Russian Military Build-Up On Ukrainian Border Accompanied by Pro-Kremlin Disinformation Campaign

EUvs­Dis­in­fo, a dis­in­for­ma­tion watch­dog affil­i­at­ed with the Euro­pean Union’s for­eign ser­vice, is report­ing that Russia’s build-up of mil­i­tary forces along the Ukrain­ian bor­der is being accom­pa­nied by a pro-Krem­lin dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign try­ing to con­ceal the true breadth and inten­tions behind Russia’s build-up.  Accord­ing to a EUvs­Dis­in­fo report:

Decem­ber 9, 2021 Dur­ing the past cou­ple of months numer­ous cred­i­ble media out­lets report­ed that Rus­sia has deployed around 90,000 troops(opens in a new tab) and mil­i­tary assets in stag­ing areas near to its bor­der with Ukraine, refer­ring both to offi­cial gov­ern­ment sources and main­stream media. […] Despite over­whelm­ing and pub­licly avail­able evi­dence from cred­i­ble sources, pro-Krem­lin out­lets have denied the exis­tence of any deploy­ments and con­tin­ued to spread the dis­in­for­ma­tion about their pure­ly defen­sive motives and NATO provo­ca­tions. But should there be any deploy­ments, in the twist­ed view of pro-Krem­lin out­lets, it is due to the immi­nent aggres­sion expect­ed from a Ukraine dom­i­nat­ed by neo-nazis, who in a pro-Krem­lin dis­tor­tion have been trained by West­ern coun­tries. More­over, it is not Ukraine alone, but as per well-rehearsed dis­in­for­ma­tion lines, there is always the hid­den hand of the Unit­ed States and NATO, and their aggres­sion and sin­is­ter motives behind the events.  Age-old dis­in­for­ma­tion nar­ra­tives by pro-Krem­lin out­lets of an alleged betray­al con­cern­ing NATO enlarge­ment to the East, Rus­sia being the vic­tim of so called “anti-Russ­ian” rhetoric, and Rus­sia being encir­cled by hos­tile forces have also been dust­ed off and put yet again to use to give a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the Russ­ian mil­i­tary deploy­ments, and pos­si­bly more.

Read the rest here.

The report notes that while Russia’s troop employ­ments are sim­i­lar to the build-up last April, this time, both the offi­cial rhetoric and the bel­li­cose talk on pro-Krem­lin out­lets make the sit­u­a­tion far more wor­ri­some from both Ukrain­ian and the West­ern perspectives.

In April, we report­ed on sim­i­lar pro-Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion efforts accom­pa­ny­ing Russia’s mil­i­tary build-up along the Ukrain­ian bor­der at that time.