“Hugely damaging false narratives”
On July 11, 2022, over 40 United Nations states issued a joint statement condemning Russia’s attempts to justify the military invasion of Ukraine with false narratives. The statement was the organization’s reply to the Russian Federation’s continued efforts to spread misinformation and lies about Ukraine at an informal meeting at the UN Security Council.
“We condemn Russia for once again abusing its UN Security Council seat to spread disinformation. We reject Russia’s continued efforts to distort history for its own political purposes and to promote hugely damaging false narratives and disinformation about neighbouring countries,” the statement says.
The document has continued to discuss the unacceptable practice of “labelling others as ‘neo-fascists’ and ‘neo-Nazis’ without a basis in fact.”
The meeting was yet “another deliberate effort by Russia to divert the international community’s attention from Russia’s own blatant violations of the UN Charter and other international law, including its ongoing violations of international human rights law in Russia and rampant human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law in Ukraine,” said the statement. It also emphasized the importance of having “a meaningful and constructive discussion” about the rising global neo-Nazism and antisemitism.
What’s a narrative and how does it relate to facts?
Mark Laity, Chief of Strategic Communications at SHAPE, NATO’s military headquarters in charge of Alliance military operations, in the past a special adviser and spokesman to former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, the BBC Defence Correspondent, in his article NATO and the Power of Narrative, explains that “a narrative is more than just a story. Rather, a narrative contains many stories, and — more importantly — it is an explanation of events in line with an ideology, theory, or belief, and one that points the way to future actions. Narratives make sense of the world, put things in their place according to our experience, and then tell us what to do.”
“A strategic narrative aligns the strategy and the narrative so they become mutually supportive and integrated.”
Laity proceeds to give an example, translating the Kremlin’s strategy from operational style language to emotional terms.
The strategic goal is phrased in plain terms: ‘In order to put pressure on, and regain influence over, the Kyiv government and prevent its westward orientation, we will use covert action and, if necessary, further military means to increase and exploit pro-Russian sympathies, regain Crimea, and support a pro-Russian enclave in Ukraine’ becomes ‘The fascist junta in Kyiv illegally toppled the elected government and is viciously oppressing our Russian compatriots in Ukraine, who desperately needed and called for our help to protect their culture and rights.’
The Kremlin weaves fabricated stories about “Ukrainian nationalist militias advancing on Crimea or ethnic Russian children being crucified by Ukrainian nationalists” into the web of parallel reality that is based not on facts but on its own strategic goals.
Laity points out that these are not “just random lies, but lies that support the strategic narrative.”
Making false narratives
In the process of creating narratives, Kremlin political technologists distort facts to fit their narratives; omit parts that do not fit into their narratives, or dismiss them whatsoever.
The goal of the false narratives is to manipulate emotions and eventually hijack the individual and collective consciousness to alter the political landscape to benefit the Kremlin.
The narratives are disseminated into the information space using the old KGB-style tactics and methods such as “reflexive control,” “information dumps,” “useful idiots” and infiltration of the western mass media.
Street art in Odesa, Ukraine. Photo by Zarina Zabrisky.
Kremlin Narratives. A glossary.
The Kremlin has an arsenal of narratives used to justify the war in Ukraine. Below are just a few examples.
Narrative 1: “de-Nazification,” the very goal of Putin’s ‘special operation.’
False premise: “Ukraine is governed by the neo-Nazi junta.”
Facts: The Kremlin exploits “the historical memory of the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany to fabricate a pretext for their unprovoked brutal war against Ukraine, …exploiting the suffering and sacrifice of all those who lived through World War II and survived the Holocaust,” writes the U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Italy. “In the process, the Kremlin is detracting from critically important global efforts to combat antisemitism and is instead propagating one of antisemitism’s most insidious forms, Holocaust distortion. With antisemitism on the rise around the world, it is imperative for all to call out this particularly pernicious kind of Russian disinformation.”
Goal: “Fabricate a pretext for the war” and gain emotional support from the Russian population and the international community.
Narrative 2: “Younger brother” concept.
False: “Ukraine is not a nation; its culture, language, history do not exist, etc.”
Facts: “Soviet doctrine “Three peoples — Three brothers” labelled Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian peoples as “brotherly” and recognized the supremacy of the Russian people. The Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples were considered “Russians with local deviations,” writes Kostyantyn Doroshenko, an art critic, author, a podcast host. The myth of a “big brother” with its “vassal” countries is a major force driving Putin’s full-scale aggression war against Ukraine. Putin has expressed these views in his infamous 2021 ‘op-ed.’
Goals: Undermine the Ukrainian national identity and the idea of Ukraine as a sovereign state.
Narrative 3. “Minsk agreements.”
False: “Ukraine constantly violated the Minsk agreements.” “The Western partners are unhappy with Ukraine breaking the Minsk agreements.”
Facts:
- Minsk agreements were designed to stop the hostilities after Russia annexed Crime and funded the war in Donbas in 2014. Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and representatives of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic” signed the second agreement in February 2015.
