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Ukraine’s propaganda machine is vital for Zelensky: Here is how it works

Rt.com 12 June 23

Kiev is waging an extensive information war against Russia and it began long before the military conflict

The Russia-Ukraine conflict isn’t just about the clash of armed forces on the battlefield. It has also been marked by unprecedented levels of confrontation in the fields of information and psychology, cognition and semantics. 

Kiev has arguably achieved more success on the information front, than on the ground. There the “fighters” aren’t just journalists and information and psychological warfare specialists, but content makers and PR experts. Influencing the psyche, mindset, and emotions of ordinary people has become a big deal, as shaping Western public opinion is vital for President Vladimir Zelensky’s regime.

The symbols of war

Anyone familiar with advertising and PR knows that tying a product to a colorful, memorable symbol, or slogan, will boost its popularity, especially in this era of short attention spans. During wartime, the same strategy works just as well with the news as with advertising and election campaigns.

In the current conflict, Ukraine has become very good at creating symbols. Media outlets instantly take up any popular symbol and make use of it in order to influence the mindset of ordinary Ukrainians.

Here’s a recent example. In May, despite the very difficult situation for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in Artemovsk (Bakhmut) and statements from several commentators  – particularly the former Zelensky adviser Alexey Arestovich – that the army could soon retreat (as it eventually did), Ukrainian society wasn’t at all worried and had complete faith in the AFU’s ability to retain control over the city.

In fact, public attitudes towards the battle were largely shaped by the media. For example, at the beginning of the year the rock band “Antytila” (“Antibodies”) released a video for the song ‘Bakhmut Fortress.’ A few months later, it became viral.  Ukrainians have since posted countless self-made versions of the video on social networks, affirming the myth of the impenetrable fortress of Bakhmut.

Such symbols are created not only during ongoing battles, but also in the aftermath of the AFU’s obvious failures. For example, at the end of February, the Artemsol salt production enterprise announced that before the start of active battles for Soledar (which ended in January with the victory of the Russian Army), it collected 20 tons of salt from the mines. The salt was packed into 100,000 packages bearing the symbolic inscription “Ukrainian Rock-Solid Strength.” Each package was sold for 500 hryvnia (about $13.50). According to the organizers of the fundraiser, most proceeds were spent on kamikaze drones for the AFU.

Symbolic campaigns like these occur regularly in Ukraine and are designed to encourage the population. In November of last year, when Russian troops withdrew from the west bank of the Kherson region and the AFU entered the eponymous regional capital, a national social media campaign urged users to place images of watermelons (the area grows them) on their profile pictures.  ………………………………………………………………

The triumph of these symbols, which have endured long after being confirmed as fake, is a result of the information bubble in which Ukrainian society and much of the West has found itself. In the past year and a half since opposition media was blocked, government-controlled outlets are often the only source of information for Ukrainians. 

The invisible front

“Today, information warfare is the core structure of any war. It is very important to have influence over a society that is involved in combat. Moreover, it is essential to convince the world community of the rightness of our actions in order to receive further support. Not only authorized persons can take part in this information war, but also regular citizens who ‘fight’ at their own discretion,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Anna Maliar said in February.

Information and Psychological Operations (IPsO) are intended to brainwash people and shape public opinion, and they are among Kiev’s most important strategies in the conflict with Russia. In combat conditions, these operations are primarily aimed at demoralizing and disorganizing the enemy’s front and rear and inspiring a hopeless, doomed atmosphere. Usually, their main task is to discredit the military and political command and highlight defeat and failure…………………………………………………………………………………….

As part of Ukraine’s integration into NATO structures, special unit instructors from the United States and other Western countries are involved in the training of IPsO center personnel. In particular, these are specialists from the US Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group (formerly called the 4th Military Information Support Group) and the UK’s 77th Brigade – a special unit of information, psychological, and cyber operations of the Armed Forces of Great Britain. IPsO specialists also undergo regular training at US military bases.

Disinformation and propaganda

In addition to official media outlets, Ukraine’s Information and Psychological Operations Centers rely on several thousand internet resources including information and news sites, social networks, and coordinated social media groups.

