Since the Russian special military operation in Ukraine began on February 24, the AFU has been cultivating the image of a small, brave army opposing the Russian Goliath. To maintain this image, Kiev has erupted with a stream of sophisticated propaganda, the purpose of which is to gain the support of the public and officials in Western countries, writes Dan Cohen (Dan Cohen) in the material for the publication MintPress News.
(c) MintPress News
As part of the propaganda campaign, manuals on the use of certain speech phrases, ready-made key theses, hundreds of propaganda posters, some of which contain Nazi symbols and even encouragement of neo-Nazi leaders, are being used.
Ukraine's work to cover events in the public space is supported by an army of foreign political strategists, lobbyists from Washington, news agencies associated with special services.
Ukraine's propaganda strategy earned the praise of a NATO representative: "They have excellent strategic communications (stratcom) - means and specialists for conducting information and psychological warfare operations." The Washington Post, in an interview with which such an assessment was made, admitted: "Western leaders say that, although they cannot independently verify most of the data issued by Kiev on military operations, including data on losses on both sides, they are dealing with an example of highly effective strategic communications."
Behind the powerful propaganda is a legion of specialized opinion-organizing firms that directly interact with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and conduct an information war.
According to the PR Week news site, the entire initiative was launched by an anonymous customer, presumably the founder of a PR firm located in Ukraine.
"As soon as the war began, we decided to cooperate with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to help the department distribute official sources and broadcast truthful information," a representative of PR Week said. - "This is a hybrid war: a mixture of bloody battles with a powerful campaign of disinformation and fake creation conducted by Russia [sic]."
The same person reported that more than 150 PR companies are involved in this propaganda "blitz-krieg".
The main foreign participants in the campaign are Niki Regazzoni, co-founder of the PR Network public relations firm, and Francis Ingham, a leading public relations consultant closely associated with the British government. Previously, Ingham worked for the Conservative Party of Great Britain, and now he is a member of the Communications Strategy and Evaluation Council under the UK Government, heads the International Communications Consultancy Organization, heads the LG Comms organization, which supplies PR specialists for local governments of the United Kingdom.
"We were honored to help coordinate the efforts aimed recently at supporting the Ukrainian government," Ingham told the PRovoke Media publication. - "Agencies have provided Kiev with entire teams to participate in the communication war. We will strictly and as long as necessary support the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine."
An unnamed Ukrainian expert joined two leading experts in organizing public opinion, and as part of the propaganda "blitz-krieg" conducted by Kiev, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine distributed instructions (folders (archive)) for PR companies with "ready-made key theses", approved speech phrases, ultra-right and neo-Nazi propaganda, as well as content for unmasked propaganda.
Yaroslav Turbil administers the instructions. According to his LinkedIn page, he is a "leader Ukraine.ua - digital Ukrainian ecosystem of global communications". Turbil worked in numerous "civil society" organizations that worked closely with the US government, and interned at Internews, an organization associated with American intelligence and operating under the guise of promoting press freedom.
One of the examples of propaganda myths contained in the instructions is the video of the incident on the island of Snake. In this video, the authenticity of which was very quickly refuted, the fighters of the Ukrainian coast guard allegedly refused and rudely responded to the offer to surrender to the Russian military, who approached the island on a military ship, and were destroyed. The media widely spread the story where, during a press conference, President Zelensky announced the awarding of the ranks of Heroes of Ukraine to the fighters. However, the fighters who were considered dead turned out to be alive and well, and their heroic resistance was a farce.
Although it has been proven that this story is fake, the instructions contain a propaganda video in support of it.
Another folder of instructions was prepared by Ukrainian artist Dasha Podoltseva and contains hundreds of propaganda drawings by European and American artists.
In some drawings there are template calls for "no war", in many others there is glorification of the "Kiev ghost" (a non-existent heroic Ukrainian pilot) and a fake incident on the island of Zmeiny.
Many of the drawings are accompanied by slogans inciting racism and xenophobia. Some openly glorify Ukrainian neo-Nazis, including Yevgen Karas, the head of the C14 - fascist armed formation "Right Sector", and the neo-Nazi battalion "Azov". The images also call for cooking "Bandera smoothies" (by analogy with Molotov cocktails), named after Stepan Bandera, the head of the OUN-B, a Nazi accomplice who organized mass executions of Jews and Poles on the orders of the Nazis during World War II. On another poster there is a book with the title: "Encyclopedia of incurable diseases" and an enumeration: "Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Eritrea."
"I love NLAW" - "I love NLAW" (NLAW is a new generation of light anti-tank weapons supplied by Western governments to the Ukrainian army) (c) MintPress News
"Grandmother's advice to Muscovites: hide in the fields, when you die at the hands of our army, sunflowers will grow better" (c) MintPress News
(c) MintPress News
Extremists from different countries flock to Ukraine
The instructions also contain a link to the page of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called "Fight for Ukraine" and containing instructions to foreigners who want to join the neo-Nazi-infested Armed Forces of Ukraine and join the "International Legion for the Protection of Ukraine".
