Prepare for winter
In Ukraine, winter has come. Since it began in February 2022, Russia’s full-scale war is entering its third winter period. At the end of last week, we witnessed perhaps the most intense Russian drone attacks against civilian targets in Ukraine. What is the usual Kremlin cocktail of messages and disinformation when it gets cold? A closer look at the previous winters, in 2022 and 2023, can serve as an indication of what to expect this winter.
After more than 21 months of intense war and senseless destruction in Ukraine on all fronts, Kremlin disinformation no longer even attempts to hide Moscow’s goal: namely, the destruction of the modern Ukrainian state. Ukrainian statehood and identity are denied. Putin and his aides reiterate that Russia cannot accept a neighbor that seeks to build its future outside of Moscow’s control. The Kremlin perceives almost as a law of nature that the world should be structured in this way. Public opinion polls by the Levada-Center, Russia’s only non-government-controlled institute, continue to show that about 70 percent (41% “strongly yes” + 32% “yes”) of Russians express support for Russian military action in Ukraine.
But how to convince people outside of Russia? The answer is that it is done through brute force and manipulation.
Hatred and subjugation
Despite intense attacks during the first cold months of the start of the war in 2022 – February, March and April – Russia failed to break Ukraine’s spirit. Last winter, from November 2022 onwards, Moscow attempted to “process” target audiences” in Ukraine with massive bombing aimed at destroying energy and heat transfer infrastructure. In addition, the Kremlin tried to demoralize Europe with predictions that the continent would “collapse” due to the lack of Russian gas. None of this happened. Ukraine did not collapse and Europe endured.
Fake negotiations
The prospect of peace talks has a magical sound. What could be more tempting to people living under a rain of bombs than to hear that peace talks are underway and their suffering will end? But Ukrainians in places like Bucha, Mariupol, the areas around Kharkiv and elsewhere learned the lesson of what peace under Russian control entails: deportation and atrocities. As we shall see, mantras for peace negotiations resemble the bewitching songs of the sirens of mythology that confuse sailors and shipwreck them…
The Kremlin has repeatedly used the trick of pretending to want peace. The Russians called on NATO to return to its pre-1997 borders. After the full-scale invasion, at talks in Belarus in March 2022, Moscow demanded that Kiev relinquish territories and surrender outright. In the fall of 2022, after the destruction of agricultural infrastructure, ports and arable land on a scale unseen in recent world history and the absurd so-called “official annexation” of four Ukrainian regions to the Russian Federation, they tried again: accept the loss of the annexed territories and stop fighting!
Winter 2023: The Deceptive Sirens Song
We are already in the month of December 2023, and Russian missiles and drones are operating in parallel with the Kremlin’s attempts to sow new doubts about the authority of the political leaders of both Ukraine and the West. In previous weeks, we have documented how the campaign against President Zelenskyi, his wife and the commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Zaluzhnyi, has gained momentum again.
Now the smear campaign has developed with widespread coverage in Russian state media and pro-Kremlin platforms of “revelations” by David Arahamia, a leading member of Zelensky’s political party and head of the Ukrainian delegation to the peace talks in the spring of 2022. The media in question used manipulatively selected quotes about how the Belarus peace talks in March 2022 would have succeeded had it not been for the sinister hand of the Anglo-Saxons, and in particular Boris Johnson, whom the Kremlin’s propaganda network has labeled a warmonger.
The Russian leadership-controlled outlets focus on the first element: peace could have been secured if Ukraine had promised to remain neutral and outside of NATO. However, they forget to mention the other important part of Arahamia’s interview with the Ukrainian media 1+1, also quoted by “Ukrainskaya Pravda”: Kiev had no confidence that Russia would abide by such a deal and not attack again. Judging by past experience with Russia’s approach to negotiations, it usually goes like this: concessions are made to Russia, and then Russia makes even stronger demands for more concessions to the negotiating partner in a more prestigious position.
At the same time, the Kremlin loudly and constantly repeats its ideologues about weakening international support for Ukraine – that this country is allegedly Nazi, controlled by corrupt pedophiles, divided by coup attempts and even desperately sending old men and children to the front. Meanwhile, Poland, another favorite target of Moscow’s criticism, has been lambasted for wanting to revive the Polish Empire. In short, the message is that the West should abandon Ukraine and seek an agreement with Moscow. However, the situation resembles the legends of Greek mythology, in which the deceptive song of the sirens is intended to lure sailors off course and shipwreck.
Other disinformation attempts by Russia:
– Western bombs are the cause of the wave of refugees at the Russian-Finnish border. It is part of a wider campaign by the Kremlin to use migrants as a hybrid weapon against the European Union and Finland, possibly in retaliation for Finland joining NATO and stoking anti-Western sentiment over the Gaza conflict. There is no connection between the war in Gaza and what is happening on the Russian-Finnish border, as most migrants trying to cross into Finland come from Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Turkey. In response to Russia’s actions, the Finnish government decided to close the entire eastern border from November 30 to December 13, with the possibility of an extension.
– The West is preparing Georgia for a new color revolution. Also false. Over time, one begins to understand why this popular Kremlin narrative appears again and again with claims such as that the West and Ukraine want Georgia to go to war with Russia. The European Commission recently recommended that Georgia receive the status of a candidate country for EU membership. Such a status does not fit into the aforementioned notion that Moscow has the right to dominate its neighbors. The Kremlin sees “Western dark forces” behind any display of political ambition that runs counter to Moscow’s aspirations. The Kremlin cannot fathom that local people may have their own geopolitical ambitions, so it labels them Russophobes or color revolutionaries.
– We will end with a typical example of clickbait: Ukrainian children are sold for 150,000 dollars each at the Polish border. This is another attempt to undermine the authority of the leadership in Kyiv, including President Zelensky, as well as Ukraine as a whole. The fake “news” is as insane as the so-called “Pizzagate” allegations that Hillary Clinton ran a child abuse ring. However, if amplified by an army of trolls and artificial intelligence bots, this new false narrative could flood the information space and distract from the real problem: Russia’s cold-blooded, brutal attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine. Let’s not get caught on the line.
EUvsDisinfo/ translation: Representation of the European Commission in Bulgaria
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Rating 2.2 from 31 votes.
2023-12-05 17:27:00
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