Even before the start of Russia’s military campaign, certain Ukrainian volunteer internet information resources were controlled by IPsO centers. This included the volunteer communities InformNapalm, (informnapalm.org ), Peacemaker (psb4ukr.org ), Information Resistance (sprotyv.info ), as well as commercial sites (seebreeze.org.ua, petrimazepa.com, podvodka.info, metelyk.org, mfaua.org, burkonews.info, euromaidanpress.com , peopleproject.com and others) used for information campaigns and testing “social engineering” technologies. In particular, it was noted that IPsO officers often operated under the guise of “volunteers” and pseudo-bloggers……………………………………

Ukraine uses various tools – including websites, social networks, and bots – to spread disinformation. In April, hackers from RaHDit and other groups revealed Ukrainian Telegram channels presumably supervised by the SBU, which posed as pro-Russian. An entire network of such channels, with an audience of 5-6 million people, was discovered during the investigation. The list includes channels Operation Z, Novorossiya 2.0, and many others……………… more https://www.rt.com/russia/577774-kievs-propaganda-machine-how-it-works/—

June 14, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Patrick Lawrence: Neo-Nazis in Ukraine? No, Yes, No–Yes

Stepan Bandera torchlight parade in Kiev, Jan. 1, 2020. (A1/Wikimedia Commons)

As is well-known and documented, the neo–Nazis who infest the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the AFU — among many other national institutions — have made idols of such figures as Stepan Bandera, the freakishly murderous nationalist who allied with the Nazi regime during the war.

A New York Times’ reporter’s job this week is to persuade us that all those Ukrainian soldiers wearing Nazi insignia and marching through Kiev in Klan-like torch parades are not what you think.

June 7, 2023, By Patrick Lawrence, Original to ScheerPost

I tell you, serving as a New York Times correspondent these days cannot be easy.

You have to convey utter nonsense to your readers while maintaining a straight face and a serious demeanor.

You have to suggest the Russians may have exploded a drone over the Kremlin, that they may have blown up their own gas pipeline, that their president is an out-of-touch psychotic, that their soldiers in Ukraine are drunkards using faulty equipment, that they attack with “human hordes” (Orientalism, anyone?) and on and on — all the while affecting the gravitas once associated with the traditional “Timesman.” You try it sometime.

………………….. now we have the case of Thomas Gibbons–Neff, a square-jawed former Marine covering the Ukraine war for the Times — strictly to the extent the Kyiv regime permits him to do so, as he explains with admirable honesty. This guy is serious times 10, he and his newspaper want us to know.  

Tom’s job this week is to persuade us that all those Ukrainian soldiers wearing Nazi insignia, idolizing Jew-murdering, Russophobic collaborators with the Third Reich, gathering ritually in Nazi-inspired cabals, marching through Kyiv in Klan-like torch parades are not what you think.

Nah, our Tom tells us. They look like neo–Nazis, they act like neo–Nazis, they dress like neo–Nazis, they profess Fascist and neo–Nazi ideologies, they wage this war with the Wehrmacht’s visceral hatred of Russians — O.K., but whyever would you think they are neo–Nazis? 

They are just regular guys. They wear the Wolfsangel, the Schwarze sonne, the black sun, the Totenkopf, or Death’s Head — all Nazi symbols — because they are proud of themselves, and these are the kinds of things proud people wear. I was just wearing mine the other day. 

The slipping and sliding starts early in “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History,” the piece Gibbons–Neff published in Monday’s editions.

He begins with three photographs of neo–Nazi Ukrainian soldiers, SS insignia plainly visible, that the Kyiv regime has posted on social media, “then quietly deleted,” since the Russian intervention began last year.

“The photographs, and their deletions,” Gibbons–Neff writes, “highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II.”

Complicated relationship with Nazi imagery? Stop right there, Mr. Semper fi.  Ukraine’s neo–Nazi problem is not about a few indiscreetly displayed images. Sorry. The Ukrainian army’s “complicated relationship” is with a century of ultra-right ideology drawn from Mussolini’s Fascism and then the German Reich.

