Amid Ukraine Tensions, Russia Pushes Twisted Historical Facts and Lies About Ukraine

UK media is report­ing that Russia’s mil­i­tary build-up on the Ukrain­ian bor­der is accom­pa­nied by a pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign push­ing twist­ed his­tor­i­cal facts and the lie that Ukraini­ans and Rus­sians are “one peo­ple.” Accord­ing to a report in i News:

Jan­u­ary 22, 2022 Rather than study his­to­ry, author­i­tar­i­an states pre­fer to re-write it.  So, last sum­mer Vladimir Putin gave us his essay “On the His­tor­i­cal Uni­ty of Rus­sians and Ukraini­ans,” a pro­pa­gan­da sheet that made clear his inten­tions to absorb Ukraine by twist­ing his­toric facts and push­ing the lie that Ukraini­ans and Rus­sians are “one peo­ple”.  Orysia Lut­sevych, Head of the Ukraine Forum and Eura­sia expert at Chatham House, yes­ter­day declared that “Putin is weapon­is­ing his­to­ry”. But manip­u­lat­ing his­tor­i­cal facts is only part of the Rus­sia infor­ma­tion war being waged right now on Ukraine – before a sin­gle tank cross­es the bor­der.  Some of the Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da deals in gen­er­al­i­ties. The Krem­lin says its troop build up on the Ukrain­ian bor­der is hap­pen­ing against the back­ground of “active mil­i­tary ‘expan­sion on the ter­ri­to­ry of Ukraine by Nato coun­tries, which cre­at­ing a direct threat to the secu­ri­ty of Rus­sia”.  In real­i­ty, the West’s supine reac­tion to the cur­rent cri­sis shows that it’s failed to learn the lessons of the August 2008 war in Geor­gia, in which Rus­sia grabbed 20 per­cent of Geor­gian ter­ri­to­ry. The mut­ed inter­na­tion­al response encour­aged the Krem­lin to invade Ukraine and annex Crimea six years lat­er. Moldo­va is anoth­er vic­tim of Russ­ian aggres­sion; the Krem­lin main­tains troops there against the will of its people.

Read the rest here.

Since its ille­gal annex­a­tion of the Crimean penin­su­la in 2014 and its ongo­ing mil­i­tary aggres­sion against Ukraine, Rus­sia has waged a sus­tained and coor­di­nat­ed state-con­trolled dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign tar­get­ing pub­lic opin­ion in Rus­sia, the Euro­pean Union, and beyond.

EUvs­Dis­in­fo, a dis­in­for­ma­tion watch­dog affil­i­at­ed with the Euro­pean Union’s for­eign ser­vice, has pub­lished a list of the most preva­lent dis­in­for­ma­tion relat­ed to the Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict, including:

• “The cur­rent ten­sions are the result of per­sis­tent aggres­sive behav­ior of Ukraine and its allies in the West.”
• “The sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine trig­gered this conflict”
• “The EU and the West are not inter­est­ed in the Ukraine and have aban­doned it”
• “The cur­rent cri­sis is the fault of NATO and the West. If they had hon­ored their promise not to enlarge the alliance, Rus­sia would not feel threatened.”
• “Because of NATO’s aggres­sive expan­sion, Rus­sia is now ‘encir­cled by ene­mies’ and needs to defend itself.”
• “Ukraine has delib­er­ate­ly vio­lat­ed the Min­sk agree­ments and the West is fur­ther arm­ing Ukraine.”
• “The EU in any case is weak and irrel­e­vant. Why even both­er speak­ing to the EU?”

Read the full EUvs­Dis­in­fo, report here.

In Decem­ber, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that pro-Krem­lin out­lets were still deny­ing the exis­tence of any troop deploy­ments on the Ukrain­ian bor­der and con­tin­ued to spread the dis­in­for­ma­tion about their pure­ly defen­sive motives and NATO provocations.