The public in Romania and Europe is inoculated with the fear of war so that Russia can be denigrated, the Russian press censored and arms sellers made rich. These false narratives are promoted by the controversial journalist Ion Cristoiu, who also says that the same “techniques” were used to terrorize the population during the pandemic.
NEWS: “I was referring, thinking of the role of the media at the end of the Pandemic, to the atmosphere of fear created not only in Romania, but in the whole of Europe, by what we might call the reflection of the Pandemic in the media. I am not saying - as authors of conspiracy theories do - that the virus did not exist and that everything was a media manipulation. I say, as I said back then, that the atmosphere of panic was exaggerated by the dramatization to which the press subjected a true reality. […] With the media reporting only on those getting the virus and dying of it, the pandemic seemed to be the only disease on the planet and the only cause of death. Another tool is what we might call the glass half full. If you only speak of coronavirus-related deaths, the Pandemic raises fear. If you speak of recoveries from the disease, the Pandemic doesn’t look that dangerous anymore […]The apocalyptic undertakers have run out of business. Those who sustained our fear through apocalyptic prophecies - from Raed Arafat to Virgil Musta - have disappeared from the media firmament. Some have gone back into their anonymity.
Others, such as Raed Arafat or Gabriel Diaconu have reoriented themselves. They are no longer the Apocalyptic Undertakers of the Pandemic. They are the Apocalyptic Undertakers of War. […] The Fear on behalf of which national assets were plundered gave birth to a new category: the Rich of the Pandemic. And that fear is gone now, because it was replaced by another type of Fear: the Fear of War and, more recently, of Nuclear War.
The fear in the name of which news televisions, the same ones that would violate the code of conduct on the grounds that such a thing was allowed in the War against the enemy called Pandemic, are now displaying a delirium of fake news, on the grounds that such a thing is allowed in the War with the enemy named Vladimir Putin .
Fear used to shut down websites and TV stations and to have personalities excluded from public life only because they ask questions, because they want to understand what is happening […] the Fear because of which in is no longer necessary to explain the waste of money given to the EU by every European citizen for vaccine doses that are now being dumped.
Just like the Coronavirus Fear, the War Fear is about to create a new category of the rich. Those who got rich from arms purchase commissions”.
NARRATIVES: 1. The war in Ukraine is used in the same way as the coronavirus pandemic was, to frighten the population; 2. The risks posed by the war in Ukraine are exaggerated by the media; 3. Russia is denigrated through fake news presented by the media that covers the war in Ukraine. 4. The war in Ukraine is a pretext to censor the Russian press, and to force into silence all those who ask questions or have different views; 5. The war is used by arms sellers to get rich.
LOCAL CONTEXT / ETHOS: Ion Cristoiu's article is based on the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the behest of the Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, and under the pretext that Russia's security would be threatened in the event of a virtual accession of Ukraine to the EU and NATO. Even if that would have taken many years to actually implement.
Moreover, after the Kremlin failed with its “blitzkrieg” in Ukraine, which is very likely to be a long-term military campaign, difficult for Russia to sustain financially, Moscow has also been hit by a string of heavy economic sanctions from the West.
All of this has inevitably led to threats from Russia, and, on Sunday, the fourth day of the war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert.
Russia's Security Council Vice-President Dmitry Medvedev also threatened the West again on Monday, against the background of the sanctions imposed on Russia: “Don’t forget that economic wars have often turned into real wars”.
As for Ion Cristoiu, this is by no means his first conspiracy article about the pandemic or the first attempt at demonizing the West for an alleged aggression against Russia.
The pandemic not being a human catastrophe is one of the main narratives of the Russian propaganda, frequently signaled by Veridica.ro.
Official figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that no less than 5.96 million people worldwide have died from COVID-19 so far, and Russia has been one of the hardest hit with 345,000 officially reported deaths out of 16.2 million cases of infection.
PURPOSE: To distract attention from the premediated war that Russia is waging against Ukraine.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The author says nothing about the fact that Russia is the aggressor state that initiated the military action against Ukraine, without having a real reason, claiming an alleged security threat against Russia. Vladimir Putin has inferred that he is ready to use his nuclear weapons, threatening with “unprecedented consequences” for anyone involved in the conflict, organizing exercises of the nuclear forces before the start of the war and placing them on alert after it started, so Russia is the one that induces fear. Other risks that the press has written about are the onset of a refugee crisis - as the number of refugees is rapidly approaching one million and the UN has estimated that it could reach 5 million, it’s again no exaggeration - and that of an economic crisis, which, given that sanctions against Russia also indirectly affect Western countries, is no exaggeration either; on the contrary, as in the case of the refugee crisis, its first signs are already visible.
Although he does not mention them in his article, Cristoiu refers to the shutdown of Russia's main propaganda vehicles, media outlets that were critical during the pandemic, such as Sputnik or Russia. In fact, these were fake news factories that supported, during the pandemic, conservative and ultra-religious groups, as well as anti-vaxxers. Even so, they were not shut down because of disinformation aimed at undermining anti-pandemic measures, but only after the start of the war in Ukraine, when they took over the Kremlin's official propaganda about war and narratives that completely distorted reality.
Ion Cristoiu provides no evidence that fake news has been spread in the media in Romania and in Europe regarding the war in Ukraine. Although they sometimes tend to exaggerate or take over unconfirmed information, Romanian publications and television stations have generally followed a straight line and accurately reflected the essence of this situation - namely that Russia has staged the large scale invasion of an independent state, invoking false pretenses, and using clearly superior forces, which have however failed to conquer significant urban centers though they besieged many, that they have suffered significant losses on the ground and that Ukrainian civilians have been killed in its bombardments. However, none of these realities are reflected by the Russian media (with a few rare exceptions), which have taken over the official thesis that it was only a short special operation and that, in fact, the separatist forces in Donbass are the ones engaged in the conflict.
Sputnik and Russia Today had been promoting fake news for years about “neo-Nazis and drug addicts” holding power in Kyiv, an ubiquitous element in in the speeches delivered by Putin to justify the attack on Ukraine. Paradoxically, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, is a Russian-speaking ethnic Jew, and his family went through the Holocaust.
As for the arms dealers getting richer thanks to the war, nobody forced Russia to invade, so to suggest that the war was provoked in the interest of Western arms companies is similar to saying that Vladimir Putin is their sales agent.
