A look back at Russian propaganda and its consequences in terms of disinformation or the conditioning of information on the war in Ukraine.
A tribute was paid on Friday June 10 in Paris to Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, this journalist working for BFMTV who was killed in the Donbass by the Russian army. On the same day, a hearing was held before the Court of Justice of the European Union to challenge the ban on broadcasting of Russia Today and Sputnik in the 27 countries of the Union. Between these two events, there is the whole tragic distance that separates information from propaganda.
The eighth journalist to be killed during the war in Ukraine, Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff was killed even as he tried to bear witness to the reality of the fighting during the evacuation of civilians. His death has also led to the opening of an investigation by the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office. Conversely, one wonders what the alternative narrative to reality specific to the RT France channel on Ukraine would have been.
► To read also: Russian disinformation around the death of journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff
“Parallel Realities”
We have an idea by following on France 24 the Chronicle Seen from Russia by Elena Voloshin who translates images from Russian channels. We see ” parallel realities “, she says, like a huge black and orange ribbon of Saint George to celebrate the victory in a street of Mariupol, city “ liberated from neo-Nazis “. We also see bulldozers at work to rebuild the city, largely razed after 20,000 deaths. ” The Russians never see in their media destruction and death caused by their army “, explains Elena Voloshin.
As for the Mariupol theater, where 300 to 600 people were killed, Russia 24 perceives manipulation by the Azov battalion holding civilians hostage. Even the massacre of Boutcha would only be a staging of Ukrainian fighters who would have disguised themselves as Russian soldiers to incriminate Moscow by shooting civilians, according to the first channel.
Preventive war against the West
The international commission of inquiry will establish the facts, but none of these allegations correspond to the reality observed on the ground. It is therefore clear that there is a brainwashing in Russia to make believe that the Ukraine does not exist, that Russia comes to the aid of the populations, that it is a question of defending civilization against decadence. And since the Duma has passed a law providing for up to 15 years in prison for any discredit brought against the armed forces, this propaganda tends more and more to make believe that a preventive war is taking place against the West to defend the fatherland. Russian, even if officially we speak ” special military operation “.
Of course, RT like Sputnik echo this position of the Kremlin and it is the very fact of relaying a discourse denying reality to such an extent that it was deemed urgent in Brussels to ban. Right or wrong.