NARRATIVES: 1. The United States / NATO are maintaining and feeding the war in Ukraine in order for Russia to be defeated and Vladimir Putin removed from power, which also explains Joe Biden's statements. 2. The US / NATO are fighting Russia by proxy and are sacrificing the Ukrainians to achieve their goals. 3. Ukraine has been left to face Russia alone. 4. Putin is not an aggressor, but a victim of American plotting.
LOCAL CONTEXT / ETHOS: Although Russia invaded Ukraine with far superior forces, it has failed to score a quick victory or at least conquer an important city, and has suffered significant losses. Russia is now regrouping and rethinking its tactical plans and seems to have abandoned the discourse on “denazification”, an objective that was one of the pretexts used to attack Ukraine. What Russia is doing now on the ground is destroy civilian infrastructure by long-range rocket bombing and hold civilians captive in besieged cities. Although humanitarian corridors have been opened for them, convoys have often been considered unsafe as the ceasefire agreements have not been observed. The city of Mariupol, heavily bombarded by the Russian army, is such an example. Civilian casualties are estimated at thousands, and the brutality of the siege triggered a humanitarian crisis in the city heavily destroyed by the Russians; their actions there might be regarded as war crimes.
Although now Moscow says it wants to withdraw some of its forces, most analysts say that Russia is trying to gain time in order to regroup and reorganize its military targets. Moscow needs a tangible success for this military adventure in Ukraine in order to justify itself domestically, where the invasion is presented as a “special denazification operation”. The narrative that seeks to exonerate Russia is promoted by Ion Cristoiu, a former collaborator of the political police in communist Romania , who has promoted several pro-Russian pieces of disinformation since the beginning of the war.
PURPOSE: To shift responsibility for the war from Russia to the West. To induce the idea that the West is only using Ukraine in its geopolitical game against Russia.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: Russia is the one that invaded Ukraine, on several fronts, without being provoked in any way. The Russian army is besieging Ukrainian cities, the Russian army is bombing civilian targets in Ukraine and the war could stop when the Russian forces cease operations and retreat to their territory. Russia has invaded Ukraine for the second time (after the initial attack in 2014 when it seized and annexed Crimea and initiated and militarily supported the formation of separatist republics in Donbass) giving ultimatums to both Kiev – on disarmament, regime change, cession of territories, giving up the right to decide what kind of foreign policy it wants to pursue and the kind of future it wants - and NATO, going as far as calling on the latter to withdraw from eastern Europe.
However, despite the fact that Ukraine is the target of a massive attack and the unequivocal testimonies and evidence of the extent of the destruction caused by the Russians, the Kremlin's propaganda blames Kiev for the excesses committed by the Russian army – Ukrainians are allegedly those that actually destroyed Mariupol , civilians were used as human shields , civilian units, including the Mariupol maternity hospital, are in fact military units, etc.
Cristoiu's narrative that the United States has no interest in stopping the war in Ukraine, which was started by the Russians, is also present these days in the Russian media.
“US military spending figures show that a peaceful scenario for resolving the conflict in Ukraine does not favor Washington”, retired lieutenant general Yuri Netkachev told Nezavisimaia Gazeta.
“The United States intends to lead and support Kiev's military operations against Russia in both 2022 and 2023.” The expert does not rule out the undercover involvement of the Pentagon and NATO forces in military operations against the Russian Federation.
“As long as Russia does not show any activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv, there may be several scenarios for such an intervention. First, there is a real threat that Kyiv or Washington will stage and falsify facts about the Russian army using chemical weapons. Joseph Biden has said openly that if such weapons were used, the United States would directly support Ukraine. Secondly, it seems that the Pentagon, with the help of technical means, will try to develop scenarios for the local closure of the airspace above Ukraine. Therefore, six EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft from the US Navy VAQ-134 Squadron may have been deployed from the United States to Germany for this,” the expert was quoted as saying by Nezavisimaia Gazeta.
On the same wavelength as Ion Cristoiu is Sputnik 's Russian columnist Alexandr Khrolenko, who wrote for Sputnik on March 28 that “the operational situation in Ukraine is like the end of a game of chess, when there are still many pieces and pawns on the board, but the result of the game is obviously known beforehand. At the request of the American masters, the Kyiv regime is simply playing for time and is cynically shedding Slavic blood - before the inevitable capitulation under Moscow’s conditions (it simply cannot be otherwise, Russia has sacrificed too much in the Ukrainian war by proxy with the US and NATO)”.
As for Joe Biden's speech in Warsaw, the harsh words used by the US president about Putin were nothing new. In March 2021 Biden called Putin a criminal for Russia’s interference in the 2020 US presidential election.
NATO and the United States have always said they will not intervene directly in the war in Ukraine, as this would lead to the outbreak of World War III. As a defensive alliance, NATO is not designed to attack but to protect its members - and those in Eastern Europe have a rich historical experience in terms of Russian aggression. Ukraine wanted to join NATO precisely to avoid an attack like the one it is now under. However, Russian propaganda is trying to invent hostile NATO movements because the invented “threat” posed by the Alliance was one of the pretexts used to invade Ukraine.
On March 24, the Russian state newspaper Rosskaia Gazeta quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as warning the North Atlantic Alliance countries against the deployment of peacekeeping forces in Ukraine, saying it could lead to a direct confrontation between Russia. and NATO.
The deployment would be “a reckless and extremely dangerous decision,” Peskov said. “A special operation is underway and any potential contact between our troops and NATO troops could lead to understandable consequences, which will be difficult to correct”, he said.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov has also stated that Russia might be on the verge of a direct confrontation with the NATO countries that are sending weapons to Ukraine.
Therefore, Russia is in the position of a country that threatens NATO, although the Alliance has made it clear that it will provide defensive weapons to Ukraine, without directly intervening.
This is NATO's strategy in connection with this war, and the Alliance is not leaving Ukraine to fight alone, it is delivering weapons. On the other hand, the EU is providing money and material aid to the Ukrainian civilian population, and is hosting Ukrainian refugees.
In fact, the United States and NATO have said in unison that the approach could change only if Russia begins to use chemical weapons in Ukraine.
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