The Western media are lying, and the horrors committed by Russians in Ukraine are not real. Arms manufacturers want a New World Order, and are paying the western media for pro-Ukrainian propaganda, according to false narratives published in Bucharest.
NEWS: “Does anybody really want to know the truth about the war in Ukraine? There are definitely no interested parties, just propaganda. The Western chancelleries recommend portions of lies from “official sources”.
Will Putin be able to fulfill the will of Peter the Great? Will he build New Russia? Will the US win the proxy war? What do we know about developments on the front? Nothing. We are hit by fake news from everywhere. And the big lies are taken only from “official sources”. […] As I use to start my mornings by reading the main press in Great Britain and the US, I’ve reached the conclusion that the most prestigious publications are remotely controlled by one invisible command unit of the New Big Brother. How come the same headlines appear on their front pages: The Horrors of Bucha, The Ghost of Kyiv, The Russian Crimes in Snake Island, The Mariupol Maternity Bombing? And all these to be subsequently invalidated, not only for lack of evidence, but also because of contradictory information […] Asked why I do not see how children are being killed in Donetsk, Lugansk, Mariupol, I’ve cynically replied that I do not know who sent minors on the Children’s Crusade either. Did it exist or it’s just a legend? […] A TV moderator asked me what I see in Ukraine and I asked dryly: still life with tanks on the streets. The Audio-Visual Council was very prompt in fining the stations with 50,000 lei. The professional obligation not to trust official points of view is a crime. […] But what is the measure of the good? What are the degrees of that? Is there a cash register? Or do the world's biggest arms manufacturers deliver bags of money through newsrooms? War propagandists have the mission to convince the public that “you are saved when you have a bullet in the barrel and your brain is pounding with hate”. Beware of the propaganda spread by various forms of power! It's toxic. Who is winning the war? Does it depend on whose side you are: Zelensky's flatterers or his opponents? And you will find the answer yourself. Even if Russia takes back its territories, the winners will be those who are rewriting history and are reinventing the world's poles of power”.
PURPOSE: To undermine citizens’ trust in the western media.
NARRATIVES: 1. The western media is lying, guided by the interests of the big arms manufacturers; 2. Children are being killed because they are sent to this war in Ukraine; 3. The US is waging a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia; 4. The Bucha massacre and the bombing of the Mariupol maternity are just propaganda; 5. Russia will take back its territories from Ukraine.
CONTEXT/LOCAL ETHOS: Russia first attacked Ukraine in 2014, after pro-European forces came to power in Kyiv following a popular uprising, with the wish to integrate Ukraine into the EU. The Putin regime has always considered that the former Soviet space should be part of Russia's sphere of influence (in fact, to be its vassals), and at the same time, as the repressive domestic policies show, it has seen liberal democracies as a threat. A democratic country on the territory claimed by Moscow, with an independent press and a functioning civil society, is perceived as a danger as it’s evidence that there are alternative models to the authoritarian system proposed by the Kremlin.
The Kremlin tried to block Ukraine's rapprochement with the Western democracies and invented a double pretext: on the one hand, it claimed that the pro-European forces were in fact Nazi, and on the other that Ukraine was a security threat to Russia because it would bring NATO to its borders (given that Russia is the one that invaded, Ukraine wants to join NATO precisely to be defended by Russia and NATO is a defensive alliance, which would intervene only in case of a Russian aggression against one of its members).
After the start of the large-scale invasion, in February 2022, the narratives about NATO’s presence in Ukraine (and its involvement in the conflict) were used to justify Russia’s failures in the field.
Similarly, old narratives about Ukrainian Nazis, which had been repeatedly debunked, have also been used either to justify certain Russian actions (such as bombing civilian targets under the pretense that there are positions of the right-wing forces), or to blame others for crimes committed by Russians (the massacres in Bucha and other places near Kyiv, the bombing of the Mariupol theater, etc.). However, the Russian propaganda has been debunked by information coming from the field, mostly reported and verified by the western media that have correspondents there.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The big western news-rooms have sent reporters to all the big cities of Ukraine, as well as to the front’s hot spots.
Western countries’ satellites are also focused on the Ukrainian front, and some of these images are made public. Russia can no longer hide its attacks, including atrocities, by denying them or invoking the so-called “fog of war” (where certain things are not visible).
There is no proof that the western media are financed by the big arms manufacturers.
As regards the crimes against children, this is the responsibility of Russia as an invading state, which is constantly bombing areas where there are civilians. The children are not sent to the front, they are victims of this invasion.
The West supports Ukraine with arms and has imposed sanctions on Russia in response to Russia's aggression; so Russia is not the victim, it’s the aggressor, and the West is not campaigning against Moscow, but is offering (limited) assistance to an independent state to defend itself from an aggressor.
There is lots of evidence (drone and satellite images, etc.) and testimonies about the war crimes committed by the Russians in Bucha. However, Russia has launched numerous false narratives in which it tries to pass the blame (see, for example, the narratives debunked by Veridica here and here).
Also, Russia initially denied and later admitted that it had bombed the Mariupol maternity hospital, but only because Ukrainian troops were allegedly hiding there. Fact checks by USAToday showed that there were no Ukrainian troops in the building when the Russians bombed the civilian target in question.
Last but not least, Russian propaganda is trying to justify the illegal annexations of Ukrainian territories – Crimea, or those they would like to annex as something they need to recover from Ukraine (Donbas and Lugansk), an independent state with internationally recognized borders.
GRAIN OF TRUTH: The western media largely covers Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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