An important part of Ukraine's population has close ties with Russia and wants good relations with it, according to the Russian propaganda, which also claims that Russian-speakers are being used by Ukrainian nationalists as human shields.
NEWS: Russia's Defense Ministry says that more than 15 million Ukrainians still have close ties with Russia. “Historically, a significant portion of Ukraine's population has always advocated for respectable relations with Russia. According to statistics, there are more than 15 million people who still have strong ties to the Russian Federation, where their relatives, acquaintances and friends live,” Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian Federation's National Defense Management Center, said at a briefing.
According to him, “it’s mainly about the regions of Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Herson, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Poltava, Sumyi, Kirovohrad, Cerkasyi, Kiyv and Zhytomyr”.
“In the context of a humanitarian crisis, most of the population is being held by force by nationalists in Ukrainian cities and used by them as 'human shields'. They are looking for protection in Russia, not in the West, which is confirmed by millions of calls from citizens to the Russian side for help in the evacuation process”, Mizintsev said.
NARRATIVES: 1. Russian speakers are “human shields” for the Ukrainian nationalists. 2.15 million Ukrainians have close ties with Russia.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The Russian Defense Minister does not cite any opinion polls or evidence to support the statement that 15 million Ukrainians have close ties with Russia and pleads for a resumption of the ties with Moscow.
Images from southern and eastern Ukraine of thousands of Russian-speakers protesting against the occupation forces, presented by Western journalists, show that Ukrainians, regardless of ethnicity and language, are rejecting the geopolitical project of restoring “the Russian world”. Opinion polls in Ukraine, conducted before the start of the war, show that only one third of the Ukrainians had a positive attitude towards Russia .
Sociological studies conducted after the start of the Russian war against Ukraine show that 86% of Ukrainians want the recovery of Crimea and the liberation of Donbass in the near future .
According to UN reports, only 5% of the Ukrainian refugees chose Russia, and the remaining 95% chose Western states. So, the Ukrainians are looking for support and shelter in the West because they are being attacked and killed by the Russian army. Most of the refugees in Russia come from territories controlled by it and had no alternatives after the conflict broke out.
The argument that Ukrainian forces are blocking Russian speakers in the Ukrainian cities in order to use them as human shields is contradicted by realities on the ground: Ukraine has constantly called for the formation of humanitarian corridors, and whenever it was possible, tens of thousands were evacuated from the besieged cities. However, there have been incidents when Russian forces have made it impossible to use the corridors, opening fire on the convoys. The Russians are besieging the cities and preventing civilians from leaving. Finally, the Russian forces have bombed numerous civilian targets since the beginning of the war, including apartment buildings where there were no soldiers, which also refutes the narrative about the use of human shields.
