How Russian Propaganda Paints the West as Aggressors in Ukraine

Whether Putin invades or stands down, Russian media peg him as the good guy.

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Late last month, a spokesman for a Russian-backed separatist enclave in eastern Ukraine—the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR)—warned Russian media that British-trained commandos were planning a “series of terrorist attacks” on critical infrastructure in the Donbass region. The operation’s goal: to “lure” Moscow into an unwanted armed conflict with the West, the spokesman alleged.

Look no further than the comments responding to the accusation’s coverage in RT, Russia’s state-controlled news agency, to grasp its intended effect. 

“The U.S. conducted several false flag operations at home, for example, 9/11,” one commenter wrote. “I would not be surprised if they do something similar in Ukraine.”

“Kievnazis are asking for a bloody nose,” wrote another.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    “ Whether Putin invades or stands down, Russian media peg him as the good guy.”

    The Trumpist media will too.

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    Lawrence C Berg

    I have had it with Putin. Russia needs to be put on the terrorist list, every sanction possible must be put in place, and the US should sign a mutual defense pact with Ukraine.

    Putin's Russia has:
    Violated a 1994 treaty between Ukraine, US, and Russia in which the US and Russia agreed to guarantee the territorial integrity of the Ukraine in return for Ukraine's elimination of the nuclear weapons inherited from the USSR. Russia's annexation of Crimea was gross violation of that treaty. The US cannot allow nations to sign treaties with the US and so boldly violate them.

    Russia has interfered in the internal affairs of Ukraine with support for Ukrainian separatists in the eastern sections of the Ukraine. This is also intolerable and justifies placement of Russia on the terrorist nation list.

    Russia has threatened Ukraine with a massive military build-up on their border, including the placement of forces in a third party territory, Byelorussia, on the Ukraine border. Such intimidation is simply not acceptable behavior. It is the behavior of a terrorist.

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    Mike Kupfer

    "Look no further than the comments responding to the accusation’s coverage in RT, Russia’s state-controlled news agency, to grasp its intended effect. ... Comments sections on the country’s primary media outlets brim with anger toward Western efforts to start a war at the expense of the Ukrainian people. "

    But how much can you actually take these comments at face value? I wouldn't be surprised if comments that are counter to the party line get taken down. Nor would I be surprised if some of the comments are from sock puppets.

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    rlritt

    They must be feeding Fox News the same info. They seem to be pushing pro Soviet anti American propaganda.

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  5. John Easter

    Enjoyed the article, and learning about the different separatist groups in eastern Ukraine. Donbass seems like an important region at this moment after reading. With these milestone dates coming up, “Feb. 4th - 21st”, along with the earlier Intel in like December of Russia taking action as early as February. I wonder if we are closer to a casus belli then what appears, or truly Russia does understand they can’t go to war but can get better NATO agreements.

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    Josh Blumenthal

    "Whether Putin invades or stands down, Russian media peg him as the good guy."
    That was his plan. He either takes Ukraine or is seen as being bullied by the west who refuse to grant his security wishes. He becomes a new victim, but why not? It's working for so many others.

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    Ben

    Donbas has been a festering zombie bite. Kiev needs to cut its arm off and join NATO if it is to survive.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Bill B

    Deja vu. Pretty much what we saw during the entire Cold War.

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  9. L R Dillon

    I really, really sympathize with the Ukraine, and think it most certainly has a right to exist as an independent nation. But taking a broader view of history, the country's name after all means "borderland" or "frontier" or something along these lines. Putin is a disgusting dictator whom history will place in the same "hall of fame" as Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin, etc., but the West is ill-advised to pull the Ukraine directly into NATO, and should announce that it will not. If during the Cold War we found out that Mexico had just become a Warsaw Pact member, I suspect that we would have immediately launched an invasion.

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      James Spiller

      If you sympathize with Ukraine, a good way to express that would be to refer to it by its name, Ukraine, rather than adopting Russophile terminology.

      I don’t think the etymology leans the way that you suggest. The initial application of the term to mean the country as it now exists (or the region before that) was to refer to it as part of Poland.

      Could you explain why Ukraine is different from the Baltic States? Ought Russia invade those? Or Norway? Or, via it’s Konigsburg exclave, Poland?