As is well-known and documented, the neo–Nazis who infest the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the AFU — among many other national institutions — have made idols of such figures as Stepan Bandera, the freakishly murderous nationalist who allied with the Nazi regime during the war.

This history is a matter of record, as briefly outlined here, but Gibbons–Neff alludes to none of it. It’s merely a matter of poor image-making, you see. In support of this offensive whitewash, Gibbons–Neff has the nerve to quote a source from none other than Bellingcat, which was long, long back exposed as a C.I.A. and MI6 cutout and which is now supported by the Atlantic Council, the NATO–funded, spook-infested think tank based in Washington. 

“What worries me, in the Ukrainian context, is that people in Ukraine who are in leadership positions, either they don’t or they’re not willing to acknowledge and understand how these symbols are viewed outside of Ukraine,” a Bellingcat “researcher” named Michael Colborne tells Gibbons–Neff. “I think Ukrainians need to increasingly realize that these images undermine support for the country.”

[Related: Ukraine Parliament Cheers Nazi Collaborator]

Think about that. The presence of Nazi elements in the AFU is not a worry. The worry is merely whether clear signs of Nazi sympathies might cause some members of the Western alliance to decide they no longer want to support Nazi elements in the AFU.

I am reminded of that Public Broadcasting news segment last year, wherein a provincial governor is featured with a portrait of Bandera behind him. PBS simply blurred the photograph and ran the interview with another of the courageous, admirable Ukrainians to which we are regularly treated.

I hardly need remind paying-attention readers that the neo–Nazis-who-are-not-neo–Nazis were for years well-reported as simply neo–Nazis in the years after the U.S.–cultivated coup in 2014.

[Related: Caitlin Johnstone: What MSM Can No Longer Say]

The Times, The Washington Post, PBS, CNN — the whole sorry lot — ran pieces on neo–Nazi elements in the AFU and elsewhere. In March 2018, Reuters published a commentary by Jeff Cohen under the headline “Ukraine’s Neo–Nazi Problem.”

Three months later The Atlantic Council, for heaven’s sake, published a paper, also written by Cohen, titled, “Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far–Right Violence (And no, RT Didn’t Write This Headline).”

I recall, because it was so surprising coming from the council. The original head on that paper was “Ukraine’s Got a Neo–Nazi Problem,” but that version now seems lost to the blur of stealth editing. 

Then came the Russian intervention, and Poof! There are no more neo–Nazis in Ukraine.

There are only these errant images that are of no special account.

And to assert there are neo–Nazis in Ukraine — to have some semblance of memory and a capacity to judge what is before one’s eyes — “plays into Russian propaganda,” Gibbons–Neff warns us.

It is to “give fuel to his”— Vladimir Putin’s — “false claims that Ukraine must be de–Nazified.” For good measure Gibbons–Neff gets out the old Volodymyr-Zelensky-is-Jewish chestnut, as if this is proof of… of something or other.

My mind goes to that lovely Donovan lyric from the Scottish singer’s Zen enlightenment phase. Remember “There Is a Mountain?” The famous lines went, “First there is a mountain/ Then there is no mountain/ Then there is.” There were neo–Nazis in Ukraine, then there were no neo–Nazis, and now there are neo–Nazis but they aren’t neo–Nazis after all. 

………………………………….. Gibbons–Neff resolutely avoids dilating his lens such that the larger phenomenon comes into view. It all comes down to those three unfortunate insignia in those three deleted photographs.

The parades, the corridors of neo–Nazi flags, the ever-present swastikas, the reenactments of all-night SS rituals, the glorification of Nazis and Nazi collaborators, the Russophobic blood lust: Sure, it can all be explained, except that our Timesman does not go anywhere near any of this.

Gibbons–Neff resolutely avoids dilating his lens such that the larger phenomenon comes into view. It all comes down to those three unfortunate insignia in those three deleted photographs.

The parades, the corridors of neo–Nazi flags, the ever-present swastikas, the reenactments of all-night SS rituals, the glorification of Nazis and Nazi collaborators, the Russophobic blood lust: Sure, it can all be explained, except that our Timesman does not go anywhere near any of this.

