(Doha) Ukraine’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Djaparova on Saturday compared the use of disinformation during the conflict in Ukraine to the start of a “Third World War”, a month after the Russian invasion of her country. country.
Posted at 10:26
Russia has devoted substantial resources to convey in the media and on social networks its version of the war, presented as a “special operation” intended to “denazify” Ukraine.
“We are entering a third world war, not a conventional conflict, but an information war,” said Emine Djaparova, herself a former journalist, at the Doha Forum in Qatar.
“Like radiation, you neither feel it nor touch it, but it affects you,” she said.
According to her, convincing Russians and other countries to support Ukraine has become more complicated due to Russian propaganda, which has improved since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and is relayed by political leaders, Internet users, athletes and artists.
“Russia has been very inventive in this area,” observed the minister, saying that “millions of Russians simply do not want to believe” the “truth” about the war in Ukraine.
Accused of being Moscow’s instruments of “disinformation” in its war against Ukraine, Russian state media RT and Sputnik broadcast on television and the internet have been banned in the European Union from March 2.
At the same time, Russia is stepping up repression to control information. On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law punishing prison sentences of up to 15 years for “false information” about Moscow’s action abroad.
Since the beginning of the Russian intervention in Ukraine on February 24, the Russian government has considerably strengthened its control over the information disseminated on the Internet, one of the last spaces for free expression in the country.
Many Russian and foreign media, including the BBC, have been banned from access and the American social networks Facebook and Instagram have been declared “extremist” by a Moscow court.
On Thursday, Russia’s media regulator restricted access to the News online service. Google, accused of providing access to “false” information on the Russian offensive in Ukraine.