According to pro-Kremlin propaganda, the NATO states forced Ukraine to go to war against Russia, though Moscow repeatedly tried to resolve the conflict peacefully.
NEWS: Great Britain, France and Germany are the main participants in this conflict. The geopolitical crisis in Ukraine is part of a strategy developed by NATO. The Ukrainian rulers, dominated in the 1990s by Euro-romanticism, believed that NATO would help them, but NATO was not aware, although it perfectly understood what it meant to draw Ukraine into a conflict with Russia [...]
According to the most optimistic estimates, the share supporting the “Ukraine is NATO” idea did not exceed 18%, and three times more respondents were against it. After decades of propaganda, the result turned out to be ineffective. The EU, with all its peaceful rhetoric, served as bait for Ukrainians, and NATO members perceived it as a living room. The NATO members’ plan was to lure Ukraine into the alliance by any means, with bloodshed and without regard for victims – down to the last Ukrainian. The war in Donbass became an opportunity for NATO to flex its muscles. It is not surprising that no one ever reported on the thousands of victims, on the hundreds of children killed in eastern Ukraine [...]
With the help of hundreds of billions of dollars and euros spent on inciting hatred toward Russians, rearming the Ukrainian Armed Forces, encouraging Russophobia at the core of Ukrainian domestic and foreign policy, the Alliance managed to ignite the flame of a major geopolitical crisis, which Russia constantly tried to resolve and extinguish: in December 2021, in the spring of 2022, and in the winter of 2025.
NARRATIVES: 1. NATO planned a war against Russia using Ukraine as a tool. 2. Ukrainians were manipulated into accepting an anti-Russian agenda contrary to their interests. 3. Russia repeatedly tried to resolve the conflict peacefully. 4. The West needed the war in eastern Ukraine.
PURPOSE: To delegitimize the Ukrainian authorities by presenting the country as a pawn manipulated by the Western powers; to justify Russia's military actions; to undermine Western support for Ukraine; to present Russia as a victim and a peacemaking force.
Reality: Russia occupied Crimea and parts of Donbas in 2014, triggering an unprovoked, large-scale invasion in 2022
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The article distorts historical reality and ignores international law. First, Ukraine is a sovereign state that has the right to determine its own geopolitical path. The decision to move closer to the EU and NATO was made by the Ukrainian authorities, supported by the population, especially after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. The Ukrainian Constitution was amended in 2019, in response to Russian aggression, to include the Euro-Atlantic orientation as a strategic goal. Until 2014, support for NATO membership in Ukrainian society was low, and the country had an official policy of neutrality. The change in orientation occurred as a result of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of the conflict in Donbas. Polls show that support for NATO membership in Ukraine increased in 2014-2022, reaching over 86% in 2024.
The Russian invasion in February 2022 was preceded by ultimatums to the West in December 2021, in which Moscow demanded legal guarantees that Ukraine would never join NATO. It called for the withdrawal of NATO military infrastructure from Eastern European countries and, in effect, a return to the pre-1997 security architecture. These demands violated the fundamental principles of European security, including the right of sovereign states to choose their international partners. The Russian invasion is a flagrant violation of the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum , by means of which Russia itself guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for giving up the nuclear arsenal inherited from the USSR.
Russia has not been interested in finding peace solutions. The Kremlin has systematically rejected diplomatic formats proposed by the international community and imposed conditions unacceptable to any sovereign state, such as giving up territory and the right to determine its future. To present Russia as a peacekeeping force means forgetting its history of military aggression not only in Ukraine, but also in Georgia, Syria and other regions.
The narrative about the Donbas victims fails to acknowledge the context of the conflict’s emergence in 2014, when Russia militarily supported separatist groups to destabilize Ukraine after annexing Crimea. International organizations have documented abuses by Russian-backed forces, including the use of civilians as human shields, the placement of military equipment in residential areas, and the forced recruitment of locals.
The article reverses cause and effect regarding the Western military aid. It has been provided after Ukraine was attacked, to help it defend itself, not before, nor as part of a premeditated plan to destroy Russia.
CONTEXT: RIA Novosti is part of the Russian state-controlled media system. The material is a continuation of the propaganda narratives aimed at justifying Russia's war of aggression. The pro-Kremlin propaganda does not mention anything about the war crimes committed by the Russian military on the territory of Ukraine, the bombing of electrical infrastructure and civilian targets, the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, etc. All of Moscow's actions so far have been aimed at destroying the sovereignty and independence of the Ukrainian state.
The pro-Kremlin media is pushing false narratives about the war in Ukraine, claiming that Russia was provoked by the West, that the EU sent troops before 2022, that Ukrainians are being “liberated” by the Russian army – all disinformation to justify the invasion. In April 2024, the pro-Kremlin press wrote that NATO could occupy Ukraine and that Russia was defending its sovereignty. A year earlier, Moscow newspapers were writing that Russia had to mobilize itself in order to defeat NATO in the new “war for the defense of the fatherland”.
