New Eastern Europe issues an article surveying the weight of Russian propaganda in Ukrainian crisis

The Russian propaganda machine went into motion almost immediately with the start of the EuroMaidan revolution. With the new government in power in Kyiv, the focus is now discrediting the new authorities while simultaneously fanning the flames of separatism in the east of Ukraine.

 

Ukraine and everything related to it has been at the top of Russian propaganda since very beginning of the EuroMaidan protests in the fall of 2013. This is not surprising. Back then, the authorities of the Russian Federation already felt the threat of a possible change of government would result in Ukraine leaving Russia’s sphere of influence. However, in spite of all the efforts of Russian propaganda, the democratic and pro-European Maidan triumphed. Nevertheless, the Russian media immediately found a new task (here I deliberately equate the official Russian disinformation and the Russian media because there is only about a dozen media organisations in the Russian Federation that are free from the Kremlin’s influence and those are not very popular).

 

Only a few days after former president Viktor Yanukovich fled Ukraine, Russia began its annexation of Crimea and later fanned the flames of pro-Russian separatism in the east of the country, which the new Ukrainian authorities have been unable to put out. Every day, the Russian media added full tanks of gasoline to the fire and the deaths of many Ukrainians (both military and civilians) killed by the separatists – the victims of Russian propaganda – are in a large part on their conscience.

 

 

Russian disinformation is simultaneously targeting three audiences: Russians, Ukrainian citizens and the western states. In Russia, it is a part of a large-scale campaign aimed at consolidating President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian power. So far, this campaign is quite successful. According to public opinion polls by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, in May 2014 Putin’s favourability rating reached almost 86 per cent (for reference, in January 2014 it was at the level of 65.6 per cent). In Ukraine, Russian propaganda aims to arouse hatred of ordinary Ukrainians towards the new authorities. It has achieved considerable success here. In the West, it aims to compromise the post-Maidan authorities of Ukraine to the greatest possible extent. So far, it has been less successful in this regard.

 

Nevertheless, the propaganda primarily focuses on the events in the east of Ukraine and is based on the following message: (in a simplified form, their concrete presentation varies depending on the media and the audience): “In Donbas, the ordinary locals peacefully protest against the violation of their right to speak Russian and demand more autonomy in their region.” In reality, the new authorities did not discredit the linguistic rights of eastern Ukrainians; decentralisation of the country is listed among the top priorities of the new government; and the often well-equipped gunmen and a great number of foreign mercenaries are fighting against Ukrainian troops.

 

“Why were protests on the Maidan allowed, but not in Donbas?” this question is repeated regularly. The propagandists seem to forget that the protests in Kyiv stopped being peaceful only Euromaidan 01 after the former authorities launched massive repressions against the demonstrators. The Molotov cocktails, the main “combat weapon” of the Maidan protesters, are by no means comparable to the portable air defence systems and sniper rifles which the Donbas separatists actively use. Russian media get carried away with stories about “peaceful protesters in the east” so much so that they broadcast a separatist missile bringing down a helicopter of the Ukrainian armed forces without any reservation.

 

Another thesis that is promoted by Russian propaganda is that “the Ukrainian army and volunteers act outrageously and hide behind the peaceful population”. In reality, during the on-going anti-terrorist operations (ATO), the Ukrainian troops and the National Guard try their utmost to avoid civilian casualties. Every day the Russian media features new scenes of “atrocities” purportedly carried out by the Ukrainian military. Many of them prove to be ordinary fakes though. For example, Russian social networks bustle with numerous photos of civilians and children purportedly killed during the ATO. A simple search online proves that those photos were in fact taken during wars in Syria, Yugoslavia or the Caucasus.

 

Apparently this leads to the conclusion that the production of such disinformation is at such a low level, which is not surprising considering that the propagandists enlist the services of non-professionals and ordinary students. Sometimes the cynicism of the propagandists goes over the top. All Russian channels broadcasted a video that showed purportedly Ukrainian military mocking the dead bodies of separatists. In fact these shots were made in Dagestan in Russia, where it was actually the Russian military that had mocked the bodies of North Caucasian gunmen.

 

 

Another message promoted in Russian media is that Ukrainian troops extensively employ foreign mercenaries and the whole anti-terrorism operation is directed by the United States or other NATO states. In reality, the pro-Ukrainian forces are comprised of solely Ukrainian citizens, military personnel and volunteers. Not a single day passes without the Russian media mentioning the “black mercenaries” caught by the “forces of the Donbas militia”. The mercenaries, however, are never shown on camera. Instead, they show stories of separatists and ordinary residents of Donbas saying that they or their friends “heard English”. In some cases, the “mercenaries” come from the Baltic states or Poland. Russian media sometimes report on those Eastern Europeans had purposely received Ukrainian citizenship in order to take part in the ATO. An average consumer of the Russian disinformation was persuaded long ago that the current Ukrainian authorities, both civil and military, are “the puppets of the US State Department”.

 

Russia media often describe the anti-terror operations as being led by Ukrainian neo-Nazis from the Right Sector (RS) who aim to annihilate the Russian speaking population of Donbas. The ATO, however, is carried out by the forces of the Ukrainian army, the National Guard and volunteer formations. There are people of very different political views among the soldiers, including nationalists. Purely nationalistic formations, however, are very few in numbers. The myth of Maidan as “a neo-Nazi take-over” was amplified during the current conflict in Donbas. In fact, this is a profound and dangerous myth, which, after being repeated so frequently by the Russian media, has sparked collective hysteria among thousands of residents of the east of Ukraine. They believe that any stranger could be a member of the Right Sector, especially if he or she speaks Ukrainian. Most of all, they fear that the “pravoseki” (pejorative name of the members of the RS) will come to their streets and organise a bloody terror campaign. In reality, the terror, kidnapping, thefts and looting are now being performed by the separatists-gunmen in Donbas. Despite all its efforts, the Russian television has failed to produce a single gunmen of the Right Sector caught in the east. Overall, the Right Sector is a marginal right-wing Ukrainian party, which speaks out against any manifestations of Nazism, fascism, chauvinism or antisemitism. Its leader, Dmytro Yarosh, won only 0.7 per cent of the votes in the recent presidential elections.