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      1. L R Dillon

        Well, please Google "Ukraine" or refer to Wikipedia and you'll see it's of Slavic origin, meaning something like "borderland." This in no way infringes on its right to exist as in independent country, same as the Baltic states. Ukraine IS however different in that it is a very significant state in its own right, second largest in Europe, one that Russia would like to either repossess or at least set up as a puppet regime as with long-suffering Belarus. History is FULL of "buffer states:" Armenia between the Roman and Persian empires, Belgium between Germany and France, Finland between Russia and Sweden, Poland between Germany and Russia. It has been argued that in a sense Israel is today such a state between The West and the Moslem world. There is nothing DEMEANING about being a buffer state, but from the perspective of history, the "great powers" they lie between need to tread very carefully when dealing with it so as to avoid provoking each other. Putin is OF COURSE going to couch his actions one way or another so as to make him look like a hero, consciously or not following the lead of such great "spin artists" as Hitler and Stalin.

        But NATO and The West in general should put themselves in the shoes, as I originally proposed, of the typical patriotic Russian, and avoid unnecessary provocation by allowing Ukraine to join its ranks. That would just strengthen Putin's hand. That does NOT mean that we cannot arm them to the teeth, the latest anti-tank weapons against Russia's proudest entrees into this armament type. Some have argued that such weapons have brought the era of the tank, just a bit over a century old, to and end: should Putin decide to actually invade Ukraine, one way or another this hypothesis will probably be tested.

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          James Spiller

          I am aware of the Slavic origin. Did you know that “Slavic” and “Russian” are not synonymous, and that the successor kingdoms to the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth (particularly Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus) have substantially more Slavs than Russia does?

          I am somewhat deeper than wiki deep in my Eastern European history. If you would care to join me in some research on the matter, it will confirm that while the term is widely conjectured to mean borderland, the use of Ukraine as a name for a specific place was a Polish innovation; “borderlands” tend to be the edge of civilization, part of the civilized state, so naturally face Eastwards in that region.

          I agree with you that history has many “buffer states”. I disagree with you that this means that it should be acceptable to murder their citizens. A key casus belli for the First World War was the German invasion of Belgium, the integrity of which had been guaranteed by Britain (and, for that matter, Germany). Britain demanded that Germany desist and when they did not Britain declared war. A key outcome of this was the Kellogg Briand Pact, under which the prosecutions at Nuremberg took place (the predominant crime at Nuremberg was not the Holocaust, but conquest, committed by Hitler in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, and committed by Putin in Georgia and Ukraine, so far).

          In the last half century no one other than Putin has been permitted to conquer anywhere, with that improvement to humanity’s condition forming one of the primary advances in the welfare of our species and others. You’ll find hymns of praise to it in The Better Angels of Our Nature by Stephen Pinker, and other books along those lines.

          Critical to that has been the protection of vulnerable countries and territories, such as in the Falklands War and Gulf War, along with more soft power protections, such as, in the case of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, the Budapest Memorandum. We protect states along Putin’s border; Norway, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Azerbaijan and Estonia have substantial NATO deployments, while Georgia has a smaller number. Until recently we also supported the Central Asian republics, but sadly we have a Russophile President today. That isn’t a threat to Russia; no one contemplates an invasion. There is no Russian action that is inhibited that Russia has not committed many times over to avoid regardless. The desire to be able to freely abuse one’s neighbors is not a legitimate desire that deserves respect.

          Ukraine has always, like most countries, had relationships with powers to its east and west. If Russia or the EU wished to have close fraternal relations with Ukraine, they had two options. The first was to sabotage and dominate Ukrainian elections, purchase and publish the largest newspaper in Ukraine and many other Ukrainian news sources, and to blackmail, hack, and otherwise bully leaders and institutions in Ukrainian society. The second was to treat them with respect and offer assistance. Russia chose the first path, which led to Russian ascendance while it worked, while the EU chose the second path.

          It is not the fault of the West that murdering vast numbers of Ukrainians and destroying their property directly as well as devastating their economy indirectly has reduced Ukrainian affection for Russia. It is not “provocation” to treat Ukraine as a peer in the international community, a peer to which security commitments have been made in exchange for their surrender of nuclear weapons.