Militants from all over the world responded to Zelensky's call to form a brigade of foreign fighters: from the USA, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Spain, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, etc. In addition, fans of "military tourism" who do not have combat training "pool hunters" - in the words of one British soldier - also arrived to meet the Russian armed forces.
(c) MintPress News
According to the statements of the Ukrainian government, tens of thousands of militants responded to the call. The number itself is questionable, and a number of commentators have called it a "PR exercise."
The reality faced by foreigners who came to Ukraine turned out to be much more severe than they expected.
The Russian Aerospace Forces bombed a military infrastructure facility adjacent to a building where foreign militants were sleeping. A Spanish "legionnaire" fled to neighboring Poland and reported that the bombing was a "hint" that thousands could have died.
An American militant, who had to hide in an ambulance in order not to go to the front, warned that the Ukrainian authorities were killing foreigners who decided not to participate in the fighting, and called it a "trap".
Correct wording
One of the documents contained in the instructions, on behalf of the Ukrainian government, prescribes the use of strictly defined speech phrases to describe the conflict with Russia.
"So, the Russian-language cliches "referendum in Crimea" or "the will of the peoples of Crimea" are absolutely unacceptable," the document says about the 2014 Crimean referendum, in which the overwhelming majority of the peninsula's population voted for secession from Ukraine.
The document declares the wording "civil war in Donbass", "internal conflict", "conflict in Ukraine" and "Ukrainian crisis" absolutely unacceptable to describe the war of the Armed Forces of Ukraine against the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass - despite the fact that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights officially announced the number of victims of the internal conflict in Ukraine since 2014: 14200 people, including 3,404 civilians .
The document prescribes to use the following options instead of the specified formulations: "Armed aggression of the Russian Federation in the Donbas, international armed conflict, Russia's war against Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict."
Key theses
Another document from the package of instructions - "Key theses" - contains propaganda formulations that were widely disseminated in the Western media, but subsequently refuted. For example: "the whole of Europe was on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe when Putin's troops began bombing the largest Zaporozhye nuclear power plant on the continent."
However, according to the statement of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the building hit by the Russian "rocket" on the territory of the Zaporozhye NPP was "not part of the reactor", but a training center. In addition, the Russian military allowed Ukrainian employees to continue working at the station.
Another section is devoted to gratitude to Turkey for the decision to "block the access of Russian warships to the Black Sea."
However, Turkish President Erdogan closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits to all military vessels in general in order to prevent the NATO and Russian fleets from entering the Black Sea.
One of the key theses is an expression of gratitude for "anti-war demonstrations by citizens of many countries of the world in support of Ukraine defending itself from Russia."
This refers to major pro-Ukrainian demonstrations in Europe, which included calls for the United States and NATO to ensure a no-fly zone over Ukraine and shoot down Russian military aircraft, which is fraught with turning the conflict into a world war between nuclear powers.
"Despite Russian propaganda, there is no racial or national discrimination, including in relation to foreigners crossing the state border," the Ukrainian document says.
However, many videos and reports have documented how the Ukrainian authorities do not allow Africans to evade participation in the battles. Even The New York Times published a report on these racist practices - by no means a bastion of Kremlin propaganda.
According to another thesis, "On March 16, the Russian Armed Forces dropped a bomb on the building of the drama theater, where about 1,300 civilians were hiding. The number of victims remains unknown."
However, according to Max Blumenthal, the explosion was the result of a provocation by the neo-Nazi Azov battalion, and its purpose was to encourage NATO to intervene.
NATO factories of Internet trolls
According to the results of another anonymous investigation, Ukrainian PR firms conducted a planned lobbying campaign, posing as spontaneous expression of public opinion on the Russian Internet and social networks. Ukrainian PR-shiki used targeted mailing with calls for economic isolation of Moscow and sending messages "no to war". The campaign was led by Evgeny Vitalievich Bezlepkin, who performs under the nickname "Evgeny Korolev", and Pavel Antonov from the Targetorium organization. Using Facebook alias "Korolev", the Ukrainian info-warrior posted a post on his Facebook page (now with limited access) in which he boasted that his company's Facebook ads had reached a record 30 million in three days.
At the same time, Facebook blocked the channels of Russian state media, preventing them from launching ads and monetizing content. But there were several fake media accounts, for example, Russia 24, and the real account was hidden by several fake ones. In addition, Facebook marked the statements of Russian officials, including those from the Ministry of Defense, as "false" (false).