- While the Russian government blamed Ukraine for breaking the truce, the West accused Russia of violating the first clause of the Minsk agreements, the ceasefire.
- On February 22, 2022, Putin announced that the Minsk agreements “no longer existed” and in two days, the Russian Federation started a full-scale war in Ukraine.
Goal: To discredit Ukraine and justify the war.
Note: One of the most popular narratives.
Narrative 4. “It’s a civil war.”
False: The Russian-speaking population of Ukraine is fighting the Ukrainian-speaking part. East fights West.
Facts: “Luhansk People’s Republic” and “Donetsk People’s Republic” are not “breakaway” or “separatist” states; these are Russian proxy-states funded and supported by the Russian Federation.
Goal: To weaken Ukraine from within and misrepresent the situation to the international community.
Note: For eight years, Russia presented the war as a Ukrainian civil war. This is also why the show trials of Azov defenders or the International Legion volunteers take place or are planned to be held in Donbas, at Ukrainian territory.
Narrative 5. “Ukraine fatigue”
False: “The EU is tired of supporting Ukraine.”
Facts: Political, economic, and social support of Ukraine by the EU is growing steadily.
Goal: To demoralize the Ukrainian population. To create the desired sentiment by suggestion.
Example: In 2021, Donetskie Vesti analyzed this old narrative, providing materials on military support from the US, UK, and NATO. Propaganda media in the Russian Federation spread the thesis of “disappointment of Canadian mercenaries in the ‘military operation’ in Ukraine due to insane incompetent commanders and acute lack of weapons,” which is why they “leave the area of hostilities.”
Note: According to Alexander Kovalenko, the Information Resistance military and political advisor, the Kremlin is pushing the “Europe is tired of you; it wants to ditch you” narrative on Ukrainians since 2014.
Narrative 6. “Genocide of the Russians in Donbas.”
False: “Ukraine has been shelling Donbas for eight years.”
Facts: “By accusing the Ukrainian government of the deadliest of crimes against humanity, the Kremlin not only tries to portray Kyiv as the worst of villains but also abuses the term that is clearly defined in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1948,” writes EU vs.Disinfo, another excellent resource on the Kremlin false narratives.
Note: “None of the multiple reports on the human rights situation in Ukraine(opens in a new tab), which are regularly published by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, or the reports of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (opens in a new tab) come even close to referencing genocide in Ukraine,” adds EU vs.Disinfo.
Narratives 7, 8. “Bombings and destruction are fakes” and “Ukrainians are bombing themselves.”
False: “Bucha, Irpen massacres are staged.” In an interview with the Associated Press, Lukashenko said that “what happened in Bucha was a show. There were British people who came from Lviv in cars, filmed in Bucha, and then threw it into the information space.”
Goal: To whitewash the Russian Federation’s war crimes in Ukraine.
Note: Such narratives are tempting to believe in because psychological defences kick in.
Narrative 9: Blame the government.
False: “The current government is to blame for growing taxes, utility bills, food prices, exchange rates, inflation, etc.”
Facts: Taxes and fees are regularly rising worldwide. Governments do not control the price of fuel. Currencies are subject to inflation.
Goal: This narrative plays on voters’ feelings to incite the anti-government sentiment.
Note: On June 5, 2022, SBU (the Security Service of Ukraine) gained access to the combat propaganda tutorials of the 5th department of the FSB (the Russian Federation intelligence agencies) on the “proper coverage of the special operation” in Ukraine. The documents state “a need to strengthen the work of journalists and media experts from foreign countries (not only in Western countries but also in the Arab world, in Central Asia, China, India, etc.) in addition to strengthening propaganda in Russia.
The following strategies and tactics are offered, “With regard to the EU, start a massive information dumps of the facts and forecasts of the deterioration in the lives of people in the EU caused by the policy of the EU governments, supporting nationalist groups in Ukraine. Provoke internal public pressure on the government and political elites in western countries.”
To form a negative attitude to the EU governments, the Russian intelligence agency suggests focusing “on the deterioration of life in the EU and around the world in the long term.” The following arguments are used to push the above narrative:
- arming Ukraine at the expense of European taxpayers, while closing some social programs within the EU;
- an increase in the proportion of the poor in a number of countries;
- forecasts on the number of Ukrainian refugees and the burden created on the budget and socio-economic infrastructure of the EU;
- the hardships due to the energy crisis; etc.
Note: This technique is not unique to the Kremlin, says Alexander Kovalenko. The Republican National Committee’s official Twitter account delivers this narrative to the US voters on a daily basis.
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While the statement by the UN members is an important milestone, acknowledging the information attacks and false narratives post factum is hardly a sufficient measure during the hybrid war. Promoting education, early recognition and prevention, and building psychological defence systems become the number one task in modern warfare.
(Writing by Zarina Zabrisky, editing by Klaudia Fior)