          For what it’s worth, I agree with you that our primary response should not be in Ukraine, but in Syria, Mali, Libya, Georgia, and other places where Putin’s unopposed atrocities have gained him considerable glory at home. It wouldn’t take a lot of effort to support his victims there and elsewhere and to clarify that future war criminals would not benefit from taking Assad’s path. We should work to diminish Putin’s cybercrime, to prosecute those who take Russian assistance for misinformation campaigns and such, and to do more to increase the fluidity of global trading networks. I don’t think that mining a port in specific would be a good idea (starvation is a real problem in Syria already, and part of that is about resources, a problem that is likely to be worsened by Lebanon’s crash), but that’s a relatively minor quibble.

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          1. L R Dillon

            James, I always like a good historical discussion; the thing I miss the most about my late dad, a retired history prof, were just this. But I think we ought to end this one "while we're ahead," so to speak, because you have several times imputed beliefs to me that I in no way have, nor have stated - most recently, "I disagree with you that this means that it should be acceptable to murder their citizens." I of course do not. And yes, we do agree on many things; let's leave it at that. :-)

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      BWG

      Cuba, Bay of Pigs. But that was a proxy army propped up by the CIA, not US troops. And of course when the USSR tried to install missiles there JFK “quarantined” Cuba. (Not “blockade” as that’s an act of war.). And JFK negotiated a deal, we’d remove our missiles from Turkey if they promised to keep their missiles out of Cuba. And it worked. Cuba of course was never part of the WP, but almost as much in the USSR’s orbit. You’re suggesting a moral equivalence there (NATO = WP) that just doesn’t exist. It’s true that Russia is very insecure, but this is more about Putin propping himself up and deflecting attention from his failed leadership (wages have stagnated in Russia and there’s much discontent) and less about NATO “aggression”.

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      1. L R Dillon

        Good points, all. Interesting how the Cuban Missile Crisis has been spun in America to appear a clear American "victory" when in reality it entailed compromises on both sides, with the US removing its missiles from Turkey (the existence of which most Americans were and are still unaware of.) Putting these missiles there was a pretty provocative act!

        I'm NOT suggesting a moral equivalence between NATO and the WP; what matters is what the typical patriotic RUSSIAN thinks, and it could well (especially with Putin's help) appear like Russia putting 100,000 troops on the Guatemala / Mexico border (seeing Mexico as a "buffer state."

        I'm still a huge fan of finding a way to so humiliate Putin that the oligarchs behind the throne decide to depose him. Don't know if you saw my prior post about mining Syria's ports so that Russian ships could no longer reach and support their darling, Bashar al-Assad. Israel (and probably Turkey) would welcome the move, and, as per the mining of Haiphong's harbor during the Vietnam conflict, it might be seen as an act of war against Syria, but not Russia: "We TOLD you we'd laid mines there; why did you sail into Latakia harbor anyway?" This would have the side benefit of probably leading to Assad's fall as well.

        But realistically, economic warfare is what will probably happen regarding Russia. But we should not take half-measures, as is so often the case...

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  10. Avatar photo
    Ed P

    I heard a fascinating perspective from Andrea Chalupa this week, sister to Alexandra Chalupa, dubbed “Chalupa Taco Bell” by Devin Nunes in the First Trump Impeachment if you recall.

    Chalupa detailed a deceitful tactic continually employed by Russia in this escapade in Ukraine.

    Spies and special services would pepper an area with propaganda and bullshit. Years and years of this and there are already plenty of extremists. But a focused effort could precipitate an attack on local government. You message to some people the county clerk is a baby-eating pedophile satanist, and to others the county clerk is taking Russian bribes.

    Once an armed insurrection of the local government occurs, the Russian military comes in to restore order and now pretend to have some more serious legitimate claim to the turf and most locals probably not seeing through the charade.

    Indeed, this framework was basically the one used to take Crimea.

