Last week, Russian media insisted on a bitter feud between the military and political leadership of Ukraine. The disinformers speculated that Zelensky would soon be killed or replaced by Valery Zaluzhny as Washington’s new protege. We found more than 1,000 such stories which propelled the topic to the week's Top 15 on Russian news.Read this article in Ukrainian

Why is the death of 300,000 Russians in a war of aggression not a reason for the people to demand from their government to stop the "special operation"? What does need to happen for this to change? What is in their minds? The author, who is looking for answers to these questions, knows the Russian hinterland from his own experience, and is currently monitoring interviews with Russian prisoners and their communication with relatives.Читати українською

Period: 30 October-5 November 2023. Last week, Russian media showed considerably less interest in the military operations in Ukraine than usual which may be due to the lack of Russian victories in Ukraine or the kick-off of Putin's election campaign.

In October, the Ukrainian trashy websites spread fakes about the blocking of bank accounts and plastic cards which belong to draft dodgers. Oleksii Arestovych still remains one of the most popular military experts in the segment while the news on Putin's death has been presented with absolute certainty.

Last week, Russian media tried hard convince their readership that Ukraine was supplying weapons to HAMAS. The narrative that Ukraine is selling Western aid, which has been circulating Russian media since the beginning of the full-scale war, is to make the West turn away from Ukraine. The propagandists kept ridiculing the prime minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan: Russian media seem to agree that he is an American political project.

Last week’s Ukrainian ATACMS strike on airfields in the occupied territories caught Russian propagandists by surprise. Russian media tried to avoid any mention of damaged military equipment and focused their reports on Ukrainian air force losses instead. The disinformation media also stood up for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) which is in fact part of Russian Orthodox Church and accused the evil Kyiv regime of dismantling orthodoxy in Ukraine. They also claimed that Armenia was turning into another Ukraine and touted Viktor Orbán as Russia's friend.

Last week's publications on Russian media were focused on the Middle East: Russian media claimed that Israel had no regard for conventions of war. The propagandists praised pro-Russian Romanian politician Diana Șoșoacă who had managed to have Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to the members of the Parliament of Romania canceled.Russian media also provided their own explanation of Germany is reluctantance to provide cruise missiles to Ukraine: according to the propagandists, the Germans are extremely concerned about the missiles falling into Russian hands.

Last week, Russian media brimmed with excitement over the successful launch of a Burevestnik (Thunderbird) missile. The propagandists described it with such words as “game-changer” and “unparalleled capabilities” and claimed it to be able to destroy cities anywhere in the world.

As the war is well into its second year, some Ukrainian websites have resumed spreading news which align with the key narratives of Russian propaganda and disinformation. This is a monthly digest of the news items published by the online media in the occupied territories and the Ukrainian websites which tend to manipulate public opinion.Our analysis is limited to the news items from online media which operate in the occupied territories (further referred to as “occupation news websites”) as well as from news websites operated from Ukraine.

Last week, Russian propagandists took advantage of the scandal in the Canadian parliament to promote their own narratives.Russian media appealed to the background of the former fighters of the Ukrainian “Halychyna” division which had fought in World War II as part of the German Waffen to blame Western countries of supporting the Nazi and fascists. Finally, the propagandists used the findings of the Polish prosecutor's office in the case involving the death of two Poles from a missile allegedly launched by Ukraine to claim that it is Ukraine that fires missiles at its neighbors to blame everything on Russia.