[WonderMomma]

Originally Posted by kellyhound ↗

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegatio...read-russia_en

Thanks for this Kellyhound... but I'm sure it will be dismissed due to the fact it's the EU.

Don't mind me, I'm going to copy/paste the info from the link here.

_______________________

Disinformation About Russia's invasion of Ukraine - Debunking Seven Myths spread by Russia (https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegatio...read-russia_en)

18.03.2022 Brussels

The following article presents a selection of the myths and disinformation pushed by pro-Kremlin channels since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis. From its illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and its ongoing military aggression against Ukraine, Russia has waged a sustained and coordinated state-controlled disinformation campaign targeting the Russian population, Russia’s neighbour countries, and the rest of the world, particularly aiming at influencing public opinion.

These most prevalent and dangerous myths — some of them outright lies — illustrate the Kremlin’s attempt to spread disinformation and manipulate information in order to justify its military aggression against Ukraine.

The article is an update and synthesis of previous work by EUvsDisinfo on the topic: “Disinformation About the Current Russia-Ukraine Conflict – Seven Myths Debunked” and “The Kremlin’s Playbook: Fabricating Pretext to Invade Ukraine - More Myths”

Myth 1: “The situation in Ukraine triggered this conflict. There is proof that Ukraine is committing atrocities against its Russian-speaking population in the country’s east. Russia has to intervene, not least because Ukraine and Russia are ‘one nation.’ Ukraine simply belongs to Russia’s “privileged sphere of influence”.

To galvanize domestic support for Russia’s military aggression, Russian state-controlled media have tirelessly sought to vilify Ukraine, falsely accusing it of genocide in eastern Ukraine, drawing groundless parallels with Nazism and World War Two, and fabricating stories aimed at striking a negative emotional chord with audiences.

There are many instances of such fabricated stories, best illustrated by the famous example of a Russian television report accusing Ukrainian forces of crucifying a young boy in eastern Ukraine in the beginning of the conflict. Fact-checkers were quick to prove that the story was entirely made up. Similar stories continue to be produced.

In reality, there is no evidence that Russian-speaking or ethnic Russian residents in eastern Ukraine face persecution – let alone genocide — at the hands of Ukrainian authorities. This has been confirmed in reports published by the Council of Europe, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the OSCE.

The often-used claim that Ukraine and Russia are “one nation” is one of the oldest and most deeply ingrained myths used against Ukraine. Even from a long-term historic perspective, this argument does not hold. While they have common roots dating back to Kievan Rus, which existed from the ninth century to the mid-13th century, it is just not true to argue that Ukrainians and Russians are one nation 800 years later. Despite long periods of foreign rule, Ukraine has a strong national culture and identity, and is a sovereign country.

The notion of an “all-Russian nation” with no political borders is an ideological construct dating back to imperial times and has been used as an instrument to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and national identity. Since 2014, the Russian government has cultivated this myth with renewed vigour in an attempt to rationalise and justify its military aggression against Ukraine.

Notions of “spheres of influence” have no place in the 21st century. Like all sovereign states, Ukraine is free to determine its own path, its foreign and security policies and alliances, and its participation in international organisations and military alliances.

To advance the idea that Ukraine belongs to Russia’s “sphere of influence,” Russian authorities and state-controlled media frequently claim that Ukraine is not a “real” state. State-sponsored Russian propaganda tries to misrepresent history in order to legitimize the idea that Ukraine belongs to Russia’s natural sphere of interests.

Myth 2: “Ukraine is conducting genocide against the Russian-speaking population in the East.”
By accusing the Ukrainian government of the deadliest of crimes against humanity, the Kremlin not only tries to portray Kyiv as the worst of villains, but also abuses the term that is clearly defined in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1948.

Such claims have been unequivocally debunked by independent Russian media, among others. None of the multiple reports on the human rights situation in Ukraine, which are regularly published by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, or the reports on the human rights situation in Ukraine come even close to referencing genocide in Ukraine. Ukraine has sought an emergency order from the International Court of Justice to halt hostilities on its territory based on Kremlin’s ill-intentioned accusation of genocide.

Throughout the years, the pro-Kremlin media have used the word “genocide” liberally, to describe things that have nothing to do with large-scale human rights violations, thus undermining this term of international law itself. Examples include alleged water and visa “genocide” in Crimea and “genocide” of Ukrainians refusing to buy Sputnik V vaccine.

