Propaganda in the Ukraine War
Four brazen claims by the Russian government – and what to make of them
Anti-war protests on Russian TV: the veil of propaganda lifted
© AFP
For a brief moment, the protest by the TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova broke through the Russian war propaganda. A look at the particularly brazen claims made by the Putin government – and what to make of them.
There is no war in Ukraine at all, Russia is only defending itself against external threats, the real warmongers are the USA and NATO – the Russian state propaganda creates an “alternative reality” around the Ukraine war. With her protest on Russian TV, the journalist Marina Ovsyannikova lifted the veil at least for a few moments. “Here you are being lied to,” read her poster. Even on the international stage, however, the representatives of President Vladimir Putin’s government stick to their statements. A look at particularly brazen claims.
“We didn’t attack Ukraine”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said so on March 10 after talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba. More precisely: “We will not attack any other countries, and we have not attacked Ukraine either.” A remarkable sentence, uttered before the eyes of the world after two weeks of war, with numerous foreign observers in the war zone and increasingly noticeable consequences – from an increasing stream of refugees to skyrocketing energy prices.
For many months, Russia also concentrated troops on the border with its neighboring country, only to finally invade on February 24, despite intense global diplomacy – without direct provocation. And: It was not Russia’s first attack on the neighboring country. The Crimean Peninsula has been illegally annexed by Russia since 2014. And in the same year, with the help of pro-Russian militias, the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk were plunged into a civil war that has lasted until the current invasion.
Ukraine commits genocide in Donbass
A clever assertion by Putin in his declaration of war, because genocide is considered a legitimate reason for military intervention. However, neither the OSCE nor the United Nations have any indications of a systematic genocide of Russian-born or Russian-speaking people in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, which have been contested since 2014. The de facto war in Donbass has been going on for eight years, with a corresponding death toll which, according to official figures, amounted to 14,000 before the current invasion, and Amnesty International found as early as 2014 that both sides are committing war crimes in Donbass. But a systematic genocide? Even if one were to assume the intention, there is simply no way to do so in the areas controlled by pro-Kremlin separatists beyond the “line of contact” established in the 2015 Minsk agreement.
Again and again, including last weekend, mass graves of civilians shot dead are cited by Russia as evidence of the genocide by Ukrainian units. However, the information on these graves is contradictory, as the “Deutsche Welle” reports in an inventory – even the number of dead varies considerably in the information provided by Ukraine, the Donbass separatists and Russia. OSCE statistics also show that more civilians die in the separatist areas than on the Ukrainian side, but this is due to the fact that the Ukrainian army used artillery, while the militias loyal to the Kremlin used snipers. It is largely undisputed that the mass graves date from 2014, i.e. from a time when there was fierce fighting in the region. Experts therefore assume that – horribly enough – these are victims of acts of war, but not systematic killings.
Ukraine must be liberated from a Nazi regime
Part of the genocide war pretext is Putin’s claim that Ukraine must be “denazified.” However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy does not lead a fascist government, and the soldiers of the Russian army are not welcomed anywhere as liberators. On the contrary, it has been widely documented how the civilian population openly opposed the Russian soldiers and pro-Ukraine. A video circulated last weekend from the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, in which demonstrators walked along Russian army armored vehicles and loudly chanted “Kherson is Ukrainian.”
Also: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been described as a fascist, is Jewish. His grandfather commanded a rifle company in the Russian Army during World War II. Three brothers of Zelenskyy’s grandfather and the president’s great-grandfather were victims of the Holocaust. “How can I be a fascist,” the Ukrainian president asked rhetorically in one of his video speeches recently.
The Ukrainian army is even bombing the cities
According to the Russian interpretation, the invading army is conducting a “special military operation” aimed exclusively at military targets. That still applies now. But then how do you explain the countless photos, videos and reports showing the devastation of entire streets, especially in Kharkiv and Mariupol, how do you explain the destruction of schools and hospitals, which are war crimes? In a sensational interview with the BBC emphasized the Putin-loyal Duma deputy, former agent and convicted in the USA as a conspirator, Marija Butina, at least it wasn’t the Russians, there are allegedly tons of evidence for that.
When asked if she would deny that Ukrainian cities were being bombed, she replied that she wanted to see evidence that it was being done by the Russian army. BBC interviewer Nick Robinson asked in dismay: “Wait, stop please! Are you suggesting that the shells that are leveling Ukrainian cities are being fired by Ukrainians?” The answer: “I hope not. I hope nobody in the world would bomb their own population. I don’t want to believe it (…), but I talk to these people, many of them. It’s abnormal.” Butina did not provide any evidence for her indirect claim.
Incidentally, contradictions do not embarrass Russian war propaganda. Example: bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol about a week ago. The Russian Defense Ministry said there had been no attack in the region. Foreign Minister Lavrov then had a reason for the attack: the clinic was the base of the right-wing paramilitary Azov regiment, which the staff of the clinic drove away. Evidence for this was not presented. When images of the destruction and injured pregnant women began to accumulate, a different narrative was tried – even at the United Nations: An actress played all the injured pregnant women. The basis was that the photos showed a beauty blogger in polka dot pajamas. ZDF was able to prove that the blogger actually wanted to give birth to a child in the clinic.
Swell: Amnesty International; UN Genocide Convention; Federal Agency for Civic Education; German wave; “Frankfurter Rundschau”; “Jewish General”; BBC; ZDF; DPA news agency