 

Ukraine’s presidential elections in the context of Russian propaganda shall be mentioned separately. Although the presidential campaign has no direct connection to the separatist rebellion in the Donbas region, Russia has given full attention to it. The purpose remains unchanged: to set the residents of the east of Ukraine against the future central authority in Kyiv. Petro Poroshenko and Julia Timoshenko, the two front-runners of the elections, were chosen as targets (as a result they won 54.7 per cent and 12.8 per cent respectively, thus Poroshenko won in first round).

 

Films and features devoted to them, which were broadcasted by Russian TV, turned out to be the worst examples of disinformation in all sense of the word. It included primitive bad-mouthing and appeals to basic human instincts. “Accusations” against Timoshenko and Poroshenko were identical: fraudulently gained capital, criminal and corruption schemes, attempts to force one’s way to politics through connections with people in power (in the case of Timoshenko “through the bed”) and the dependency on the mythical “State Department” and close connections with “neo-Nazis from the Right Sector”. Despite being broadcast as true, there is no real proof of any of it. The purported Jewish origins of the heroes should be noted separately. The Russian propagandists made a specific, clearly negative emphasis on this, appealing to the anti-Semitic attitudes of the audience – the same audience that is brainwashed every day with the stories of rampant neo-Nazism in Ukraine.

 

When the results of elections became clear, the symbol of the whole Russian propaganda, TV presenter Dmitry Kiselyov in his popular weekly programme, exhaustively commented on all the drawbacks of Poroshenko: weak, dependent on the West, unable to implement reforms etc. Hence, Kiselyov set the tone in which Putin-TV would undoubtedly cover the activities of the fifth President of Ukraine (irrespective of the steps that Poroshenko will take in reality).

 

 

In the West, Russian propaganda occasionally prefers more sophisticated methods. Sometimes its activities turn out to be successful. A number of leading German media, for example, have helped spread many of the Kremlin myths in one form or another. The case is either that Germans are supersensitive to anything related to nationalism (the post-war syndrome of the Second World War) or a result of the “close connections” between the German media and the Russian authorities. The fact remains that a number of German (though not only) media on their own incentive, under the influence of the propaganda, retranslate messages that fully reflect the Russian policy on Ukraine.

 

However, on the whole, Russian propaganda is not hugely successful in the West. Governments of the EU and NATO states have their own analytics centres that make telling the truth possible, precluding the Kremlin propaganda from influencing foreign policy.

 

In some cases, Russian propagandists act very openly. For example, Chris Elliot, the editor of the Guardian, has recently noted that the number of comments on the website of his newspaper defending the Russian point of view in relation to Ukraine amounts to 40,000 comments a day. Elliot speculated that this could be a result of funded Internet trolling. An even more illustrative situation occurred when the The Independent held an online opinion poll – around 93 per cent of the visitors to the website named Putin their “favourite world leader”. It was very soon established such phenomenal results had been achieved due to “bots” from Russia and the results of the poll were deleted from the website. But this number still circulates in Russian social networks as proof of Putin’s support in the world.

 

While the actions of Russian propaganda have not delivered any significant results in the West so far, the situation is unfortunately different in Ukraine. For a long time, the majority of Ukrainians treated Kiselyov (and others) as rather comical characters, the heroes of numerous parodies of internet and comedy shows. Nevertheless, many took the propaganda voiced by such “Kiselyovs” very seriously. Many dormant pro-Russian inhabitants of eastern Ukraine, bombarded by anti-Maidan (de-facto anti-European) propaganda during the revolutionary events of November 2013–February 2014, have become intolerant of any other point of view. After the triumph of the Maidan, most of the Ukrainian media have changed their focus to favour the new authorities, undermining their credibility in the eyes of Donbas residents.

 

Therefore, during the separatist meetings, assurance of uninterrupted broadcasting of Russian TV was always named among the top demands of the protesters (up to now TV remains the main source of information for many of the protesters). Russian TV channels, almost non-stop, report on the horrors that the post-Maidan authorities would bring to Donbas: forcible Ukrainianisation, shutting down mines (a large employment sector), forced gay marriages and neo-Nazis that would butcher all Russian speakers. As a result, an ordinary peaceful resident of Donbas, whose right to speak his mother tongue, preserve his culture and honour his heroes has taken up arms to the barricades to “defend against the invasion of the Right Sector”. As a consequence of this, Ukraine has lost hundreds of fellow citizens on both sides of the conflict.

 

The new authorities have failed to set anything against the Kremlin propaganda. Even the broadcasting of the Russian channels was only stopped in the end of March – one month after the annexation of Crimea had started and when the separatist rebels in Donbas were in progress. An elaborate system of state propaganda does not exist. This task lies with the community of volunteers that create projects like www.StopFake.org, where they systematically refute numerous Russian reports (this website is also available in English). Of course such initiatives are helpless in the fight with the immense pro-Russian machine.

 

What is most unfortunate is that even if the anti-terrorist operation succeeds and the armed separatists would be defeated, the minds of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of residents of the east of Ukraine would remain injured by the Russian propaganda. The Ukrainian state will have to sort out this consequence over the next several years.