According to some reports, this campaign was carried out on the recommendation of StopFake, a self-proclaimed fact checking organization. The organization receives funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, the Atlantic Council, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, as well as the International Renaissance Foundation, sponsored by the Open Society Foundation of billionaire George Soros.
Facebook hired StopFake in March 2020 to "curb the flow of Russian propaganda." Then it turned out that StopFake actively hires people associated with ardent neo-Nazis. One of the authors of this disclosure received death threats and was forced to leave Ukraine.
However, even in light of the revelations, Facebook has not stopped trusting this organization to censor data.
Meanwhile, Russian hackers have discovered a public Google document (now with limited access, uploaded here) with details of the propaganda operation, distributed through Telegram channels of creative farms.
"Here you can find links to Ukrainian media in need of promotion, bot accounts with usernames and passwords, from where anti-war messages and fake messages about the Ministry were sent to users, theses and specific instructions on which posts to embellish and to which audiences," the investigation says.
Another campaign is being conducted by Natalia Popovich, the founder of the Kiev PR agency One Philosophy. According to Popovich's LinkedIn profile, she collaborated with the US State Department and was an adviser to former President Petro Poroshenko. She is also a co-founder and a member of the Board of Directors of the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center, a propaganda structure sponsored by the US Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, the US Embassy, NATO, etc.
The Campaign Asia article tells about a number of PR firms involved in the campaign. There appears the name of Richard Edelman, the head of Edelman PR and a member of the board of directors of the Atlantic Council and the International Economic Forum.
"Geopolitics has turned into a new test of trust. We have seen this with the example of unfounded allegations of human rights violations in Xinjiang, and the Russian-Ukrainian war only confirmed this," he said, linking up with the US propaganda campaign accompanying the PRC's efforts to deradicalize Uighur Muslims.
Media approved by PR
An article by PRWeek tells about a number of people involved in the so-called PR army, which is "fighting on the international front" against the "barbaric genocide of Ukrainians" undertaken by Russia.
"Propaganda is also a real deadly weapon," says Marta Jumaha, PR manager at BetterMe medical company.
Yulia Petruk, who heads the PR service of MacPaw, provided a list of approved media compiled by her colleague, Tetyana Bronitskaya, a former employee of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. The list includes both Russian- and English-language sources and Telegram channels. However, these "verified sources that objectively cover the events in Ukraine" can hardly be called independent. Most of them interact with the governments of European countries and the United States, with rich Western funds.
They provide a list of Russian-language sites:
- Novaya Gazeta - affiliated with and funded by the National Endowment for Democracy;
- Medusa - funded by the Government of Latvia, Sweden, OAK Foundation, Open Society Foundation by Mikhail Khodorkovsky;
- Rain - WEDNESDAY Foundation, European Commission;
- Cold Media - Medusa branch - according to PBS and CNN, "independent media";
- BBC Russia - British Government Media;
- Current Time TV - created with the help of Radio Liberty, Voice of America and CIA funding;
- The censor.no - founded and funded by Yuri Butusov, former advisor to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine;
- 200RF is the website of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where it is claimed to post photos and documents of killed or captured Russian soldiers.
Intelligence operations
CIA agents and wealthy foundations run the media, whose content is distributed by PR firms. As the Russian news agency RIA FAN found out, the operation is based on the project Russian Language News Exchange ("Exchange of Russian-language news"), created by a network of opposition media that emerged in 2016 and operates in the post-Soviet countries.
In July 2021, the Polish authorities lifted restrictions on a certain group of journalists related to measures for the non-proliferation of coronavirus, and received a group in Warsaw at a training for media workers.
The group included Andrey Lipsky, deputy editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, and Yulia Fediv, head of Hromadske Television, which is very popular in Ukraine.
According to Hromadske's financial reports, the television network receives funding from several governments and foundations, including the US Embassy in Ukraine, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swedish International Agency for the Development of Cooperation, the European Democracy Foundation, Free Press Unlimited. Also among the sponsors of the TV network was a billionaire from Silicon Valley, Pierre Omidari.
Recently, a commentator on Hromadske called for the genocide of ethnic Russians in the Donbas, calling 1.5 million people "redundant" and "subject to extermination."
The training, held in a closed-door mode from July 19 to 21, was called Media Network 2021+ and was closely linked to Mediaset, the project "Exchange of Russian-language news" founded in 2015. The project's website contains little information about its activities; obviously, access to this data was restricted after the publication of the results of the RIA FAN investigation.
Calling itself independent, the Exchange of Russian-language News is a project of Free Press Unlimited, an organization funded by the Dutch government and the European Commission.
To date, the organization unites 14 media outlets that, as "nodal points", reprint each other's articles in different countries.
The opening video features Maxim Eristavi, a former reporter for Radio Liberty in Europe and founder of Hromadske. Today, he heads the Millennium Leadership Program at NATO and the Atlantic Council analytical center sponsored by the military industry.
