Western media wages unprecedented propaganda war on viewers about Ukraine

The situation in Ukraine has made it clear that the nature of propaganda is evolving in the 2020s

I've seen a lot of western propaganda in my life. The first real instance was after 9/11, when images of the World Trade Center collapsing were replayed by media networks for weeks on end, fueling support for the US to invade Afghanistan. It was even worse leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, where I watched networks repeatedly (and falsely) tie Saddam Hussein to 9/11 while simultaneously fearmongering about his vast collection of non-existent WMDs. Once US forces began storming Iraqi cities, I remember seeing the bloodied image of Saddam's dead sons plastered all over the news like a sick trophy. More propaganda waves followed in the years after with the US invasion of Libya, and not long after, Syria.

In February 2022, yet another propaganda campaign kicked off, starting for me on social media with a video of what I thought were Russian paratroopers blotting out the sun as they rained down over what appeared to be Ukraine. Turns out that video was old footage. Not long after, I came across another video, this one supposedly showing a Russian plane being shot down. Again, old footage. That video of the brave little girl supposedly confronting a Russian soldier? It’s actually a video of a Palestinian girl confronting Israeli soldiers. That video of a Russian airstrike on a power plant? It’s footage from China dating back to 2015. So many videos hit algorithms, accrued thousands of shares, only to later be debunked.

Making matters worse, in conjunction with misattributed viral footage, the propaganda blitz around the Ukranian government has also been a fascinating spectacle. For example, an image of Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko in camo with a machine gun made the rounds on Instagram, and while the photo is real, it’s actually from March 2021. And then there’s Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who became an overnight internet hero after allegedly refusing to evacuate Kyiv. “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride” is the quote famously attributed to Zelensky, later carried around the world and picked up by numerous media outlets. And yet, “the only evidence for this line is an unnamed US official,” the Washington Post later reported. “It has not been confirmed by either the US government or Zelensky’s office. Administration officials expressed confusion about the claim to The Fact Checker – they deny Zelensky was asked to leave Kyiv by the US government – and said they do not know what call the Associated Press is citing.”

Zelensky rose to power on the promise of being a departure from Petro Poroshenko, who took office following the US-backed 2014 coup. Poroshenko not only had a vast history of corruption, but also incorporated the Azov Regiment, a neo-Nazi militia accused by the UN of committing crimes against humanity, into Ukraine’s National Guard. While running against Poroshenko, Zelensky appeared to be an outsider who wanted to take on Ukranian oligarchs and resolve the conflict in Donbas, but once elected, Zelensky wasted little time proving his allegiance to the status quo.

In February 2021, the Ukrainian government imposed sanctions on members of a “pro-Russian” political party and censored several “pro-Russian” media outlets. As reported by Al-Jazeera, the move primarily served to undermine the Opposition Platform/For Life party, which “emerged as Ukraine’s most popular party at the end of 2020, not least because of Zelensky’s failure to bring peace and repeal the ethnonationalist legislation restricting the use of the Russian language, a ticking time bomb set up by his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, in the last days of his presidency.”

Two months later, Zelensky arrested demonstrators protesting actions by the Kharkiv city council, accusing them of being “pro-Russian political forces” sent to justify Russian aggression against Ukraine. The authorities did not accuse the protestors of engaging in violence; instead, the state security service alleged that “pro-Russian political forces” had sent the demonstrators to stage protests as a way to "justify possible acts of Russian aggression against Ukraine."

In August 2021, Zelensky banned Strana.ua, one of the largest news sites in Ukraine, by decree, and sanctioned the outlet’s editor-in-chief.

In October, the Pandora Papers revealed that Zelensky, who criticized his predecessor for hiding offshore assets, had a “previously undisclosed stake in an offshore company, which he appears to have secretly transferred to a friend weeks before winning the presidential vote,” as reported by to The Guardian.

In early December 2021, “thousands” of protesters held a demonstration in Kiev demanding Zelensky’s resignation. Around the same time, Zelensky proposed legislation into parliament that would be used to deny Donbass residents citizenship and voting rights while giving the Ukranian government the ability to rescind citizenship from anyone participating in “actions threatening Ukraine’s national security and national interests.” The measures would also risk stripping citizenship from Ukrainians with Russian passports. By mid-December, “small arms and ammo” from the US arrived in Ukraine as part of a $60 million security assistance package, and by late December, Zelensky’s approval ratings had plummeted.

Three months later, Zelensky’s unattributed “ammo not a ride” line spawned media headlines depicting him as a “defiant” “cultural icon”, causing his poll numbers among Ukrainians to skyrocket. His ties to the oligarchs he pledged to reign in, his scandals, his censorship of media and opposing political parties, suddenly forgotten.

From the moment he took office, Zelensky pushed hard for Ukraine to join NATO, despite this being as clear of a red line for Russia as it would be for the US to allow Mexico or Canada entry into some kind of global Russian military pact. In September 2021, the Kremlin warned that NATO would cross a boundary if its military infrastructure continued expanding in Ukraine, a warning that was ignored: in October, Ukraine started using newly purchased Turkish aerial drones against Russian-backed targets in Donbass.

And yet the many provocations leading to understanding Russian military action in Ukraine have mostly been lost in a pro-war media chorus eager to construct alternative (and ridiculous) narratives about Russian motives, like Putin wanting to rebuild the Soviet Union. As with most conflicts fueled by the US, moronic and baseless fantasies are required to fill the gaps so that Americans remain wholly propagandized and always ready for another war.

Whereas propaganda used to be based around print, television, and radio, now it also finds its way to devices in our pockets with lightning speed. Videos and stories of varying authenticity hit algorithms, spread like wildfire, and are viewed by millions. How many of the people who saw the video of “Russian paratroopers” also saw the debunking of that video? How many people who think Zelensky is a hero know that he may have never actually said the “ammo not a ride” line, or that his administration was rocked by numerous scandals prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? How many of the people who heard Biden’s speech about Russia’s “unprovoked” entry into Ukraine understand the decades of provocations leading up to it?

Misattributed videos, photos, and quotes can be fact-checked, but once these claims go viral, there is no guarantee that the same people who saw them in the first place will ever see the corrections. The situation in Ukraine has made it clear that the nature of propaganda is evolving in the 2020s, and we would all do well to approach social media videos, news articles, and especially claims made by politicians with a heavy dose of skepticism.