Voice of America: Russia successfully pushes its narratives through the Western media

Russia is successfully spreading its narrative about Ukraine in Western media, reports Voice of Americaciting Western experts. Propagandists manipulate information and distort the perception of their war of aggression in order to blame Ukraine for it.

Several commentators noted that the coverage of the American weapons attack on the space surveillance and communications center in temporarily occupied Crimea was distorted, with Western media focusing on quotes from pro-Russian “officials” in Crimea rather than addressing the core events of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“The attack, confirmed by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, allowed the Ukrainian Armed Forces to neutralize a significant military component of the satellite communications and navigation system that helped the Russians attack civilian objects in peaceful cities. Instead, several leading Western media outlets cited the Russian side, emphasizing the casualties among people who were allegedly relaxing on beaches of the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula,” the text says. Such publications appeared on BBC, The guardAnd CNN Web pages.

At the same time, Russia changed its statements and contradicted itself, noted German commentator Jürgen Nauditt. Initially, the occupiers claimed to have fired an ATACMS missile, but then retracted this version and accused Ukraine of a deliberate attack.

“One rule always applies – the Russians always lie,” writes Nauditt.

The English-language media, echoing the Russian headlines, focused on the casualties among the people of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. This overshadowed the main event: the neutralization of a strategic military target that allowed the Russians to kill Ukrainian civilians on a daily basis, says journalist Joe Lindsley of the Chicago WGN Radioo. “The negative stories dominated the headlines. This is how Russia manipulates the mindless media,” Lindsley writes.

Lindsley stresses that the people were killed by remnants of Russian air defenses, and not by American weapons fired by Ukrainians. At the same time, the journalist notes that these media do not mention the Ukrainian civilians deliberately killed by Russians in peaceful Kharkiv.