The Anglo-Saxons Are Suffocating Europe and Selling Ukrainian Weapons to Africa. Monitoring of Russian Mass Media for June 27th - July 3rd

Desolate Donetsk and the propagandistic use of Ukrainian prisoners of war

Last week, Russian propagandists and disinformers closed the “encirclement ring” around Lysychansk. This became the number one topic when reporting on the progress of hostilities in Ukraine. In fact, the Ukrainian military managed to escape the encirclement and make an organized exit from the city. A lot was also written about Ukraine’s massive shelling of the civilian population in separate raions (districts) of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (regions) and how Russia is helping the residents of Donbas and other occupied territories in every possible way. At the same time, it seems that the propagandists went a little overboard with the panic-mongering, so the Donetsk collaborators had to crank out several reassuring statements and interviews to quell the anxious moods of the local population: “We have some kind of strange panic that Donetsk is all on fire and blazing. This is a wrong impression, because a city of one and a half million cannot be terrified by dozens, or hundreds, even two hundred artillery tubes. […] Yes, they are shooting at Donetsk, it is quite deserted, many families have left. Many have taken their families away.”

Little was said about the setback of the Russians from Zmіinyi island, the official comment of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation about the “goodwill gesture” was disseminated.

We also notice that the Russians are increasingly using our prisoners of war in their propaganda. Misinformers spread streams of stories about “acute conflicts between the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Ukrainian national battalions”, that “the Ukrainian command puts its soldiers in a hopeless situation”, and also that our soldiers “fought to the last bullet, and then surrendered, because they ran out of everything, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense sells weapons to Africa without blinking.”

MI6 oversees the sale of Western military aid from Ukraine to African countries

The issue of supplying military aid to Ukraine is one of the most painful for the Russian Federation. Therefore, since the beginning of such processes, Russian mass media have been actively spreading thematic fakes and horror stories.

The most popular are points that Ukraine sells Western military aid: “Illegal trade in weapons at the state level is not a novelty for Ukraine”, “Experts believe that weapons do not go to the Ukrainian army, but straight to the black market”, “You can recall that in 2014 NATO rations began to arrive in Ukraine, not yet when they arrived, they appeared on the eBay auction. Now the weapons are actively traded on the DarkNet.”

Russian journalists even found the main Western arms dealers: “The first on the list turned out to be the head of the Odesa oblast military administration Maksym Marchenko. He was instructed to control the sale of weapons in the region. This is done with the help of local smugglers”, “the head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov is involved in the scheme for the secret sale of Western weapons supplied to Ukraine.”

African countries became the main buyer of Western weapons in Ukraine: “The West cannot sell its weapons to African countries directly. However, the «military assistance» provided by the «independent» [Ukraine] and allegedly written off at the front is a tasty morsel”, “and representatives of the British intelligence MI-6 are in charge of all arms sales”. And James Bond personally, we’d like to add.

Russia is not threatened by Finland and Sweden joining NATO

The accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO became a big problem and a nuisance for Russia. They immediately started saying that “Finland and Sweden made a strategic mistake by deciding to join NATO. ... to remain neutral in the modern world is a very beneficial policy for the countries”.

When Russian mass media wrote about the Scandinavians joining the Alliance, they avoided at all costs reports or hints that this was a strategic failure of the Russian leadership, which publicly announced that Russia was invading Ukraine because of our desire to join NATO. Therefore, in the news, they decided to go the other way - reports spread that the accession of these countries to the Alliance does not particularly threaten the Russian Federation:

“Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev drew attention to the fact that the possible expansion of NATO through the membership of Sweden and Finland would not provoke new threats to Russia.”

“In the next 3-5 years, they will not strengthen the defence capability of the Alliance, but rather sit on NATO’s neck. Because in order to fit into the framework, standards, and requirements of NATO, it takes a long time to comply. That is, to retrain and understand all internal mechanisms of action of the Alliance”.

After all, it is true. NATO has never carried out an aggressive policy towards Russia, the Kremlin knows it, and the “threat from NATO” is just a cover for an attempt to occupy Ukraine, which is Russia’s main goal. In fact, NATO was of interest to Russia only in the context of the fact that Ukraine’s accession to the Alliance would make Russian invasion impossible.