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      James Spiller

      It’s really hard to overstate the degree of Russian media dominance in Ukraine, although it did get somewhat better in December 2017, when the largest newspaper in circulation (a free newspaper) was taken by the courts from its owner, who ran media businesses in both Ukraine and Russia until he fled with EU and other international warrants out. Its chief rival is still owned by a Russian sympathizer and critic of the government, but a way less intense one.

      Radio channels, too. I spent a little time with a group trying to get a Ukrainian TV station to broadcast to the west, but describing it as under resourced is inadequate. And that losing battle is just the stuff that’s physically based in Ukraine. It should go without saying that most Russian language TV and internet is foreign and worse still. The important thing to understand about the campaign you’re talking about is that it isn’t the sort of thing you can start overnight, but has been a priority for the Kremlin for decades.

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        Ed P

        And to my point earlier, key Republicans not named Trump belittled an ally to Ukrainian freedom in Alexandra Chalupa in that first impeachment. And not just her.

        In their overzealous defense of Trump, they badly undermined the whole cause of Ukrainian independence in that first impeachment. I heard Russian bullshit being spewed again and again out of Republican mouths in our House of Representatives. Really made me queasy

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          James Spiller

          If you listen for it, you’ll find it from both parties. It’s true that defenses of Trump tend to be pretty personal, but criticism of the Syrian opposition and of Ukrainians that follow Russian thought trains are pretty common. Back when the Iraq war was the biggest focus, it was primarily Democrats you’d hear voicing Russian talking points. Sometimes a big Russian effort, like anti-vaxx stuff, which had been D leaning for decades, switches partisan valence. Glen Greenwald’s switch was a little out of the blue, too. But for the most part the Pauls, the Gabbards, the Nations, the Independents, the Breitbarts, the Robert Fisks, the Sy Hershes, they all stay in their ideological corners and speak to their co-ideologues.

          Russia isn’t really interested in party politics, for the most part. It’s interested in promoting isolationists and in increasing American dysfunction. There are many different factions to support. Putin’s work in the 1980s with African American, gay, and white socially conservative groups is a classic example of how they operate. If you listened to any of those groups you’d hear some voices spouting the Kremlin line, but it’s a lot easier to hear in people you disagree with.

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            Ed P

            Its not that I’m not listening for it

            Its that we had an enormous political display for all the world to see very recently on matters to do with Ukraine and Russia. The Republican party line was to side with Trump (and against Ukraine’s position as an independent nation struggling to resist Russian aggression and influence and weaponized corruption.)

            That Trump attempted to weaponize corruption is extremely notable. He turned this American support of Ukraine totally on its head. He would make Zelenskyy engage in corruption on order to receive it. This would achieve goals mutually beneficial to him and Putin and this should not be lost on any of us. And at the end of the day this was what Trump was impeached for and at the end of the day Republicans allowed him to get away with it, and excused the same sort of corruption we try so hard to get nations like Ukraine to fight EXACTLY SO,m they can rid themselves of this sort of illicit influence.

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        Ed P

        Inciting “kinetics” are definitely not an overnight deal. But it doesn’t take decades either. You just need the extremists willing to believe the message without proof and act out violently.

        January 6 should not be lost on us. Neither should the pre-amble that was the attack on a DC pizzeria in Pizzagate in 2016

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          James Spiller

          I agree that January 6 should not be lost on us, but I don’t think that January 6, nor Pizzagate, would have been possible without decades of effort. Okay, Pizzagate in the narrow sense of the one crazy dude being radicalized probably could have been, but not the broader phenomenon of Q.

          It’s not just the development of institutions, actors, and ecosystems. You need to train your people to understand the demographics they’re working with and you need to train the demographics you’re working with to trust your sources. For it to work well, you need to attack things from multiple angles, so that people can read or hear something in one place and go and research it in a different, independent, place, and find the story confirmed. Ideally, you get your stories into the work of people who really are independent; getting your experts into places where they become sources for journalists is important to having non-fringe coverage of claims; you don’t want to rely too heavily on mainstream sources you own for that (although they also help).

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      Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

      tbf, having adopted from Ukraine specifically Crimea), I had my religion translated in a court of law as a "child sacrificing cult". Not technically blood libel, but pretty close.
      We chalked it up to an incompetent translator who, it turns out, was not credentialed as a translator. The judge was furious about that.

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