Since the very start, before and during its military invasion of Ukraine, the Russian leadership has been engaged in a disinformation campaign in media and official statements to justify its unprovoked attack on Ukraine and its people, which it considers a brother people sharing the same history and destiny as the Russian people.
As already reported in our LIVE reporting, the Ukrainian minister of foreign affairs, Dmytro Kuleba addressed the media on Sunday afternoon for an update of the ongoing war and referred to a previous video statement from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“In his video address, he unloaded a series of false claims including bizarre claims of Ukraine committing alleged genocide which have zero factual evidence. He also called for demilitarisation and de-Nazification of Ukraine, which shows he exists in a completely parallel reality,” Kuleba said.
In a kind of Orwellian newspeak, President Putin claimed last week that Ukraine was ruled by neo-Nazis and antisemites, and even drug addicts, and that Russia only wanted to “demilitarize” the country. Facing fierce resistance by the Ukrainian army, he called on it to lay down its weapons before any cease-fire talks. President Zelensky, himself of Jewish origin, did not owe him the answer.
“You are told that we are Nazis, but how can a people support Nazis that gave more than 8 million lives for the victory over Nazism? How can I be a Nazi? Tell my grandpa, who went through the whole war in the infantry of the Soviet army and died as a colonel in independent Ukraine.”
During the weekend, Zelensky brushed aside an American offer to evacuate him from Kyiv. “I don’t need a ride but weapons to defend Ukraine,” was his reply.
The EU has created a special database and publishes tweets with focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages on the conflict with Ukraine. The EU East Stratcom Task Force publishes regular disinformation reviews.
The Brussels Times
