Fake news – the west tries its hand

Who dealt the west such a bad hand in this propaganda war while the real war rages in eastern Ukraine?

The battle for journalistic integrity was lost many years ago – apart from a few notable exceptions which include John Pilger and the late Robert Fisk. The extent today to which we are indulging in misinformation is wanton. There is no way this article from the Russian newspaper, RIA Novosti, can be read without decent people bowing their heads in shame. Published earlier today it is by Andrei Kotz, while an English version is reproduced next.

“The main weapon of Ukraine.” What Kiev has its cash on.

MOSCOW, 21 Mar – RIA Novosti, Andrey Kotz.

Brussels, Washington and Kiev have waged an information war on Moscow — dozens, if not hundreds of fake items are thrown into the media and social networks every day. The goal is to convince Western audiences that “evil and totalitarian Russia attacked a small democratic Ukraine for no reason.” RIA Novosti holds examples of the most odious fake items.

Falsification of facts

Not for the first time the West distorts the picture detail of events taking place in the world. Suffice to recall how the European and American media covered the Five-Day War in August 2008. Journalists quickly put together the necessary narrative, in an attempt to show that Moscow unleashed the conflict. Everything was used: fake photos, fake documents, fabricated videos. Only six months later did the European Commission quietly announce the results of its own investigation: Mikhail Saakashvili [then president of Georgia] launched the offensive.

A resident of Mariupol told how a “Russian strike” was faked at the maternity hospital

MOSCOW, 17 Mar – RIA Novosti. Filming of the consequences of the alleged Russian strike on the maternity ward of the city hospital No. 3 of Mariupol was definitely staged. Ukrainian journalists were clearly prepared in advance for the rapid issuance of this fake story, said one of the residents of Mariupol.

According to the man, who did not give his name, the maternity ward of the hospital was full of women in labour, but the day before the incident they were all evacuated. Local residents say as soon as the explosion occurred which threw glass about from the shock wave, “literally five minutes later, journalists were there, videography, a bunch of police cars, and the filming began,” he said.

“It is clear it was fabricated, the video was stage-managed without doubt. All eyewitnesses say so. It doesn’t happen that journalists are sitting around the corner, or drinking coffee in a coffee shop, when a rocket flies in, and they immediately appear there,” the man added. “A woman in labour was filmed. How did she get there, by what miracle? Because all of them were removed in advance,” he said. The maternity hospital was “definitely” evacuated on purpose before the implementation of this provocation, according to the man.

“A massive attack has been launched against Russia in cyberspace, an unprecedented information campaign has been unleashed, involving global social networks and all Western media, whose objectivity and independence has turned out to be no more than a myth,” Vladimir Putin said.

Access to information is restricted, people are overloaded with a massive number of fakes, false propaganda, in other words, frauds.

One of such fabrication was recently exposed by the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova. The Italian newspaper La Stampa has published heartbreaking material about the atrocities of Russian gunners. In the picture — a man covering his face with his hands – dead civilians lying around. A screaming headline reports that the Russians have launched a missile attack on Kiev. In fact, this is a photo of the consequences of the AFU attack on Donetsk on March 14. Of course, the Western media, as if by command, kept silent about this tragedy. [All the Goss covered that story here].

“There are examples of special cynicism that cannot go unnoticed,” Zakharova commented on fake-news – La Stampa came out with a photo from Donetsk on the front page. Rescuers, bodies, people in grief, traces of destruction. All these are the consequences of the shelling committed by the APU in the DPR with the help of the Tochka-U tactical missile system. The inscription on the front page of the newspaper read: “So Kiev faces the latest assault.”

It’s as if the bodies of the victims from the fighting are slain in Kiev, and not in Donetsk.”

“The Ghost of Kiev” and mass graves

Ukrainians themselves threw in a lot of fakes, especially in the first days of the special operation. There are dozens of staged videos on the Web with “victims of Kremlin bombs” in plastic bags. It’s just the “corpses” are constantly moving, scratching, correcting props and even smoking. Attempts by Ukrainian propagandists to pass off footage from the computer flight simulation software, Digital Combat Simulator (DCS), as newsreels caused particular jollity on the Internet.

This is how the myth of the “Ghost of Kiev” was born — an unknown Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter pilot, who allegedly destroyed more than ten Russian aircraft in air battles. However, it soon became clear that “peremogi” [“victory”] — is exclusively virtual. The developer, Eagle Dynamics, demanded not to use footage from the game in propaganda. And the Russian Aerospace Forces confirmed that not a single Russian aircraft was lost in air combat. The war in the sky proceeds with a dry score in favour of Moscow.

In Kiev, they also prepare a larger scale fake. According to the official representative of the DNR army, Edward Basurin, Ukrainian security forces dug a 100-meter trench at a local cemetery in Mariupol, in which they want to bury their killed colleagues. And the controlled media is going to issue a staged picture from footage of mass graves of citizens allegedly killed as a result of Russian artillery and air attacks.

“This has often been used in wars after the collapse of the bipolar world,” explains political scientist and military expert, Ivan Konovalov. In Yugoslavia, this was arranged by Bosnian Muslims, Croats, in order to discredit the Serbs. But it is unlikely that the Ukrainians will succeed. I think we are already prepared for this and the Russian side is playing ahead of the curve in covering the situation. They will not be able to do something like the “chemical attacks” in Syria.”

False information

Nevertheless, Ukrainian journalists persistently try to give wishful thinking. Recently, photos of civilians allegedly “shot by Russian servicemen” in Chernihiv were distributed. And the Russian Defense Ministry denied this: the army has not yet entered Chernihiv. In addition, there are no traces of ammunition explosions on the video frames, the windows in the buildings are intact, the walls are not damaged.
“The Ukrainian side passes off its atrocities as the actions of the Russian military,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed. – The West ignores the suffering of civilians on the side of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as in other parts of Ukraine. Russia is actively collecting evidence of the Kiev regime’s war crimes.”

They are also fighting fakes inside the country. The other day, the Russian IC [Investigation Committee] opened a criminal case against blogger Veronika Belotserkovskaya, accused of publicly spreading false information about the actions of the Russian army. According to the investigation, in March she published several posts with allegations that the military purposefully destroy cities and the civilian population of Ukraine, including children.

The cover image shows those who started this war 8 years ago: Victoria Nuland, Geoffrey Pyatt, Petro Poroshenko, and just behind him, John Kerry.