Myth 3: “Ukraine will use chemical, nuclear and other prohibited weapons against civilians in Donbas.

Ukraine has never produced, stockpiled or used chemical weapons. The US is also a signatory of the Chemical Weapons convention, and does not use chemical weapons.

The pro-Kremlin media have also accused the Ukrainian military of using white phosphorus ammunitions, banned under the Geneva Convention, while Telegram channels, affiliated with the Russian secret services, have spread rumours about homemade radioactive bombs. Pro-Kremlin media have recently claimed that Ukraine was developing nuclear weapons (a plutonium-based “dirty bomb”) in Chernobyl, but no source or evidence was provided. Such false narratives are promoted to evoke fear and act as emotion-triggers, denigrating the Ukrainian armed forces while justifying Russia’s attack on the Chernobyl nuclear plant and Ukraine in general.

The pro-Kremlin media has a long history of distortion of facts about chemical weapons, including denial of chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian regime. The pro-Kremlin media has also been instrumental in obfuscating the facts about Russia actually using chemical weapons in the assassination attempt of Alexei Navalny and in the Salisbury poisoning.

Myth 4: “Ukrainians have been committing atrocities in Donbas.”

This has been one of the most prominent disinformation narratives used by the Kremlin to justify military invasion of Ukraine. For years, the pro-Kremlin media have used highly emotional and fabricated messages to incite hatred and fear of Ukrainians, in particular among the domestic Russian audiences. Following the infamous fabrication about a “crucified boy”, circulated by the pro-Kremlin media back in 2014, there have been wild allegations of Ukrainian armed forces organizing “human safaris” where rich Westerners could allegedly buy the right to kill civilians in Donbas (2018). Similar claims about alleged “sniper safari” were made as recently as February 2022. In the spring of 2021, Russian state media heavily promoted the story of a 4-year boy in Donbas allegedly killed by a Ukrainian drone. By all accounts, the reason of his death was a forgery.

Myth 5: “The current tensions are the result of persistent aggressive behaviour of Ukraine and its allies in the West. Russia is defending its legitimate interests and is not responsible for this conflict”.

The fact is that Russia continues to violate international law as well as other agreements to which it committed. By illegally annexing the Crimean peninsula and committing acts of armed aggression against Ukraine, Russia, one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, has violated at least 12 international and bilateral treaties. These include the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, and the Charter of Paris, which guarantee sovereign equality and territorial integrity of States, the inviolability of frontiers, refraining from the threat or use of force, and the freedom of States to choose or change their own security arrangements.

In other words, Russia’s actions undermining and threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, are illegal. They continue to threaten the European security order at its core and put the international rules-based order at risk.

Such disinformation messages are closely linked to a prominent disinformation narrative of “Nazi” Ukraine, cultivated by the Kremlin for years. Now, Russia has used “denazification” as a pretext to invade Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine is governed by a democratically elected government. Over 8 million Ukrainians died fighting Nazism in the World War II.

Myth 6: “The current crisis is the fault of NATO and the West. If they had honoured their promise not to enlarge the alliance, Russia would not feel threatened.”

Such a promise was never made, nor was it ever asked from NATO. Russian state-controlled media have often claimed that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was promised “verbally” that NATO would not expand beyond the reunified Germany. In fact, Gorbachev himself denied this claim in a 2014 interview, saying that, “the topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991.”

NATO members never made any political or legally binding commitments not to extend the alliance beyond the borders of reunified Germany.

The claim alleging that NATO promised not to enlarge fundamentally misrepresents the nature of the alliance. NATO, as a defensive alliance, is not “expanding” in the imperialistic sense. Decisions regarding NATO membership are up to each individual applicant and the current 30 NATO allies. Every sovereign state can choose its path and bordering states – in this case Russia – have no right to intervene.

Myth 7: “Because of NATO’s aggressive expansion, Russia is now ‘encircled by enemies’ and needs to defend itself.”

No country or alliance is plotting to invade Russia. No one is threatening Russia. In fact, the EU and Ukraine are staunch supporters of the established European security order. Remember that Russia is the world’s largest country by geography with a population of more than 140 million and has one of the largest armed forces in the world with the highest number of nuclear weapons. It is absurd to portray Russia as a country under acute threat. In terms of geography, less than one sixteenth of Russia’s land border is with NATO members. Of the 14 countries Russia borders, only five are NATO members.

