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Issue 50 - 6 December 2016
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Nazi terror, Nazi training, Nazi genocide
During the second half of November, Ukraine once again became the top target for outlets specialised in spreading pro-Kremlin disinformation. The main emphasis was on allegations of supposed nazi leanings among the Ukrainian people.
Miaistok, a separatist outlet notorious for spreading unfounded disinformation, once again accused Ukraine of being radically nationalistic (http://bit.ly/2gDFXXY). A couple of days later, the same outlet claimed that Ukrainians are trained to be Nazis (http://bit.ly/2h81Boj). Russkaya Pravda talked of “bloodthirsty neo-Nazi” Ukrainians (http://bit.ly/2gyZ2rq).
This messaging soon reached more mainstream media. In the talk show Vremya Pokazhet, we heard the accusation that Ukrainian leaders are carrying out Nazi terror (http://bit.ly/2fWfiXA; once again, you will find the precise time-codes of the claims in the table). Only a day later, in the same show Ukrainians were accused of committing genocide and promoting nazism (http://bit.ly/2fZGzDu).
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Pro-Kremlin outlets have been repeating these accusations from the very beginning of Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine, see e.g. this Foreign Policy article from June 2014: http://atfp.co/2g0tONO. We can also recall the infamous, fabricated news report of a boy crucified by Ukrainian soldiers, carried on the first channel of Russian State TV: http://bit.ly/2h1K2pQ.
The fact is that the vast majority of Ukrainians want peace, stability and democracy, as witnessed by the democratic Presidential elections held on 25 May 2014. A fact reconfirmed by the parliamentary elections on 26 October 2014, where parties devoted to democratic values received the strong majority of votes.
Pro-Kremlin media often choose the nationalist Right Sector as the main example to prove their "nazi" allegations, describing them as the fascists in Ukraine. It is worth being reminded that this political party has close to no influence in Ukraine. Their candidate received 0,7 per cent of votes in the Presidential elections. The party itself received 1,8 per cent of votes in the Parliamentary elections - far below the threshold needed to enter the Parliament.
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NATO and Chad child soldiers are about to invade Donbas
But it was not only about alleged Nazism. The separatists’ accounts on the social network VKontakte claimed that “dark-skinned mercenaries” had arrived in Luhansk - “proving” it with pictures of child mercenaries in Chad taken in 2009 (http://bit.ly/2fWXQSM). The already mentioned Miaistok talked of 300 NATO soldiers entering Luhansk (http://bit.ly/2gQMo7Q), and a couple of days later it invented Polish mercenaries entering the separatist territory (http://bit.ly/2fWRQJO).
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TV Zvezda, the official channel of the Russian Ministry of Defense, which is notorious for spreading disinformation and falsified evidence, also claimed that NATO is preparing to enter Donbas (http://bit.ly/2gDBXqH).
In May, the Disinformation Review registered a higher amount of disinformation targeting Ukraine during the time when the military situation in the East of the country was severely deteriorating: http://eepurl.com/b0k0uH. Also this time, the reports from the East of Ukraine talk about increased number of ceasefire violations during the period of increased media aggression, see the statement of OSCE Special Monitoring Mission: http://bit.ly/2g4Yl8v.
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To see how the separatists in Donbass fake their “evidence”, read this fresh investigation by the BBC Russian Service: http://www.bbc.com/russian/features-38109630?ocid=socialflow_facebook Journalist Andrei Soshnikov shows how a Donetsk art centre was rebuilt as a fake “Daesh military base”, where the separatists created “proofs” that Daesh fighters were joining Ukrainian battalions (disinformation you will have seen in our Reviews since last autumn). This faked evidence was later “discovered” by Kyberberkut - a so-called hacker group that regularly publishes dubious evidence serving the pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign.
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Facts are Russophobic!
Last week we showed you how disinformation-oriented outlets distort any Western efforts to counter the ongoing pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign (http://bit.ly/2fNSKqe). The monitored media continued this pressure throughout the last week too.
Once again, we saw the new Czech Centre against terrorism and hybrid threats being accused of censorship (http://bit.ly/2gDoU8P); despite the fact that it should simply monitor the disinformation campaign in the country. We saw claims that Russian propaganda doesn’t exist (http://bit.ly/2gpqPus), despite enormous evidence to the contrary. Members of the European Parliament, who voted for the recent resolution on EU strategic communication to counteract anti-EU propaganda, were accused of being Russophobic (http://bit.ly/2gM8Rn4).
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A Bulgarian outlet also invented a story that the European Parliament's resolution is targeted on all Orthodox countries, and that its ultimate purpose is to ban Orthodox propaganda (http://bit.ly/2gYjINs), because the EU is more favourable to Islam. In fact, in the whole resolution you will not find anything about Orthodoxy (http://bit.ly/2gzeFPz).
It is quite hard to imagine how exposing disinformation campaigns could constitute censorship when in reality it is raising awareness amongst more, not less, people. It is also quite hard to imagine how countering disinformation campaigns with facts and strengthening media plurality (which is what the resolution is about) could constitute the definition of Russophobia.
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Download the FULL TABLE (.pdf) of disinformation pieces
collected for the Disinformation Review issue No 50
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