Sputnik, the Russian propaganda media operation, is reporting the claim that on the eve of Orthodox Christmas, Ukrainian special forces dug up graves in the Kharkiv region for use in accusing Russia of torturing civilians. According to the report:
January 8, 2023 Moscow (Sputnik) — The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) prepared a provocation using the bodies of civilians who died in the Kharkov region in order to subsequently accuse Russia of torturing ordinary citizens, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday.“Ukrainian special services have prepared a new large-scale anti-Russian provocation aimed at discrediting the Russian armed forces and accusing Russian servicemen of allegedly committing war crimes. On the eve of Orthodox Christmas, representatives of the State Bureau of Investigation and the SBU organized the digging up of graves in cemeteries in the villages of Kazachya Lopan, Veliky Burluk, Shipovatoye and Khatnoye in the Kharkov region, where local residents who died from natural causes were buried while Russian troops were in these areas from February 24 to September 6, 2022,” the ministry said.The ministry added that the Kiev regime, through provocations, seeks to keep the attention of the West against the background in the absence of success on the battlefield.
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The Global Influence Operations Report (GIOR) reported last November that Russia was reframing its justification for the invasion of Ukraine by moving away from “denazification” to the “complete de-Satanization” of Ukraine. The above report is consistent with this theme.
GIOR also reported last November on the Christian nationalist wing of the Republican Party and its role in supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin while opposing military aid to Ukraine. Around the same, we reported that the director of the new Brussels branch of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a private Hungarian residential college funded by a massive donation of public funds, had claimed that hostility towards Hungary was motivated in part by the country’s defense of Christianity from European ‘culture warriors.”