Kollen Post
On July 8, a Russian Kh-101 rocket flew into a children’s hospital in the center of Kyiv.
On July 9, no less a figure than Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s primary mouthpiece, took to TASS, a preferred Kremlin megaphone, to declare “as before, we maintain: We do not strike civilian objects.”
Almost immediately, Kremlin-affiliated Telegram channels and pro-Russian propagandists on Twitter took to blaming the attack on Ukraine’s air defense, specifically first a US-supplied Patriot missile, before settling on a NATO-supplied NASAMS missile—belying the jet engine visible in footage of the strike and setting up one of the most insulting narratives of victim-blaming imaginable.
The fake news campaigns over Ukraine have become relentless in the West but are endemic within Ukraine itself. Some preferred themes include misfortune befalling Kyiv’s Chief of Defense Intelligence Budanov, President Zelensky abandoning the country for some estate in the UK or a private island, or egregious corruption in the Ukrainian government with Zelensky’s right-hand man, Andriy Yermak, a frequent target.
Many recurrent subjects for fake news fodder—like Budanov’s death—are overtly false. Though they are easily falsifiable, they are also easily verifiable. But others are trickier.
No comments:
Post a Comment