Posted at 7:37 p.m.
“A horror sight”
Alexey Kovalev, investigative editor at the independent Russian-language media Meduza, reports that the Kremlin’s propaganda was aimed at building popular support for the war in Ukraine. However, when the first images of the invasion arrive, this propaganda no longer succeeds in convincing people in Russia. “The Kremlin claims that the Russian army only targets military targets in Ukraine, but this is obviously not the case,” said Mr. Kovalev, joined by The Press in Moscow on Thursday. The internet is full of images of decrepit apartment buildings hit by rocket fire. The Russians recognize these buildings: we have the same everywhere in Russia. It is a horrifying sight. There are no other words. »
Propaganda
The saying goes: “Truth is the first casualty of war. In the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the truth came out long before the fighting started. Poor quality videos made by the Russian government-funded channel RT have been shown in recent days. We see journalists deploring “crimes” allegedly committed by Ukrainian soldiers. “A resident of Donetsk was reportedly ‘shredded’ by Ukrainian mortar fire,” reporter Ilya Vasyunin said in one of these videos, addressing the camera, without however providing any evidence or images to support his statements. The West feared that a major event would serve as a pretext for a Russian invasion, but the invasion took place anyway. On Thursday, Bryan MacDonald, journalist for the RT channel, made his mea culpa on Twitter. “I honestly didn’t believe that Russia would launch a full-scale military attack on Ukraine. […] I thought it was a bluff to force the hand of the West in the negotiations. I apologize for being so wrong. »
IMAGE FROM TWITTER
Reporter Ilya Vasyunin of the RT channel
feeling of shame
A sign that the propaganda no longer rallies everyone: Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has started to cause a stir in Russia, where thousands of people demonstrated in downtown Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and more than 850 citizens have been arrested by police across the country, the wall street journal. Elena Kovalskaya, director of the Vsevolod Meyerhold State Theater and Cultural Center in Moscow, meanwhile announced her resignation in protest against the invasion of Ukraine. “It is impossible to work for a murderer and collect a salary from him,” she wrote on Facebook on Thursday. Fedor Smolov, soccer player for the Russian national team and Dynamo Moscow, also broadcast an anti-war message to his nearly 600,000 followers on his Instagram account. He is the first top Russian athlete to oppose the invasion. Earlier this week, Yuri Dudt, one of Russia’s most popular media personalities, said he “did not vote for this regime” and felt “ashamed”. His post received nearly 1 million likes in 24 hours.
Like USA and Canada
Could the Kremlin have miscalculated the repercussions of the conflict on Russian public opinion? This is what journalist Alexey Kovalev believes today. “Putin is crazy, he is not well, everyone can see it,” he said. Russia attacking Ukraine is like the United States attacking Canada… This is absurd. We have family in Ukraine, we have ties. Ukraine is a country that looks a lot like Russia, and seeing images of war there is like seeing images of war back home, in Russia. In 2014, the Russians supported the invasion of Crimea, because it was done quickly and without bloodshed. This time it’s obviously a war, as everyone can see. It’s not the same thing at all. Putin’s misinformation is no longer enough. »
IMAGE FROM ALEXEY KOVALEV’S TWITTER ACCOUNT
Alexey Kovalev, journalist
“Denazification”
The Kremlin repeats that its “special military operation” in Ukraine aims to “liberate Ukraine, liberate this country from the Nazis”. This week, AFP also reported that in Slovakia, a country neighboring Ukraine, this disinformation was widely disseminated, even by members of parliament: Lubos Blaha, a member of the left-wing opposition party Smer and followed by 170,000 people on Facebook, said they were “convinced that [Poutine] wants peace” and asserted that Ukraine is “controlled by oligarchic clans, neo-Nazism and Russophobes”. This obsession with “denazification” runs counter to the fact that the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, was elected by a large majority of voters in 2019 in elections deemed fair, and that he himself is even a Jew.