By Janet Ekstract
ISTANBUL – On Thursday, the U.S. State Department made a lengthy report public on the disinformation campaign on Ukraine that Russia is perpetrating. Among the untruths in the disinformation campaign that the State Department and a U.S. interagency uncovered are several Russian military and intelligence entities engaged in “information confrontation” that targets Ukraine.
Those activities include spreading propaganda and disinformation that make Ukraine and the Ukrainian government officials appear to be the aggressors in the Russia-Ukraine relationship when in actual fact it has always been Russia that has been the aggressor and the fact is that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 on baseless grounds causing what could have been a more widespread conflict had the U.S. and the EU not intervened on Ukraine’s behalf.
The State Department reports that Russia’s aim is to get the Russian people to believe in the necessity of Russia invading Ukraine while meanwhile Russia still occupies Crimea, controls armed forces in the Donbas, and currently has 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine. And the State Department further explains in the report that Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening “retaliatory military-technical” measures if his demands aren’t met.
Meanwhile, Putin’s false narrative is that the West is pushing Ukraine toward a conflict when it is actually Russia who has instigated the current crisis by massing troops on Ukraine’s border with no provocation whatsoever by Ukraine. As the State Department explained, it is Russia’s sole responsibility to end this crisis peacefully through de-escalation and diplomacy.
The State Department report clearly states: “This follows a pattern of Russian behavior of undermining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries in the region – invading and occupying parts of Georgia in 2008, and failing to honor its 1999 commitment to withdraw its troops and munitions from Moldova, where they remain without the government’s consent. FICTION: Russia’s deployment of combat forces is a mere repositioning of troops on its own territory FACT: Deploying more than 100,000 Russian troops, including battle-hardened combat forces and offensive weaponry with no plausible innocuous explanation, to the borders of a country that Russia has previously invaded and still occupies in places is no mere troop rotation. It is a clear, renewed Russian threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