There is also no argument that would suggest that military force is the only solution. There are several international organisations, bilateral agreements, and formats where Russia can engage in a collaborative and peaceful dialogue – for instance in the OSCE framework and arms control regimes. The EU keeps channels of communication with Russia open as an integrated part of the EU’s Russia policy of five guiding principles. There is no shortage of established formats for communication. However, as a sovereign country, Ukraine has every right to choose its policies and alliances. The notion that Russia should have a veto power over Ukraine’s sovereign decisions is baseless. In this regard, neither the EU nor NATO claim to have a veto on which states may be a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), because the EU and NATO are not party to that treaty.

[WhiskeyOutpost]

Originally Posted by kellyhound ↗

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegatio...read-russia_en

"To advance the idea that Ukraine belongs to Russia’s “sphere of influence,” Russian authorities and state-controlled media frequently claim that Ukraine is not a “real” state. State-sponsored Russian propaganda tries to misrepresent history in order to legitimize the idea that Ukraine belongs to Russia’s natural sphere of interests."

[Wailode]

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegatio...read-russia_en

Nice article. Straigh up lies denying atrocities commited on russian native speakers in last 8 years.
Some french journalists were even banned on reporting situation on donbass. No one sane can take this article seriously but yet here we have few examples. I bet some of this people would deny even holocaust in WW2 to fit their narrative and bubble dream and then have audacity to call it unprovoked war and act like innocent victims.

It touches only very surface of all problems and injusticies that caused the war escalation. Cherry picking what it sues them. I bet russians have also many false flag but that doesnt support idea that war happened on base of russian imprialism.

I saw first hand videos and stories about what was hapenning in that time. Lots of movies and documents were even banned because they didnt fit under west propaganda narrative. Some of them were made pre 2014. Thats how they basically do it. War on information from first day.

With what will they come next time ? Well, they can even say that those 14k deaths just popped out of air right ? Practically denying most of the false flags they created and ignoring terrorist attacks like pipe line or crimea bridge.

[Wailode]

Some more info about the background of war escalation:

The crimes committed in Maidan Square in February 2014 have gone unpunished to this day. Those guilty of the monstrous tragedy in Odessa on May 2, 2014 have not been found and punished.
During this tragedy, about 50 people were burned alive and killed in the local House of Trade Unions. The political assassinations of Oles Buzina, Pavel Sheremet and other public figures and journalists are in the same category. Despite this, attempts are being made to impose on us a completely different narrative about Russian aggression as the prime cause for these problems.

In the process, people ignore the fact that for over eight years the Ukrainian army and militants from nationalist groups have been killing Donbass residents with impunity only because they refused to recognise the outcome of the criminal, bloody, anti-constitutional coup in Kiev and decided to uphold their rights as guaranteed by Ukraine’s constitution, including the right to freely use their native Russian tongue.

Then Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseny Yatsenyuk said in 2015 that sub-humans lived in Donbass. Current President Vladimir Zelensky has not moved too far from this. When asked what he thought about the residents of Donbass in his interview in September 2021, he replied that some were people and others were creatures or animal species. This is a salient feature of the Ukrainian regime, both under Petr Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky.

They called all those who objected to the results of the coup terrorists. For eight years, the Kiev regime conducted a “military operation” against peaceful civilians in Donbass. For a long time now, Ukraine has been carrying out the total mobilisation of adults, including women, to recruit them into nationalist battalions and the Ukrainian armed forces.

Hypocritically declaring their commitment to the Minsk agreements, the Kiev authorities openly subverted the implementation of the agreements, and did so with impunity. A financial, transport and energy blockade was imposed on Donbass. Its residents were cut off from their social benefits, pensions, salaries, banking services, communications, education and healthcare. They were deprived of elementary civil rights that were guaranteed, in particular, by the 1966 international covenants on economic, social and cultural rights, as well as on civil and political rights.

At some point, when he got tired of pretending, Zelensky said that the only thing the Minsk Package of Measures was needed for was to keep the sanctions on Russia in place. His predecessor in office and co-author of the Minsk agreements, Poroshenko, was even more outspoken. A couple of months ago, he publicly and proudly stated that neither he nor anyone in Ukraine planned on fulfilling the agreements he had signed. They were needed only to buy time to receive weapons from the Western countries for war with the Russian Federation. Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council Secretary Aleksey Danilov spoke along the same lines.

