Anti-Russian Provocations of Western Puppets. Russian Media Monitoring for April 18th-24th
Russian disinformers go on covering every third piece of news about the war and its consequences for Russia. And we continue to analyze the news of Russian websites and review what the enemy is telling its own population about the attack on Ukraine. To do this, we analyzed about 10,000 news items from the Russian state media and manipulative websites that purposefully spread Russian bogus stories.
Encirclement of Azovstal and threats of Ukrainian provocations
Last week, Russian news gave the impression that the whole of Ukraine was Mariupol. The vast majority of news about the war concerned the capture of the city and the encirclement of the Ukrainian military in Azovstal.
As a result, Russian news combined optimistic promises to hold the “Immortal Regiment” rally in Mariupol on May 9th with the discrediting of Ukrainian “mercenaries and neo-Nazis” who are allegedly “afraid to surrender to Russia because of the large number of war crimes they have committed.” They wrote a lot about humanitarian aid to Mariupol residents, ignoring the root causes of why they need it.
Russian disinformers continue to support the narrative of the “liberation” of Ukrainian cities. There are no significant military successes, so they theorize which cities to “liberate” next. Sometimes without noticing how “liberation” in the same sentence turns into “capture”.
The Russian Ministry of Defense (and after it - other mouthpieces of propaganda) also theorizes in order to intimidate its own citizens and to justify the war. They use every opportunity to accuse Ukraine / USA / NATO of future provocations - only on riafan.ru last week they published 31 articles with the word “provocation”. They write about possible “provocations to accuse Russian troops of using chemical, biological, or tactical nuclear weapons.”
Arms Supplies to Ukraine to Exterminate Ukrainians
Supplies of Western weapons to Ukraine haunt the Russians’ minds. They try to discredit them, emphasizing that weapons “may find the way into the wrong hands” and that supplies to Ukraine are disarming the United States and weakening the country’s defence capabilities.
Disinformers use arms supplies and financial support to Ukraine as evidence of external control and the desire of the West to destroy Ukraine:
«The United States, together with controlled Western countries, by increasing the volume of arms supplies to Kyiv, are doing everything to impede the special operation, and thereby showing their intention to fight “to the last Ukrainian”.»
Justifying Their War Crimes
Russia has few positive stories from this war, so disinformers have turned an older lady with a red flag into a meme to mobilize Russian audiences and are exploiting their counter-narrative on “information injects accusing Russia of allegedly committing monstrous war crimes.” Repeating over and over again that the events in Bucha and Kramatorsk are fake.
As an argument, they use the reduction of attention to these events: “the cases of Bucha and Kramatorsk had a brief information splash, and when the Russian side began to insist on the analysis of these incidents in the UN Security Council, all the hype surrounding these events disappeared.”
But they continue to repeat propaganda stamps about alleged atrocities of Ukrainians against Ukrainians:
“Our Armed Forces are accused of something that just makes your hair stand on end – “the massacre in Bucha”, “the missile attack on Kramatorsk”… Moreover, no evidence, even the most irrefutable one, that all this is the work of the Ukrainians themselves, is simply not taken into account.”
They Are All Puppets of the West in the War Against Russia
The collective West continues to play an important role in the Russian media. Against the background of the failures of the Russian army in Ukraine, the West is becoming a full-fledged participant in the conflict, which dreams of “erasing Russia as a state.” Therefore, there is a lot of news with a focus on the direct participation in the war of NATO and US representatives that “uses Kyiv as a puppet in its conflict with Russia,” hinting that they are the ones hindering Russia’s quick victory.
“The supply of weapons and instructors is carried out by London, Zelenskyy is guarded by London, there is a crazy number of Britons in Lviv. Even from the leadership style of the military operation itself, it is clear that there is a presence of British military thought.”
Boris Johnson has been among the top-10 of the most mentioned politicians in the Russian media for more than a week. And Biden is exceeded only by Putin and Zelenskyy. Thus, the narrative about the external enemy remains one of the central narratives of Russian propaganda.
The West not only participates in the war on the side of Ukraine, but also sets other states against Russia. For example, the German leadership could not voluntarily act against Russia, but “the Germans were very well processed by propaganda,” “the German people, who “gave the world great scientists and composers,” today “are driven under the bench and unable to restore order in their own country.”
All the “unfriendly steps” of the countries that used to be members of the USSR are also explained by external governance. For example, Moldova’s decision to ban the use of St. George’s ribbon and Z-V symbols.
The news of Sweden’s and Finland’s desire to join NATO is bitter for Russia. However, this is explained by the influence of NATO agents, not Russia’s actions: “adherents of NATO membership in government circles actually did not care about international law and a number of important agreements”, and “for these countries themselves such a step will bring political and economic problems.”
Russia Has Strong Allies
In the Russian media, Russia continues to play an important role on the world stage and “reserves the right to retaliate” for “unfriendly actions” of other states that the Kremlin does not like, such as the “expulsion of Russian diplomats.” Moscow is creating a new world in order “to fulfil the “dream” of many countries about the end of the hegemony of the dollar in the world. According to it, the creation of a trade union and a new world currency by Russia, China, and Iran will help end domination.”
Journalists claim that there is an anti-Western union of states that opposes the West:
“Saudi Arabia has decided to turn its back on the US and join Russia and China”
Denial of Default
Russian journalists continue to write briefly about new sanctions against Russia, describing attempts to minimize influence.
And the news about the “artificial default in Russia” is supplemented by a new point that it is in fact a default in the West: “the freezing of assets of the Central Bank of Russia in the West can be interpreted as a kind of default on their part, because we are talking about the Russian money, which is not returned to it.”
