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Thanks to the “special military operation”, the West has failed to wipe Russia off the face of the earth, according to a false narrative by Russian state media that quotes Vladimir Putin's speech at the May 9 Victory Day Parade. In reality, Russia is the aggressor, and the “special military operation” is an invasion condemned by most of the world's states.
Propaganda: Russia is defending itself against the war orchestrated by the West against it
NEWS: “A real war has been orchestrated against our Fatherland, but we will ensure our security”, said the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, at the May 9 Victory Day Parade.
Western elites talk about their exclusivism, pit peoples against each other, divide societies, trigger bloody conflicts, sow anti-Russian sentiments and aggressive nationalism, the head of state stressed.
According to him, the West starts conflicts and coups, destroys traditional values in order to impose its rules, which are, in fact, a system of theft and violence.
Everyone can see how, in a number of states, the Soviet soldiers’ memorials are destroyed, without mercy and emotion, how the cult of the Nazis and their collaborators is created, and the memory of real heroes erased, said the Russian leader.
“They want the outcome of World War II to be forgotten, to destroy all sovereign centers of development”, Putin said. The state is proud of the participants in the Special Military Operation on which the future of our people depends, the president added.”
NARRATIVE: The “special military operation” is saving Russia from the Western aggression
Fact: The West is helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia's armed aggression
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: The West does not aim to wipe Russia off the face of the earth, and there cannot be any military aggression directed against Moscow. On February 24, 2022, Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the West is supporting Kyiv’s defensive efforts. The Russian armed aggression has been condemned by most of the world’s states and the most important international organizations. According to the rules of international law, especially the UN Charter, every state has an inherent right to defend itself , which Kyiv has been doing for about 15 months.
The West is not a direct party to the conflict and did not start the war. To manipulate the public opinion, Russian propaganda swaps cause with consequence in media narratives and politicians' speeches. Vladimir Putin presents the “special military operation” as an action to save Russia, comparing it to the heroism of the Soviet soldiers who freed the world from Nazism. In reality, the West's support for Ukraine is a consequence of the “special military operation”, and the deliveries of weapons and ammunition have occurred especially after its launch, getting more intense in the last months.
As with other false narratives in recent months regarding the war in Ukraine, the cause – Russia's invasion of the Ukrainian state – is presented in a willfully false way as a consequence of the West’s delivery of arms. After it attacked Ukraine, Russia was designated a terrorist state first by the European Parliament and then by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe , and the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin. .
At the Victory Parade in Moscow, Vladimir Putin compared the “special military operation” to the War for the Defense of the Fatherland of 1941-1945 in order to encourage social mobilization and justify military actions on the territory of Ukraine. Russia is portrayed as a victim of Western aggression. This conflict acquires symbolic value by comparing the Soviet-German war - called in the ex-Soviet space “The Great War for the Defense of the Fatherland” - with the Russian-Western one. This message aims to strengthen trust in the authorities, deepening the image of Russia as a fortress besieged by “evil forces”.
Regarding the history of the Second World War, Vladimir Putin keeps spreading propaganda messages from the time of the Soviet regime when it was forbidden to talk about the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939 to partition Europe. The Soviet historiography presented Moscow as a victim of Nazi Germany's attack, and not as an accomplice and aggressor who, together with Germany, started the war in Europe. According to the dominant narratives in Russia, the West does not want to be grateful to Russia as the heir of the Soviet Union for past heroism, ignoring the enormous support from the US and Britain, without which the victory over Nazism would have been impossible. It is worth mentioning that a 2019 European Parliament Resolution points out that World War II was started as a result of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression and cooperation pact of August 23, 1939, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Veridica has dismantled a series of false Russian media narratives that were building the myth of Russia as a besieged fortress. The Russian press has written that Ukraine is a pseudo-Nazi state pushed to war by the West, and the US allowed Ukraine to bomb Russia. According to Russian propaganda, Moscow must mobilize itself in order to defeat NATO in the “New War for the Defense of the Fatherland” , while in Ukraine the mothers and wives of the Ukrainian soldiers killed in combat are protesting the war.
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