The Kiev regime owes its impunity to its Western curators, primarily Germany and France, and of course, the United States. Instead of pressing Kiev into complying with the Minsk agreements, Berlin and Paris cynically turned a blind eye to Kiev’s open threats to resolve the “Donbass problem” forcefully, the so-called plan B.

In recent years, the Kiev regime has waged an all-out onslaught on the Russian language and infringed on the rights of the Russian and Russian-speaking people of Ukraine with impunity. Controversial language laws – On Education (2017), On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language (2019), On Complete General Secondary Education (2020), and On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine (2021) were adopted. All of them were aimed at severely limiting the Russian language and, in fact, completely banning it.

At the same time, laws were passed that encouraged Nazi theory and practice. Kiev completely ignored the half-hearted recommendations issued by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, the Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities to improve the language related legislation. In turn, these multilateral entities were unable to muster the courage (or maybe they were simply not allowed to do so) to induce the Ukrainian authorities to fulfill their international obligations in human rights.

The Ministry of Education of Ukraine removed the Russian language and Russian literature from the school curriculum. Books in Russian are being banned and destroyed like in Nazi Germany, and monuments to Russian writers are being torn down.

[WhiskeyOutpost]

You're literally just copying existing things and replying it here.

Also completely omitting questions to you.

You don't see this as a discussion, more as a repository for your bullshit.

[Wailode]

Zelensky’s interview on August 5, 2021 was a high point in this regard. In it, he told everyone who feels Russian to leave for Russia for the good of their children and grandchildren.

I think that the decisions made by the people in a number of Ukrainian regions to hold referendums are a response to his wishes.
Ukraine is intensifying the persecution of dissidents under the pretext of countering “the Russian aggression” and “separatism.” A ban on the activities of 11 political parties was imposed last March under the pretext that they were “tied to Russia.” The leading opposition television channels that broadcasted in Russian were shut down long ago. Websites that the government finds objectionable are being blocked. Journalists are harassed for attempts to express an alternative view on what is happening. Prominent Ukrainian public figure Yelena Berezhnaya is in a Ukrainian Security Service dungeon. She repeatedly spoke at the UN and the OSCE about the growth of neo-Nazism in Ukraine.

We have no doubt that Ukraine has finally turned into a Nazi-style totalitarian state where standards of international humanitarian law are trampled underfoot with impunity. It is no surprise that the Ukrainian armed forces and nationalist battalions resort to terrorist tactics and use civilians as “living shields.”

The position of the states that are pumping Ukraine with weapons and combat equipment and training its armed forces is particularly cynical against this backdrop. The goal is obvious (they declare it rather than hide it) – to drag out the hostilities as much as possible despite the human losses and destruction in order to exhaust and weaken Russia. This implies the direct involvement of Western countries in the Ukrainian conflict, which is turning them into its party. The deliberate fuelling of this conflict by the collective West also goes without consequence. Indeed, they won’t punish themselves, will they?

We have no illusions that today the armed forces of Russia and the defenders of the DPR and the LPR are opposed not only by the neo-Nazi units of the Kiev regime but also by the war machine of the “collective West”. NATO is supplying the Ukrainian armed forces with real-time intelligence information using modern systems, aircraft, ships, satellites and strategic drones. Ukraine is incited to defeat Russia on the battlefield (as EU officials openly say) and Russia must be deprived of any sovereignty by way of punishment. This is no longer latent racism. It is as overt as it can be.

Vladimir Zelensky is rejoicing at the efficiency of Western arms against the background of massive shelling of residential areas in Donbass. This is a quote: “Finally, we feel that Western artillery has become very powerful – these are weapons we received from our Western partners. This accuracy is exactly what we need,” said the cynical leader of this state entity. Meanwhile, no military or strategic targets were hit during this shelling of residential areas. The suffering is befalling civilians in Donbass.

Since late July, the Ukrainian armed forces have scattered prohibited anti-personnel Petal mines over the centre of Donetsk and its suburbs. The use of these mines is a crude violation of the 1997 convention on the prohibition of anti-personnel mines, which Ukraine ratified in 2005, as well as the second protocol to the Geneva convention on conventional arms (that bans mines without a self-destruct device).

Such outrages have become possible and remain unpunished because the United States and its allies have consistently covered up the crimes of the Kiev regime for eight years with the connivance of international human rights institutions. They have built their policy on Zelensky based on the notorious American principle: “Sure, he is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch.”
The uncomfortable truth, smearing Ukraine’s luminous image as a victim of Russian aggression, is being meticulously hushed up and sometimes openly deleted. Even the Western human rights organisation Amnesty International that can hardly be suspected of sympathising with Russia, was subjected to severe criticism and blacklisted as a Kremlin agent. It was punished just for confirming in its report the commonly known facts about Kiev deploying artillery and heavy weapons at civilian facilities.

