Urban legends about Ukrainians and the war in Ukraine end up being used as war propaganda by Moscow, the Russian independent media writes, also proving why the Amnesty International report criticizing Ukraine manipulates and misinforms public opinion and how the Putin regime is using nuclear weapons as a threat.
ISTORIES: People are fighting fear with rumors
What legends have emerged during the war, why the Russians are spreading them and how they are used for propaganda purposes, we find out from Alexandra Arkhipova, anthropologist, folklore researcher and author of the volume “Dangerous Soviet Things: Urban Legends and Fear in USSR”, an in interview for Istories. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Arkhipova has been collecting or publishing on social media war legends told by the Russians for her new research thesis.
- What urban legends are now popular in Russian society?
- I can give you a few examples. For instance, Poles allegedly put needles in black bread they send to Ukraine as humanitarian assistance, or that needles have been discovered in cucumbers “brought” from the Kherson region to Rostov, that stickers supporting Ukraine have blades on the back (the sticky side), to cut those trying to rip it off, or that Ukrainians had allegedly crucified a Russian soldier and burned him alive.
I’ve collected some fifteen such topics. Some of them are spread by the pro-government media, also known as “Prigozhin’s media”. For instance, the story about the bladed stickers was published by “Politika Segodnya” and the RIA FAN agency. They simply picked up an urban legend popular back in 2016. […]
The structure of these legends is the following: Prigozhin’s media publish the article, then pro-government and pro-war Telegram channels publicize it. Subsequently, the legend is included in the statements of specific individuals. When the story reaches “Maria Ivanovna” [a generic term used to describe the general public, e.n.], it becomes an argument in favor of continuing the war against Ukraine. Because people don’t understand who we’re fighting and why.
Today, state propaganda has significantly changed its rhetoric. Previously, we fought an abstract enemy: “the Americans and NATO” who “built biological laboratories on the territory of Ukraine”, but we didn’t fight Ukrainians. Yet this enemy was too abstract for “Maria Ivanovna”. She has her daily routine: children, grandchildren, house chores, gardening, low wages, which is why she is doesn’t understand how NATO and biological laboratories pose a threat to her personal livelihood. To explain all that to her, Russian media resort to legends disseminated by government-linked media, which describes the enemy. This enemy puts needles in food, Ukrainian saboteurs are “poisoning our water with cholera” and put large magnifying glasses near wheat fields in Rostov to set fire to the crops. The first to write about this legend was Readovka. The legend became so widespread, that the local police had to issue a statement: there are no huge magnifying glasses installed in the fields.
In early May, people were widely circulating an urban legend on social media about an ethnic weapon to be used against Russians, whereas by the end of April the activity subsided. Russian citizens understood that this scare had nothing to do with their daily lives. Biological weapons cannot influence “Maria Ivanovna”’s decisions. […]
- Where are these legends most popular?
- Along the frontline: in Blegorod, Rostov, Bryansk and Novozybkov.
- Is it due to the fact that the inhabitants of these cities fear the war more than other people?
- Yes, of course. All legends appear because people fear for their lives. People use these legends to justify their fears. Why can’t children play in broad daylight on their streets anymore? Because they might find some discarded iPhone, an explosive booby-trapped device planted by Ukrainian saboteurs.
- Does the target audience of war legends have any specific features?
- According to data in my research, most consumers of war legends are women – 76%. Over 60% of them are over 60. Overall, these stories are distributed by older women.
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NOVAYA GAZETA: Amnesty for Putin
Yulia Latynina tries to prove in Novaya Gazeta why the Amnesty International report misinforms and manipulates public opinion and the kind of disinformation methods it uses.
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The Amnesty report is the kind of lie that this war has all but forgotten. It is not the presumptuous lie told by Russian televisions, it employs omission and oversight, it is subtle and intelligent, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.
The news about the report is still visible on the homepage of Amnesty International, and is titled “Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians”.
Wait. And Russia’s war tactics do not endanger the civilian population? You can agree that in times of war the commonsensical thing to do was to compile a report on the war on Ukraine’s territory. About how Russian troops have razed to the ground Volonovakha and Mariupol. About how they are destroying the cities of Bakhmut and Seversk. About how missiles hit a shopping center in Kremenchug and the hospital in Vinnytsia. And then they note in a paragraph at the end that they have discovered Ukrainian military technology in one of the hundreds of houses that were completely destroyed in a city, and which possibly put the dwellers of the nearby house at additional risk.
Instead, the report and the news headline: “Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger the civilian population”. It’s the kind of generalization that the reader’s brain perceives as “Oh, so this is how Ukrainians are fighting. They set up their guns near houses, using civilians as human shields and then they attack”.
No other examples of Ukrainian weaponry being placed elsewhere besides houses are mentioned in the report. The document equally makes no mention of the fact that Russian troops are attacking cities, razing them to the ground, irrespective of whether they host Ukrainian forces or not.
Therefore, the very title of the report is suggestive of the manipulation and lies, which are not as blatant and glaring as those used by Russian propaganda. They can be labeled as “inductive” lies. They instill a picture in the reader’s brain that derives from the text, although it is completely at odds with reality.
The second thing that stands out: the Amnesty document uses no photos to substantiate its claims? Why? It’s simple.
