WAR PROPAGANDA: The Government in Kyiv has voiced mistrust in its Western partners

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said it no longer trusts its Western partners, who don’t want peace in Ukraine, reads a propaganda narrative published by the Russian state media. Oleksii Reznikov’s statement was taken out of context. The Ukrainian official referred to a prospective multilateral peace agreement once Russia has surrendered and a constructive dialogue with the West.

NEWS: “The Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said the authorities in Kyiv have recently understood that they should no longer trust the informal promises made by their Western partners. In that respect, to reach peace in Ukraine, the authorities are ready to sign a multilateral agreement that should provide certain security guarantees.

“We have learned a lot, including not to trust various attempts at helping us secure peace in Ukraine. Unfortunately, in 2014 there were no such attempts from our partners, but the instruments and agreements proposed at the time did no work”, Reznikov said.

[…] another example is the Budapest Memorandum, which deprived Ukraine of its status as the world’s third nuclear power and did not provide this country with the security it needed.

[…]

Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for the president of the Russian Federation, has recently stated that Russia is prepared and willing to solve the situation in Ukraine using diplomatic channels and on its own terms. Moscow and Kyiv must discuss the steps for fulfilling these terms. At the same time, Peskov pointed out that Moscow’s terms remain the same. The final goal of the special operation, according to Russian president Vladimir Putin, is “to liberate Donbas and create the circumstances that will guarantee Russia’s security”.

NARRATIVE: The Government in Kyiv has voiced mistrust in its Western partners.

WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: In fact, as part of an interview for the ICTV Ukrainian TV station, Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said he no longer trusts formal ceasefires or other agreements that provide no real security guarantees. He said that “any future surrender from Russia must be reflected in a multilateral agreement that should provide security guarantees from the partners Ukraine trusts”. The Russian media did not mention anything about Moscow’s surrender and took Reznikov’s statement out of context with a view to manipulating public opinion.

Furthermore, the Ukrainian Defense Minister told ICTV: “We don’t trust those who stood before us at the negotiation table. At the time, we believed we could negotiate with them”. The Ukrainian Defense minister referred to Russia’s representatives who attended the peace negotiations for the 2014-2022 conflict in Donbas. There is no clue in Reznikov’s statement about mistrust in the West, although there is a reference to “instruments and agreements that no longer work”.

Therefore, the news article published by RIA Novosti and shared by Russian media agencies is radically distorting the statement of the Ukrainian Minister. To further amplify the false narrative, the author references the Budapest Memorandum, which refers to Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament and provides security guarantees with a view to safeguarding its independence. Based on this treaty, Ukraine discarded its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal on its territory which was subsequently transferred to the Russian Federation.

According to Russian propaganda, it was the West that deceived Ukraine into signing the Budapest Memorandum in. However, no mention is made of Russia violating this document in 2014.

It’s also worth mentioning that in August, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Russia did not violate the provisions of the Budapest Memorandum since the West bombed former Yugoslavia and created the state of Kosovo. The West also interfered with the domestic politics of Ukraine in 2004, which is tantamount to “destroying the judicial underpinnings of the Memorandum”. After the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said that the Budapest Memorandum has no provision compelling Russia to collaborate with an illegitimate government in Kyiv.

Veridica has disproved a number of false narratives regarding the West’s destructive role in the war in Ukraine. The Russian government media wrote that terrorists are trained on EU territory with a view to launching attacks against the civilian population in Donbas, that West is calling on Kyiv to surrender to Russia, while Ukrainian refugees will be accommodated in a former Nazi concentration camp.