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Intentional confusion in the chronology of the war and other manipulations surrounding Ukraine

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Photo: Valentyn Stolyarchuk, Mykhailo Chubai / ArmiyaInform, via Wikimedia Commons

This article was first published by Truthmeter.mk (North Macedonia), within the framework of Western Balkans Anti-Disinformation Project.

A Facebook post lists events from Ukraine’s recent history, creating the false impression that the Ukrainians were aggressive, and that Russia begged them to come to their senses, but was ultimately “forced” to take military action, thus justifying the invasion of Ukraine. There is also a manipulation here, which is common among pro-Russian propagandists, and that is to create confusion in the order of historical events, so that the public is confused about “who started it first”

 

A Facebook post says the following:

 

Ukraine- *overthrows the government 2014 *

Russia- Please stop!

Ukraine- *Hang all the Russians! Slava Ukraini* Send them back to Russia!

Russia- Seriously, please stop !!

Ukraine- *Burn the Russians in Odesa alive*

Russia- wtf stop!!!!

Ukraine – * 8 years of massacring Russians in Donbas*

Russia- Last warning, please stop!!

Ukraine – *wants to join NATO and is preparing a major offensive on the DPR and LPR for ethnic cleansing of Crimea and Donbas*

Russia- Fine MINSK 1,2 & Instanbul, its SMO !!!!

Ukraine- *WTFFFFFFFF WHY? WE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, HELP US! NATO HELP! OUR HUMAN RIGHTS ARE IN DANGER!!!!!*

Russia- We warned you!

WE GAVE YOU A ROPE THAT IS LONG ENOUGH … SO … WE ARE RECLAIMING OUR 4 REGIONS!

 

Here we see a common manipulation—distorting the sequence of events to confuse the public about who first started the conflict in Ukraine.

The post uses the well-known fire that killed pro-Russian activists in Odessa to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine as preventing genocide, but the fire happened on May 2, 2014, and Russia invaded as early as the end of February 2014. The target was Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia on the 18th of March 2014, encouraging separatism in the Donbas, sending its agents like Igor Girkin-Strelkov.

(Pro) Russian activists then protested in Donetsk and Luhansk and seized the administration there, so during April 2014 the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic (DPR and LPR) were established, and when it came to Odessa, the Ukrainians did not want to allow it.
Therefore, the Russian invasion is not retaliation for the arson, but the arson was retaliation for the Russian aggression. The arson was an unsightly event, but it must be said why it happened:
On that day there were demonstrations and riots, in which the pro-Russian Odessa squad of Vitaliy Budko  Boatswain opened fire on pro-Ukrainian activists, killing Igor Ivanov and Andriy Biryukov, which the pro-Russian police chief Dmitry Fuchedzhy did not prevent. Objectively, the other side has also engaged in violence.

The pro-Ukrainian activists then clashed with the pro-Russians activists, who were rallying in front of the House of Trade Unions with tents, so they barricaded themselves in it. Both sides were using Molotov cocktails, and unfortunately, that led to the burning of the house and the casualties.

It was not an unprovoked act of genocide directed at an entire ethnic group, rather, it was directed at one separatist group. Previously, Ukrainians refrained from violence, especially in Crimea, and even in Donbas. Only after 12 April 2014, when Strelkov attacked the city of Slavyansk, the Ukrainians established the so-called Anti-terrorist operation (ATO) and thus started the Donbas war, which secretly involved Russia, sparking anger which erupted in Odessa.

The Kremlin spread fake news such as: “Ukrainians in Slavyansk crucified a child,” however, eventually, the Russians themselves admitted there was no proof of that. There have been isolated excesses on the Ukrainian side, but no equivalents to the massacres in Srebrenica or Bucha, let’s say. Unlike Mariupol, Bakhmut, Avdiivka or other Ukrainian cities, which the Russians massacred and demolished, Donetsk and Luhansk are somewhat preserved.

The population of Donbass did not massively support the so-called “DPR” and “LPR,” so they didn’t cover the whole region, but expanded even further with the full-scale Russian invasion starting in 2022. Today, Russia does not control the entire Donbas, including cities like Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, and others.

Furthermore, the Donbas is not dominated by ethnic Russians, but by Russian-speaking Ukrainians, which is a consequence of the assimilation (Russification) under the rule of Tsarist Russia and the USSR.
Namely, Tsarist Russia abused the Pereiaslav Agreement (1654) to subjugate Ukraine, after which it persecuted the Ukrainian language with bans such as the Valuev Circular (1863) and the Ems Ukaz (1876), while Soviet Russia suffocated the independent Ukrainian People’s Republic (1918-1922) and replaced it with Soviet Ukraine, which was forcibly integrated into the USSR, where Ukrainians suffered from Stalin’s purges, the Holodomor, etc.
For this reason, Ukrainians in 2014 protested against the pro-Russian vassalаgе of President Viktor Yanukovych, who was both deeply corrupt and who beat and shot them. The government was not overthrown, as the post claims, but on 28 January 2014 Prime Minister Mykola Azarov resigned, and Yanukovych was dismissed by the assembly on 22 February 2014. Both of them then fled to Russia, which committed aggression against their country.
The fact that Russia illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions on the 30th of September 2022, does not mean it “reclaimed” them. It was once called Novorossiya not because it was primeval Russian, but because it was newly seized. According to the census of the Russian Empire of 1897, the majority there were of course Ukrainians, then called Malorossy.

 

The post is awkwardly translated from a foreign source. It has mixed parts in Macedonian and English, so let’s explain: DPR is the Donetsk People’s Republic, LPR is the Luhansk People’s Republic and SMO is short for Special Military Operation, a euphemism for the Russian aggression against Ukraine.

It mentions both Minsk peace agreements (2014-2015), which Ukraine allegedly violated, which is a common narrative among pro-Russian propagandists, but they are silent about Russia’s previous violation of the Budapest Memorandum, signed on December 5, 1994. Under the agreement, Ukraine handed over its Soviet-era nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for security guarantees. However, Russia still attacked Ukraine, starting in 2003 when it briefly usurped the island of Tuzla off Crimea, an action that nearly escalated into war.

Taking all of this into account, we assess the post as untrue.

 



 

Oliver
Oliver

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