putin not only presents himself as the protector of the church, but also as the protector of children, as he emphasizes in the speech. And not without reason, says Smirnova. Because he fears that the younger generations could become supposed victims of the western “information war” – after all, it is more difficult for them to control the consumption of news.

“Surveys conducted after the aggressive war began showed that support for the war is much greater among the older generation than among younger people,” says Smirnova. “That means, on the one hand, the Kremlin is actually concerned and is concerned about how it is also targeting the younger generation with its propaganda. And on the other hand, Putin is using this child protection motive to present his own policies as selfless.”

Distorted picture of the impact of sanctions

Putin devoted a large part of his speech to Western sanctions against Russia. These had “achieved nothing and will achieve nothing”. The West would thus punish itself. Putin then painted a picture of the West that pro-Russian propagandists have been spreading for a long time: that the sanctions are causing people in Germany to freeze because energy prices are so high. In this context, the protests against the federal government’s Russia policy are repeatedly presented in a clearly exaggerated manner.

Smirnova speaks of a “distorted representation of reality”. “This part was primarily aimed at the audience in Russia,” she says. Putin wanted to prepare the people for a long war. “He portrayed what he has done up to now, with aggressive war and politics, as a success. He has claimed that the West has not achieved the goals with the sanctions. And he has tried to give the impression to the people that in Russia everything is actually economically in order, that the state is taking care of them.”

The Russian economy actually slumped less severely in 2022 than initially expected. However, experts assume that the effects of the sanctions will primarily be felt in the long term. Janis Kluge, Russia expert from the Stiftung Wissenschaft & Politik (SWP), writes about this in an essay: