Donate
After the liberation of the Crimean peninsula and the occupied territories in Donbas, anti-Russian foreign companies will be entitled to tear apart these territories, the Russian media writes, quoting Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. In fact, the Ukrainian leader spoke about projects designed to rebuild Ukraine, with the help of foreign companies. The president’s speech makes no mention of “Russophobia” or “tearing apart” Ukrainian territories, as the Russian propaganda claims.
NEWS: “Zelensky promised to allow foreign Russophobes to tear apart Crimea and Donbas. Once Crimea and Donbas are liberated, it would be only normal for foreign businesses to be given priority to contribute to the reconstruction process. These companies entered the Ukrainian market or withdrew from the Russian market during the special military operation, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech before the Supreme Rada, referring to the pillars of Ukraine’s foreign and domestic policies. […]
“We need to come up with a format that would provide additional opportunities to these companies when it comes to such projects meant to rebuild Ukraine: Ukrainian, American, French, Polish businesses and others operating in our country right now”, Zelensky said”.
NARRATIVE: Russophobic foreigners will be entitled to tear apart Crimea and Donbas once these territories are liberated.
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: The propaganda narrative draws on the deliberate misquotation of Zelensky’s speech before the Supreme Rada. In his address, the president of Ukraine referred to the project to rebuild Ukraine after Russia’s relentless bombing, also drawing attention to the need to encourage companies that have shown solidarity with Ukraine, withdrawing from the Russian market, or those that chose to stay in Ukraine despite the war. This false narrative can be debunked starting with the video posted on the webpage of the Russian publication. Politnavigator also published an excerpt from Zelensky’s speech that contradicts that propaganda narrative. However, the video is titled “Zelensky promised to allow anti-Russian foreigners to tear apart Crimea and Donbas”. Watching the video, one fails to identify any such promise in the president’s speech.
In fact, this is another case of Russian propaganda using a typical strategy of distorting the truth. The title of the news article has nothing to do with Zelensky’s message, whereas the intro to the article misquotes Zelensky twice.
In reality, Volodymyr Zelensky spoke of rebuilding Ukraine, including Donbas and Crimea, not about “tearing apart” these territories. Zelensky did not use the term “special military operation”, but rather the words “war”, “aggression”, “invasion”, “invasion”, “Russian terrorism”, etc. After this deliberate misquotation and additional far-fetched reinterpretations, the Russian media published Zelensky’s real speech in Ukrainian, without providing a Russian translation. The text makes no mention about Russophobic foreign companies, about a special military operation or about tearing apart these territories.
The purpose of this narrative is to widen the gap between Kyiv and the occupied territories by presenting reconstruction projects funded by the West as initiatives designed to destroy these territories and oppress the Russian-speaking population.
The false narrative is part of the broader metanarrative according to which Ukraine and the West have organized a genocide against Russian speakers in Crimea and Donbas, and Zelensky’s proposal to encourage foreign businesses that did not leave Ukraine in spite of the war is described as a threat to Russian speakers, without providing any argument to substantiate this claim.
Veridica has debunked several false narratives designed to tell the public in eastern and southern Ukraine that Kyiv authorities seek to harm and massacre the population here. The Russian media previously wrote that only Russian speakers from eastern Ukraine are mobilized in order to exterminate them. Another similar false claim was that, due to Kyiv’s neo-Nazi propaganda, Ukrainians don’t understand that Russia is here to liberate, not occupy them. In November 2021, Russian propaganda tried to persuade the public back home that Moscow was rallying troops on the Ukrainian border in order to defend itself against a possible NATO aggression, being forced to save Donbas from the genocide organized by Ukraine and the West over the course of 2022.
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