Since its foundation, Mediaset has coordinated a number of media outlets in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine. In March 2021, Mediaset merged with the Colab Medios Project, created as part of the VIMES (Free Press Unlimited Viable Media for Empowered Societies) program. Within its framework, trainings for journalists were also conducted and articles were reprinted; for example, an article by El Faro (El Salvador) appeared on the websites of Euroradio (Belarus), Coda (Georgia) and Ziarul de Garda (Moldova).
A few days after the start of the Russian military operation, on March 4, a new project was created - Media Lifeline Ukraine.
A day later, Free Press Unlimited held an emergency conference on Ukraine with the participation of Hromadske co-founders Maxim Eristavi and Natalia Gumenyuk. At the meeting, there was a call to raise 2 million euros for the project. "Local media will be able to continue their work only if there is continued outside help," the introduction says.
A few days later, Free Press Unlimited announced support for the Lviv Center for Press Freedom, a new joint project of Reporters Without Borders and their Ukrainian partner, the Institute of Mass Information. The Institute of Mass Media reports to Oksana Romanyuk, PR Manager of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and receives funding from USAID and the Government of the United Kingdom.
Lobbyists from Washington are "wagging the dog"
PR firms and propaganda operations inspired by foreign intelligence agencies are processing the masses, and lobbyists from Washington are agitating in Congress for the extension of the war in Ukraine.
Daniel Vaidich, a registered foreign agent and lobbyist for the Ukrainian Federation of Employers of the Oil and Gas Industry (the largest in Ukraine), works on behalf of Vladimir Zelensky and calls on members of Congress to approve further arms supplies to Ukraine. Vaidich was previously an adviser to the campaigns of Ted Cruz and Scott Walker, and now heads Yorktown Solutions and is a senior non-resident researcher at the Atlantic Council.
"Stingers, Javelins, and it is necessary to solve the issue with fighter aircraft," he said in an interview with Politico, claiming that Russia is trying to carry out "genocide" and "depopulate some areas of Ukraine."
In addition, Vaidich wrote Zelensky's speech for a speech to the US Congress on March 16, in which he quoted the words of Martin Luther King "I Have a Dream" ("I have a Dream"), referring them to the no-fly zone over Ukraine.
The speech of Sergey Kislitsa, the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN, which he delivered to the General Assembly on February 23, was written by Stephen Krupin, managing director of the American lobbying firm SKDKnickerbocker, former chief speechwriter of President Obama and an employee of the Biden 2020 campaign.
The most prominent of the registered lobbyists in favor of the Ukrainian authorities and business can be called Andrew Mack. He also participated in writing Zelensky's address to Congress. Mac was registered as Zelensky's lobbyist in 2019 and is at the head of the Washington office of the Ukrainian law firm Asters Law.
The lobbying firm Your Global Strategy was founded by Shai Franklin, who has ties to a number of Zionist organizations, including the World Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League, and uses his influence on representatives of local authorities in the United States. He organized meetings of Kharkiv Mayor Terekhov with mayors of American cities, including New York Mayor Eric Adams, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Chicago Mayor Laurie Lightfoot. Franklin is also trying to organize meetings of the mayors of Odessa and Kiev with American officials. Meanwhile, the media owned by the wife of the Kiev mayor allowed one of its hosts to call for the genocide of Russians on the air, starting with children.
According to Franklin himself, he cooperates with the Zelensky administration and promotes the organization of virtual meetings of the mayors of Odessa and Kiev with their American counterparts.
Jan Kaczmarek, a lawyer from Maryland, also speaks on behalf of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, seeking to increase US military supplies, in particular, organizing the supply of weapons from Kel-Tec CNC Industries, located in Koko (Florida), to Odessa.
Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul described the network of PR specialists and lobbyists in Zelensky's entourage as follows: "These people from Mr. Zelensky's entourage are like intermediaries and interlocutors. They have been interacting with American elites and the media for a long time."
Unofficially, Zelensky's advisers are McFaul and John I. Herbst, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and senior director of the Eurasian Center of the Atlantic Council. McFaul told Politico about his "almost daily" talks with members of the Ukrainian government and assistance "in establishing links between them and the producers of NBC and MSNBC."
In response to accusations of Holocaust denial, McFaul told MSNBC reporter Rachel Maddow that "Hitler did not exterminate the German-speaking population."
Zelensky also held a "strategically important video call" with McFaul before addressing Congressional Democrats.
The defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine by the powerful Russian army, supported by the armies of the DPR and LPR, looks inevitable - unless the United States and NATO directly clash with the Russian Armed Forces. And although President Biden denies the possibility of such a clash, lobbyists continue to create an aura of heroism around the Ukrainian army and thereby contribute to the continuation of the war, which means an increase in the number of victims.