The war that started with Russia’s attack on Ukraine has also turned into an information war on the internet. According to Margaret MacMillan, the respected Canadian historian and author of several books on wars and their consequences, Ukraine has been the winner of the information war in the time period.
“The Ukrainian side’s accounts are believed, even in Russia there are people who believe them,” writer MacMillan told DW. According to MacMillan, Russian soldiers who were captured by Ukraine called out to their mothers, for example, they shared visual messages on Facebook that their children were well.
MacMillan thinks that Russia’s rhetoric is getting more and more crazy. “According to them, the Ukrainian government is made up of drug addicts. The reason for Russia’s entry into Ukraine was to prevent Ukraine from using nuclear weapons. However, Ukraine delivered its nuclear weapons in 1999,” said MacMillan. ‘ continues.
“Propaganda was always part of the war”
The Canadian writer states that propaganda has always been a tool of war in history. “Remember the Romans’ colonnades, or their kings, whose images were printed on coins, they were always made to show the power of Rome,” he gives as an example.
MacMillan says Napoleon was also aware of the power of propaganda. “The images in which he was depicted crossing the Alps on horseback, those images that spread everywhere, were to scare the enemy. It was aimed to be perceived as a symbol of power,” he says. According to MacMillan, propaganda has always been attempted with the aim of humiliating the enemy or drawing others to their side.
Historian MacMillan points out that only as technology has changed propaganda tools have changed:
“This was the siege made by planes to the enemy side in the First World War, it was radio broadcasts. Now it is done through social media. The enemy is directed to weaken through these channels and to pass their own support groups.”
“The reason for the war is Putin’s greed”
Author Margaret MacMillan points out that war is an organized act and defines war as “violence of one organized group against another organized group”. People start wars because they want something. Putin, on the other hand, thinks it is because of greed. “He wants to have Ukraine,” MacMillan says. Another cause of war, according to MacMilan, is fear.
Award-winning author MacMillan states that Ukraine has no other choice. In wars, actions are followed by ideologies, in fact, they often cross each other.
He thinks that another reason that drove Putin into the war was his “weird Russian nationalism”. “In the past, people used to go to war because of religions or ideologies or similar reasons,” he says, and despite all this, he states that in order for a war to start, eventually someone had to take the strings and say, “Come on, get up, we’re going to war.”
“This is Putin’s war”
Margaret MacMillan continues, “In democracies, a prime minister doesn’t just stand up and say ‘we are going to war'”:
“There are control mechanisms in democracies. In the United States, for example, the President cannot declare war because he wants to. It must be passed by Congress first. Moreover, if a war is not wanted in democracies, it is not considered a wise step to enter that war.”
He says the situation is different in an autocratic regime like Russia, where Putin holds all power and control. MacMillan emphasizes that “Putin is in control of all official institutions and organizations, intelligence and the army in Russia. The parliament is only for show.” Pointing out that the war started with Putin’s decision, MacMillan says, “I really think it is Putin’s war. I think this is Putin’s war just as I think World War II was Hitler’s war.”
Canadian historian and writer Margaret MacMillan was awarded with awards for her books such as “Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World” and “Peace Makers”. His latest book, “War: How Conflicts Are Changing Humanity,” published in 2020. published under the name. The book, which is on the New York Times bestseller list in the USA, is a study of how people organize and wage wars and the political, economic and cultural changes that wars bring.
Brenda Haas
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