As Russian military equipment and troops have recently moved towards Ukraine, the pro-Kremlin media have significantly intensified the disinformation campaign against Ukraine, EUvsDisinfo, the EU’s leading initiative to counter disinformation, has warned.
Russian propaganda presents Ukraine both as a relentless aggressor (attacking its own territory) and a puppet of the US, painting Ukraine as nationalist to the extent of imminent genocide of Russians in Donbas, and claiming that Ukraine isn’t even a state. The accusations of genocide are particularly worrying, EUvsDisinfo says, as a member of the Russian Duma, Yuri Shvytkin, even made a suggestion to prepare an appeal to ‘parliaments of states’ to condemn the actions of ‘Ukrainian henchmen’ regarding the ‘genocide’ of the Russian population.
Last week, the pro-Kremlin media again falsely accused Kyiv of violating the Minsk Agreements and the USA of pushing Ukraine to a confrontation with Russia.
The pro-Kremlin media also delivered highly emotional messages about a small boy allegedly killed by an Ukrainian army drone in Donbas. The claims (which were debunked by independent Russian and Ukrainian fact-checkers) were circulated across the Russian state-controlled media and were used by the speaker of the Russian Duma to demand a discussion of excluding Ukraine from the Council of Europe.
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