The criminal shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant by the Kiev regime militants, which creates the risk of a nuclear disaster, remains unpunished. The shelling continues despite the fact that the IAEA staff has been present at the station since September 1, and it is not hard to identify the party responsible for the shelling.
Let me remind you that the IAEA mission’s visit to the Zaporozhye NPP was artificially delayed. The details of the visit were agreed upon on June 3, and the mission could have safely gone there. Later, an unseemly situation arose where the UN Secretariat’s Department of Safety and Security refused to greenlight a particular route that had been agreed upon by Russia and the IAEA. Then it claimed that the IAEA would determine the mission’s parameters on its own. These unseemly proceedings pushed the IAEA mission’s visit to the Zaporozhye NPP back by three months.

The fate of the Russian troops who ended up in the hands of Ukrainian nationalists is something that is of great concern to us. There is ample evidence of abusive treatment, including out-of-court killings in violation of international humanitarian law. I’m sure that everyone who is interested in what is actually happening in Ukraine has seen videos of the Russian prisoners of war being killed by Ukrainian Nazis. They threw the POWs to the ground with their hands tied behind their backs and shot them in the head. Have any of the countries represented here commented on this crime?
We have a great amount of evidence of these and other crimes regularly committed by the Kiev regime since 2014. In cooperation with their colleagues from the DPR and the LPR, Russian law enforcement agencies record and investigate these crimes. Over 220 individuals have been identified, including representatives of the high command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and military unit commanders, those who were involved in shooting civilians.
Criminal cases are being investigated involving citizens of Great Britain, Canada, the United States, and the Netherlands regarding the facts of mercenary activities and the perpetration of criminal acts in Ukraine. Rest assured that all those responsible, regardless of their nationality, will be held accountable.

Once again, I would like you to take note of the following: Russian and Ukrainian negotiators almost agreed on the settlement terms proposed by Kiev in Istanbul in late March, but tragic events unfolded in Bucha a couple of days later. No one has any doubts that it was a staged performance. Right after this staged act became publicly known, our Western colleagues went hysterical and imposed another package of sanctions on the Russian Federation accusing us of killing civilians. No one has ever mentioned Bucha since the time this propagandistic effect was achieved. No one, but us. Once again, in the presence of the Secretary-General and esteemed ministers, I’m asking you to please get the Ukrainian authorities to take the elementary step of releasing the names of the people whose corpses were shown in Bucha. I’ve been asking for this for several months now. No one seems to hear me or is willing to respond.

[WhiskeyOutpost]

What a crock of shit this guy. Just paste in some Kremlin hogwash, surely someone will believe it.

How's the war going?

[Wailode]

Originally Posted by WhiskeyOutpost ↗

You're literally just copying existing things and replying it here.

Also completely omitting questions to you.

You don't see this as a discussion, more as a repository for your bullshit.

What questions ? Can you be specific ? You straight up denying that there were atrocities made by ukraine regime 2014-2022 by some joke article full of propaganda and you still want me to take you seriously ? How should I react to your dream reality of propaganda denying historical facts that were well documented from more objective perspective ?

I am open for debate, but with sane individuals. Not with someone who denying basic premises of why war even happened. Thats just pure delusion.

[WhiskeyOutpost]

Originally Posted by Wailode ↗

What questions ? Can you be specific ? You straight up denying that there were atrocities made by ukraine regime 2014-2022 by some joke article full of propaganda and you still want me to take you seriously ? How should I react to your dream reality of propaganda denying historical facts that were well documented from more objective perspective ?

I am open for debate, but with sane individuals. Not with someone who denying basic premises of why war even happened. Thats just pure delusion.

Are you satisfied with the outstanding performance of the Russian Army in this war?

[Wailode]

Originally Posted by WhiskeyOutpost ↗

Are you satisfied with the outstanding performance of the Russian Army in this war?

I am not satisfied with any war. I am against it and from first week I was pushing idea of peace agreements and talk points that can result in diplomacy of some sort. Problem is that by sending weapons and not recognizing crimes of ukraine regime collective west escalated this war quickly and blamed russia for everything, not recognizing own faults and mistakes.