Romania will neighbor Russia, once the Russian army have conquered a large part of Ukraine and cut its access to the Black Sea. Also, Russia will conquer the east and south of Ukraine, along with the Transnistria region in the Republic of Moldova.
NEWS: "Russia will militarily annex the east and south of Ukraine, as well as the Transnistrian region. Romania and Russia will border each other on land. This statement could become a reality soon, external analysts attending a TV show in Moscow at peak time said", according to ziuanews.ro
"When Russia played a similar game before the annexation of Crimea, no one believed that such a thing was possible. At the moment, Russia's interest in the above-mentioned territories is clear. "Russia will actually surround Ukraine and cut off that country’s access to the Black Sea. Vladimir Putin's interest is the annexation of the eastern and southern Ukraine, and also the Transnistrian region, if he manages to carry through his ambitions in the area" Alexander Mukhin, a former director of the Moscow Center for Political Information, stated.
"In Ukraine, a large part of the population is in favor of Russia and fed up with the widespread corruption in Kiev. The Ukrainian state, without foreign aid, is collapsing under the weight of corruption," Sergei Kiselev, a well-known Russian journalist and political analyst, said, according to the quoted source.
NARRATIVES: 1. Russia will neighbor Romania, after the annexation of eastern and southern Ukraine. 2. Romania must be careful how it will behave toward its new neighbor. 3. Ukraine is a failed state, because of corruption, which the Western allies will eventually abandon.
LOCAL CONTEXT / ETHOS: Ziua News is a site owned by Sorin Roșca Stănescu, a journalist previously convicted of corruption, who for several years now has been promoting an anti-Western and, more recently, pro-Russian position in his press materials.
In recent weeks in particular, Roșca Stănescu, just like the pro-Russia media, seems involved in an effort to peddle the classic themes of Russian propaganda and to influence the Romanian public opinion about the current situation in Ukraine.
Russian propaganda is trying to bring to the fore the latent mistrust between Bucharest and Kiev and the past issues between the two states.
Attempts are being made at convincing the public opinion in Romania that Ukraine is an aggressor state, and Russia is entitled to bring order to its former camp and its area of influence.
It all starts from the premise that, since the 2013 Euromaidan, Ukraine has become a failed state
and Western puppets with nationalist-fascist manifestations are at its helm, while Russia's role is only to intervene and defend the population of Ukraine, especially the ethnic Russians living mainly in eastern Ukraine and in the southern part of the Crimean Peninsula.
Russia is thus trying to discourage any potential support for Ukraine from an EU and NATO member state; such efforts are visible throughout the entire propaganda, not only in the one targeting Romania.
PURPOSE: To promote the idea of an imminent war, though one already won by Russia in Ukraine, where even Kiev’s weak Western partners will not be able to intervene.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: Romania will not have a direct border with Russia, even if the Russian armed forces advance to the Dniester and occupy the Transnistrian region. Even in such a scenario, there is also the Republic of Moldova, as an interposed country.
Even in the event of a Russian invasion, Ukraine will not be an easy territory to conquer. Moreover, Ukraine's Western partners, the United States in particular, have already firmly stated that they will not sit back and watch Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine. Even in the unlikely scenario of a large-scale Russian campaign, no potential territorial gain will be accepted by the international community, so it is impossible for Russia's official borders to advance. Also, the probability of a war is still seen as relatively low by analysts. A more plausible version is that according to which Russia is trying to put pressure on Ukraine and the West to have them make certain concessions. The ziuanews.ro publication gets even the name of the Russian analyst wrong. "Alexandr Mukin" is actually Alexei Mukin, the general director of the Center for Political Information. He specializes in "cyberwarfare" and has been a member of the Valdai Club since 2016.
As for the second "Russian analyst", Sergei Kiselev, his name is also wrong. The analyst is in fact Dmitri Kiseliov, the director of the Russia Today news holding, one of the Kremlin’s propaganda tools. Kiseliov is one of the Kremlin's main propagandists, known as Moscow’s ‘personal analysist’. He often displays anti-West attitudes, distorts the truth in his shows and is extremely biased, which makes him more of a propagandist than an analyst. Serghei Kiseliov is his nephew, convicted in 2019 by a German court because he fought alongside Russian rebels in Ukraine. GRAIN OF TRUTH: Russia is conducting large-scale military exercises at the border with Ukraine, but also in the Black Sea.
THE NARRATIVES BENEFIT the Kremlin, in the sense that they influence the Romanian public opinion regarding the current situation at the borders of Ukraine.
