the True of False Junior, this is the meeting for decrypting and verifying information carried out this week with students from the Emile-Zola colleges in Igny (Essonne) and Pablo Picasso in Montesson (Yvelines). This week, we are interested in the various arguments put forward by Vladimir Putin, to explain the Russian invasion in Ukraine. To denazify the country? Reform the USSR? Protect yourself from NATO?
Eric Biegala, senior reporter for the international editorial staff of Radio France, answers students’ questions.
Did Vladimir Putin give the real reasons for the invasion of Ukraine?
Chloe questions the sincerity of Vladimir Putin when he justifies Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “Is it true that Putin does not give the real reasons for his invasion?“
Eric Biegala replies first that Vladimir Putin does not give the real reasons for his invasion “because he doesn’t say it’s an invasion, he says it’s a military operation.” In Russia, we do not talk about war and when Vladimir Putin gives reasons to justify this “military operation“, they are “blurry, he talks about denazification of Ukraine” and “he says he wants to demilitarize Ukraine“, highlighted Eric Biegala.
“All of these claims are false” reminds the great reporter to the international editorial staff of Radio France, “There is neither a Nazi regime nor an overpowered army in Ukraine aided by NATO as Vladimir Putin suggests.“
For Eric Biegala, “the obvious reasons for his invasion are simple, even if he does not say it openly, he wants to take the country, put it in tow of the Russia he commands.“
Are there, as Vladimir Putin asserts, Nazis in Ukraine?
Gabriel wonders “if there are nazis in ukraine“, as Vladimir Putin claims to justify his invasion of Ukraine. According to Eric Biegala, it is “totally wrong“. The great reporter for the international editorial staff of Radio France nevertheless confirms that this is the first propaganda of the Russian president who continues to say that “Ukraine is completely dominated by Nazis“.
Eric Biegala explains to us that Ukraine is “a democratic regime, very close to a Western democracy, the Ukrainian President, Volodimir Zelenski, is himself Jewish and it is hard to imagine how Jews could be Nazis.”
He adds that “the Ukrainian Defense Minister is also Jewish and that there remains a relatively large Jewish community in Ukraine.“Finally, Eric Biegala recalls that”Ukrainian Jews were widely murdered by the Nazis in the 1940s.“
However, it is true that there is “as in all democracies, small far-right parties that could be called neo-Nazis, even if they should rather be defined as ultra-nationalists” develops Eric Biegala, who adds “that they do not represent much, between 3 and 5% in the elections.”
Is Vladimir Putin trying to reform the USSR?
The way history is used and sometimes rewritten during a conflict does not make things easy to understand for middle and high school students. Louane wonders “if it’s true that Vladimir Putin wants to reform the USSR“.
For Eric Biegala, “it is something that must be somewhere in the mind of Vladimir Putin, who publicly regretted the end of the USSR and who repeatedly said that his death in 1991 was one of the greatest geopolitical earthquakes of the 20th century.“He recalls, in this regard, that”the Russian president himself spent a large part of his life in this USSR as an official of the secret service, the KGB.“
For Eric Biegala, it is “difficult to say that Vladimir Putin really has the ambition to recreate the USSR, but he still seems to want to recover territories that belonged to this former Soviet empire.“
Is there a list of countries Vladimir Putin wants to annex?
In addition to Louane’s question on Vladimir Putin’s ambitions in Eastern Europe, Anaïs wonders “if it is true that the president of Russia has a list of countries he wants to annex“.
Eric Biegala specifies that it is obviously complicated to be informed of a “secret list of countries that Vladimir Putin would like to annex.“Nevertheless, he points to the fact that during a live broadcast on Belarusian television, President Alexander Lukashenko, Vladimir Putin’s main ally, “made a presentation of the plan of attack on Ukraine”. “On this plan of attack, we could clearly see the offensives that are underway and we also saw a Russian offensive which, it seems, is in preparation and which would target Moldova, a country wedged between Romania and Ukraine and which would be the next objective of the Russian army if however it manages to take Ukraine in its entirety, which is not yet the case.“
How does the Russian population perceive this war in Ukraine?
Chloe wonders”whether it is true that the majority of the population in Russia supports Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine?“
For Eric Biegala, “it’s hard to say because the Russian population is very poorly informed about this conflict.He recalls that “Russian state media is peddling this spiel that this is a military operation, sure, but for denazification purposes, so people watching TV are often convinced it is.”
But Eric Biegala also remarks “that for the first time since 2012, there were street demonstrations, in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the two main cities of Russia, with thousands of demonstrators who protested against this war.”
For the great reporter of the international editorial staff at Radio France, this is a sign “that there is very probably quite strong resistance among the Russian population, which in general knows the Ukrainian population quite well and knows very well that there is no there are no Nazis in charge of the government.”
Another symbol of this resistance, this Russian journalist, Marina Ovsiannikova, who appeared, live, on the set of the main evening news program of Russia’s most powerful TV channel on Sunday March 13 with a sign that read “No to war. Don’t believe the propaganda. You are being lied to here.”