Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the West to deliver more weapons in order to start a global nuclear war, the Russian government media writes, quoting a French politician. In fact, Ukraine needs more weapons from the West in order to defend itself against the Russian aggression in the context of ongoing hostilities.
NEWS: “Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wants to attract every country in the world into a global nuclear war, says Florian Philippot, a French politician and former MEP.
“Zelensky is asking Western countries to increase their volume of weapons deliveries. He wants a global nuclear war! Let’s quickly get rid of this insane puppet!”, Philippot tweeted.
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Starting February 24, Moscow has been carrying out a special military operation designed to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. Vladimir Putin announced the purpose of this operation is “to protect the people who in the last eight years have been subject to terror and genocide orchestrated by Kyiv”.
Russian armed forces are there to liberate Donbas and guarantee Russia’s security”.
NARRATIVE: Zelensky’s plan is to attract mankind into a global nuclear war.
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FASLE: The Russian state media published a tweet by French politician Florian Philippot, presenting it as the opinion of the entire French society and writing that “Zelensky’s master war plan was exposed in France.” Florian Philippot is a supporter and advocate of Marine Le Pen, the president of the National Front, a far-right French party and a known partner of Putin’s regime in France. Philippot was vice-president of the National Front and the coordinator of Le Pen’s election campaign.
In 2017, a few weeks after the Marin Le Pen’s defeat in the presidential election, Philippot founded a new political party called “The Patriots”. For a while, the party operated as an NGO, its mission being the promotion of nationalist ideas in French society. Much like Le Pen, Florian Philippot fostered anti-European, pro-Russian and ethnocentric values.
On October 30, 2022, Philippot accused NATO of having sabotaged the Nord Stream Russian pipeline, claiming he had knowledge Russia was not to blame. Florian Philippot is often quoted by Moscow state-linked media in order to give further context to a number of false narratives about the nature of the war in Ukraine.
On December 27, 2022, Phillipot said that Zelensky does not enjoy the support of the US Congress because only 82 of 213 Republicans were in the room when the Ukrainian leader conveyed his address. The politician is quoted by the Russian state media on various occasions.
This time, Florian Philipot claims that Zelensky is the aggressor and wants to launch a global nuclear war, without mentioning Moscow’s decision to invade Ukraine on February 24 or the war crimes Russia committed on the territory of a sovereign state. Ukraine, a country that is defending against Russia’s acts of aggression, is described as the invader, and Kyiv’s legitimate requests for more weapons are presented as a plan to launch a global nuclear war.
Such narratives, which have been identified in the past as well, are meant to spread panic in Western societies in order to stop deliveries of weapons to Kyiv. Meanwhile, the nuclear threat has itself become an element of hybrid warfare. Worth noting is that the former Russian president and the current vice-president of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, himself used nuclear threats at official level when he said that if Russia loses the war in Ukraine, it might launch a nuclear war. Medvedev also warned NATO Defense Ministers they should take this possibility under advisement when they consider delivering more weapons to Ukraine.
Moscow and its trusted politicians inside the EU are trying to persuade the international community that the war in Ukraine will still go a long way due to Kyiv receiving new weapons. Otherwise, it would end very quickly, albeit in Russia’s favor. Therefore, by quoting pro-Kremlin politicians, Russian propaganda is trying to operate a cause-and-effect switch at rhetorical level: the victim becomes the aggressor, and the invader poses as the defender.
In fact, Ukraine has shown readiness to get involved in peace talks, although it renounced the idea due to Russia’s ultimatums and its attacks on civilian targets. Volodymyr Zelensky put forward a peace plan, based on the standards of international law, which Russia dismissed unequivocally. Under these circumstances, facing an enemy that refuses to negotiate and only issues ultimatums, Ukraine is forced to defend itself, and to do that it needs weapons. However, Ukraine has only asked on the West to deliver weapons, and its partners have sent only defensive systems.
Veridica has disproved a number of similar false narratives about the nature of the war in Ukraine. The Russian media wrote that the United States have been arming Ukraine since 2014 to push it into a war against Russia, and that due to Kyiv’s neo-Nazi propaganda, Ukrainians don’t understand that Russia is here to liberate, not occupy them. Russian propaganda also tried to persuade the public back home in 2021 that Moscow is rallying troops on the Ukrainian border in order to defend itself against a possible NATO aggression, and that it was forced to save Donbas from the genocide organized by Ukraine and the West.
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