The photos of towns and settlements attacked by the Russian army show they have been completely destroyed. The Russian army sweeps everything off the face of the earth, regardless of whether these settlements host Ukrainian servicemen or not. And this is not a random act. This is a carefully-planned tactic – artillery fire. These attacks are indiscriminate. Evidence of that is recorded in many photos, some published by Russian sources as well.
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“Ukrainian forces have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapon systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals”, the Amnesty report reads.
And then the report reiterates the same claim: Ukrainians are deploying troops in schools. Ukrainians place military in schools.
Wait. There’s no rule of war prohibiting the deployment of troops in schools, as long as they are empty. Moreover, this is the most widespread and rational way of deploying troops, especially in urban areas.
In times of war, schools are large, empty areas that can easily be refitted as a barracks, housing troops in gyms and classrooms. In general, schools are not close to any other building, which is why troops are often stationed there.
What is forbidden is using children as shields. […]
We are dealing with a classical lie – lying by omission. Amnesty could have written: “The rules of war do not prohibit the stationing of troops in empty schools. Ukrainian units withdrawn from the frontlines are often deployed in schools”. But they chose to omit it. […]
“In Bakhmut, Amnesty writes, a few residents told us that the Ukrainian military had been using a building barely 20 meters across the street from a residential high-rise building. On May 18, a Russian missile struck the front of the building, partly destroying five apartments and damaging nearby buildings. Kateryna, a resident who survived the strike, said: “I didn’t understand what happened. [There were] broken windows and a lot of dust in my home… I stayed here because my mother didn’t want to leave. She has health problems.”
Readers might be under the illusion that the war in Bakhmut unfolds as follows: Ukrainian military take control of a building, and the building next to it gets hit. In fact, the war unfolds like this: Bakhmut is wiped off the face of the earth, just like Mariupol, because one in a hundred buildings might house Ukrainian military. And if there aren’t any, they will still report that “nationalists have been destroyed”.
In this case, it doesn’t matter which building the military are deployed in.
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The problem with this report is not a couple of unfortunate phrases.
It’s the fact that Amnesty failed to note that Ukraine is now the stage of a war for survival. And that in the course of this war, Russia is destroying entire cities along with their inhabitants and defenders. Had the Ukrainians taken position outside the city, it would be normal for them to withdraw within the city. Had they withdrawn outside the city, that didn’t mean that nothing would have happened to the city – it would have been razed to the ground without any resistance. And if it hadn’t been destroyed, the same thing that happened in Bucha and Yagodnoye would have happened here as well.
All the claims of this report target the Ukrainian army. […]
Criticism of the Russian army is inserted only at the end of the report. So if anyone points a finger at Amnesty, they can say: “we did write about it”. At the end? It’s not our fault you didn’t read the whole document.
But even here, Amnesty managed to squeeze in a commentary about how Ukrainians deploying forces next to civilian buildings represents a pattern. […]
Amnesty International has created a new language – a system to describe what is happening in the war which completely distorts cause-and-effect relationships and prevents readers from seeing the full picture. Instead, it allows manipulators to present unrealistic and one-sided claims about the conflict, while the crimes of the other belligerent party are mentioned arbitrarily, as a side note in fine print.
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KASPAROV.RU: Shattered paradise
August is indeed a fatal month for Russia, Andrey Piontkovsky writes for Kasparov.ru. Putin failed in conventional war against Ukraine, and as a last resort he has been waving his nuclear sword fiercely, threatening to resort to nuclear warfare if Ukraine doesn’t agree to a ceasefire. On August 1, however, in his address to the UN Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Putin unexpectedly said: “Given that there are no winners in a nuclear war, it should never be unleashed”.
Excuse me, Vladimir Vladimirovich, but how can there be no winners in nuclear warfare?! And when we all die, some of us will go to heaven, right? How can a nuclear war not be unleashed? How are we supposed to defeat Satanists in World War IV? What did you unleash on the night of February 24?
“Of course, you cannot compare the potential of NATO and Russia. We understand that, but we also know Russia is a nuclear leader, and it is even ahead of others in terms of some components of modern warfare”. […]
Putin and Patrushev have concluded that, although it may be weaker in the event of a conventional war, the belligerent party that wants to change the status quo, that has enough political will and is fully oblivious to the value of human lives, is capable of obtaining key results in external politics only by flaunting a convincing nuclear strategy, or, if necessary, a limited nuclear attack (one-two warheads).
This new fateful knowledge of nuclear strategy was clearly transparent in Moscow’s every foreign policy choice, inspiring and instilling confidence, starting with the annexation of Crimea, when “nuclear forces were put on alert in the event of a military confrontation with Western state” and ending with Ryabkov’s “ultimatum”, which global diplomacy regarded as a reckless farce. Yet Patrushev’s doctrine saw it as a dress rehearsal of the Main Ultimatum, which would force the West to surrender, gather its things and exit world history.
Nuclear blackmail has been effective all these years without a single warhead ever being launched. According to the “Patrushev-Putin doctrine”, any new concession from the West will bring it one step closer to the Final Surrender.
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Putin’s pathetic address at the UN Conference on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was a dress rehearsal for the confession and surrender of a war criminal.