“It is, of course, true that, for instance, the Azov Battalion was originally founded by neo–Nazi and far-right groups (as well as many soccer ultra-fans), which brought along with it the typical aesthetics — not only neo–Nazi insignia but also things like Pagan rituals or names like ‘The Black Corps,’ the official newspaper of Nazi Germany’s major paramilitary organization Schutzstaffel (SS).”

But worry not, readers. It is merely an aesthetic, part of a harmless, misunderstood “subculture”: 

Torchlight procession in honor of the 106 anniversary of the birthday of Stepan Bandera, Kiev, Jan. 1, 2015. (All-Ukrainian Union CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

…………………………………………….It is always interesting to ask why a piece such as this appears when it does. Dead silence for months on the neo–Nazi question, and then suddenly a long explainer that does its best to avoid explaining anything. Always interesting to ask, never easy to answer. 

It could be that a lot of stuff on these awful people is sifting out from under the carpet. Or maybe something big is on the way and this piece is preemptive. Or maybe either Gibbons–Neff or his editors saw the Ponomarenko piece as an opportunity to dispose of one of the Kyiv regime’s most embarrassing features. 

Or maybe the larger context counts here. As mentioned in this space last week, the Times’ Steve Erlanger recently suggested from Brussels that NATO might do a postwar Germany job with Ukraine: Welcome the West of the country to the alliance and let the eastern provinces go for an indefinite period, unification the long-term objective.

Late last week Foreign Affairs ran a fantastical piece by Andriy Zagorodnyuk, formerly a Ukrainian defense minister and now, yes indeedy, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. It appeared under the headline, “To Protect Europe, Let Ukraine Join NATO—Right Now.” ……………………………………….more https://consortiumnews.com/2023/06/07/patrick-lawrence-neo-nazis-in-ukraine-no-yes-no-yes/?fbclid=IwAR2qutGUc886hz22JN9TvBgmNTXCb-dJwB1TvxPfsnvxCTT6d9yuEoeJOH8

June 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Tucker Carlson steamrolls Ukraine propaganda in new show

US corporate media outlets treat curiosity as the “gravest crime,” the former TV pundit has said

7 June 23  https://www.rt.com/news/577602-tucker-carlson-twitter-show/

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has released the first episode of his new series on Twitter, taking Western news agencies to task for one-sided reporting on the conflict in Ukraine and open hostility toward anybody voicing dissenting views.

Dubbed ‘Tucker on Twitter’, the show’s first ten-minute segment was shared on the social media platform on Tuesday night. The clip opened with a monologue on the alleged Ukrainian attack on a major dam in Russia’s Kherson Region this week, which Carlson dubbed “an act of terrorism.”

“Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more, and for precisely that reason the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it,” he said. Carlson went on to observe that a Ukrainian general had admitted to planning attacks on the Kakhovka dam facility in comments to the Washington Post last December.

While Carlson said he had little doubt that Kiev was behind the incident, he noted that several American media outlets had already suggested that Moscow may have arranged the attack, claiming they view Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as simply “too decent for terrorism.”

“Of all the people in the world, our shifty, dead-eyed Ukrainian friend in the tracksuit is uniquely incapable of blowing up a dam. He’s literally a living saint, a man in whom there is no sin,” he went on, describing the general attitude within the mainstream press.

The pundit drew comparisons to last year’s attack on the Nord Stream pipelines, which were built to carry natural gas from Russia into Germany. Though Carlson argued it was “obvious” that Ukraine had carried out the sabotage, he said US media outlets had little interest in investigating, helping to make Americans among “the least informed people in the world.”

“Not only are the media not interested in any of this, they are actively hostile to anybody who is. In journalism, curiosity is the gravest crime,” he continued, adding that while media outlets lie, “mostly they just ignore the stories that matter.”

Carlson parted ways with Fox in April, a major shake-up for the media giant, given the prominence of his prime-time program, ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’. He later announced that would move his content to Twitter, where he has released other stand-alone segments similar to his former show. In his signoff for Tuesday’s episode, the host voiced hopes that Twitter would be a venue with “no gatekeepers,” but vowed to leave the site should that turn out to be false.

June 9, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, Ukraine | 4 Comments