But by inciting anti-NATO hysteria, the Kremlin must now calm down the population of the Russian Federation. So politicians and officials of Russia promise that Moscow “will give an appropriate military-technical answer to this, most likely by deploying high-precision weapons and units in the Baltic Sea and in the North of Russia.”

“The Swedes and Finns themselves are unlikely to attack, but the Yankees are adept at organizing provocations that force countries, even against their will and national interests, to take part in foreign wars. Given the general state of military danger and the growing tension in global politics, one has to hedge the bets just in case”.

In parallel with these loud statements, Russia is withdrawing its troops from bases near Finland and Norway and transferring them to Ukraine.

Economic collapse of Europe

Journalists of Russian media do not stop writing about the future economic collapse of the European Union. News about inflation and stagnation in the EU is spread with particular enthusiasm: “the level of current inflation is already prohibitively high, but the situation continues to deteriorate”, “inflation and pressure on the population and business remain high”, “If Europe, especially after World War II, found rational, peaceful ways to resolve international disputes, then this time it is regressing”, “The European Union has been called the «gravedigger» of its own economy”.

Reason for kibosh: “The EU does not belong to itself. It is the object of control by the Anglo-Saxons, and at the same time the milch cow of the current crisis.”

Germany, which is making more anti-Putin statements, receives a large amount of dirt in the news of Russian media today. And the object of criticism was German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who “does everything to ensure that Germany rolls even faster into the abyss. So that the last thing on which it has at least some kind of influence in Europe is destroyed. This is the economy. But, alas, it does not depend on him alone. Much more on those forces that have been guiding the policy of West Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany for almost 80 years.”

Olaf Scholz also made it to the list of politicians most often mentioned in Russian news last week.

They also wrote:

Fakes continued to be spread about Poland’s desire to annex not only part of Ukraine, but also the territories of Belarus and Lithuania: “Look how persistently they are pushing the young NATO members, especially the Poles, to become directly involved in the events in Ukraine. They nod approvingly in response to Warsaw’s absurd fantasies about a new Rzeczpospolita, turn a blind eye to the inhumane and racist statements of the Polish elite, in every possible way encourage the growth of nationalist and chauvinist moods there. In fact, they are nurturing a new hyena of Europe”, “Poland seeks to revive Rzeczpospolita by dismembering Ukraine, and annexing the Western Belarusian territories and Lithuania.”

They tried to convince that Transcarpathia is historical Hungary, and Budapest wants to annex these lands: “A heavy burden of historical injustice is also borne today by Hungary, whose cities of Uzhhorod, Mukachevo, and Chop in Transcarpathia were taken by the Red Army in 1944. Yevglevsky insists that the Hungarians have never recognized Transcarpathia as anyone’s, except as their own, and are unlikely to recognize it.” Russian media also assure that if Ukraine were in an alliance with Russia, Hungary would not dare to claim these lands: “Hungary will never support the unification of Ukraine with Russia, because this will mean for Hungary the collapse of plans for Transcarpathia. Would Budapest dare to lay claim to this region if Ukraine and Russia were a single powerful state? Of course not! On the other hand, weakly independent Ukraine cannot oppose anything to Hungary.”

Kyiv was accused of not wanting to enter into negotiations with the Russian Federation because of the position of the West: “Why cannot the West allow Kyiv to sign a peace treaty with Moscow?

The West is betting on the continuation of hostilities in Ukraine, under the leadership of the United States, Kyiv is not allowed to think and talk about peace.”

Methodology

We searched all materials from the Russian and occupation sites, that have been used to traditional monitoring disinformation.

The algorithm is automatically determining topics was applied to each paragraph. Among these topics (groups of similar materials) were those related to the invasion. Then we received data for each material on the site regarding mentions of a particular topic. Conclusions were built on these data and examples of paragraphs on the topic.

Sites: regnum.ru, life.ru, kommersant.ru, naspravdi.info, lenta.ru, pravda.ru, antifashist.com, c-inform.info, kafanews.com, dni.ru, sevastopol.su, newc.info, vz.ru, ruinformer.com, sobytiya.info, meridian.in.ua, newsland.com, xvesti.ru, odnarodyna.org, nefakt.info, pravdanews.info, ukraina.ru, aif.ru.

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