Ukraine says Russia used fake news to justify war
Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform has reported that Russian authorities used fake news and disinformation to justify the country's invasion of Ukraine and argued that Western efforts to debunk such reports have proven inadequate.
Ukrinform wrote on its website that in Russia, the war in Ukraine officially started on March 1, 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea "and was launched with a fake report manufactured by Russian special services and politicians."
Dmytro Zolotukhin, a former Ukrainian deputy minister of information, wrote that such a move was needed in order for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be able to deploy the army beyond Russia's borders. Approval was granted on March 1, 2014, by the Federation Council, which Ukrinform said is "totally controlled by the President's Administration."
The story proffered to persuade the Russian population that war was inevitable concerned allegations made by the RT TV channel that Dmytro Yarosh, leader of Ukrainian right-wing movement 'Right Sector,' had called on a Chechen terrorist, Doku Umarov, to "make common cause against Russia." As evidence of this, a social media screenshot was presented, described by Ukrinform as "unconvincing."
The screenshot claimed that many Ukrainians were "up in arms" to fight Russia and that "it is time to support Ukraine now."
A Right Sector representative said their VKontakte social media account had been hacked and that Yarosh would never have written such a post, Ukrinform reported. The text was circulated by Russian media, according to Ukrinform, so that the Russian population was told that "Ukrainian nationalists and Chechen terrorists are uniting against Russia."
"This is how Putin has got his excuse for starting the war," Ukrinform wrote.
The Ukrinform article went on to discuss Russian fake news on the subject of US-funded chemical warfare laboratories in Ukraine. "In February-March 2022, Russians used the same methodology to explain their domestic audience why they invaded Ukraine," Ukrinform wrote. "This time it was about the U.S.-controlled biological laboratories operating on the territory of Ukraine."
Zolotukhin stated that on March 6, 2022, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said the Russian army had discovered a US-funded lab and that the staff wanted urgently to destroy pathogens of "plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera, and other deadly diseases."
Though Western media set out to debunk the story, "frankly speaking, nobody cared about this debunking effort anymore," Ukrinform wrote, going on to report that the story had first appeared as early as April 13, 2020.
The agency wrote that the "Scientific and Technical Center in Ukraine" (STCU) was established on October 25, 1993, by an international agreement signed between the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Ukraine," and became a platform for disseminating scientific grant money.
"STCU was a part of the programs financed by the U.S. authorities, including the Pentagon, aimed at non-proliferation efforts," Ukrinform reported.
The article further stated that in 2020 the US embassy in Kyiv "issued a very ineffective and weak statement on the issue that was later used by Russian propaganda in Ukraine as a sign of recognition of the existence of biological labs in Ukraine."
Ukrinform concluded by claiming that "debunking efforts fail to prevent wars." Zolotukhin argued that the voices of the Ukrainian government and US embassy were "too weak to create opposition to massive propaganda." (PAP)
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