Changes

{{See also|Russia-Ukraine war}}

{{See also|Russia-Ukraine war}}

In their drive to stoke hostilities between [[the West]] and Russia, corporate media ignored the fact that the U.S. and NATO forces have been supporting openly Neo-Nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine for many years. A MintPress study of the op-ed pages of ''The New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'' and ''The Wall Street Journal'' found that only one of 91 articles published in January 2022 mentioned this connection at all, with far more asserting that Vladimir Putin himself is Hitler incarnate. Around 90% of opinion columns pushed a “get tough on Russia” message, with anti-war voices few and far between.<ref>https://www.mintpressnews.com/279612-2/279612/</ref>  “People who take at face value the Western media coverage would have a very distorted perception of the Ukraine conflict and its origin,” Ivan Katchanovski, Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, told MintPress, adding:

In their drive to stoke hostilities between [[the West]] and Russia, corporate media ignored the fact that the U.S. and NATO forces have been supporting openly Neo-Nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine for many years. A MintPress study of the op-ed pages of ''The New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'' and ''The Wall Street Journal'' found that only one of 91 articles published in January 2022 mentioned this connection at all, with far more asserting that Vladimir Putin himself is Hitler incarnate. Around 90% of opinion columns pushed a “get tough on Russia” message, with anti-war voices few and far between.<ref>https://www.mintpressnews.com/279612-2/279612/</ref>  “People who take at face value the Western media coverage would have a very distorted perception of the Ukraine conflict and its origin,” Ivan Katchanovski, Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, told MintPress, adding:

{{quotebox-float|"They omit or deny that there is a civil war in Donbas even though the majority of scholars who [have] published or presented concerning this conflict in Western academic venues classify it as a civil war with Russian military intervention. The Western media also omitted that recent ‘unity marches’ in Kharkiv and Kyiv and a staged training of civilians, including a grandmother, were organized and led by the far right, in particular, the [[Azov Battalion|Neo-Nazi Azov [Battalion].]]”<ref>https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1490034084600594436</ref>}}

{{quotebox-float|"They omit or deny that there is a civil war in Donbas even though the majority of scholars who [have] published or presented concerning this conflict in Western academic venues classify it as a civil war with Russian military intervention. The Western media also omitted that recent ‘unity marches’ in Kharkiv and Kyiv and a staged training of civilians, including a grandmother, were organized and led by the far right, in particular, the [[Azov Battalion|Neo-Nazi Azov [Battalion].]]”<ref>https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1490034084600594436</ref>}}

Conducting a civilian training operation in the middle of the Donbas city of Mariupol while a crowd of Western journalists looked on, Azov units showed locals how to use rifles. The image of a silver-haired, 79-year-old “babushka” staring down the sights of an [[AK-47]] went viral around the world, allowing the media to construct an “everyone in brave Ukraine is doing their part to oppose an imminent Russian invasion” narrative. The story was covered by a host of outlets, including [[ABC News]], [[MSNBC]], [[Newsweek]], the [[BBC]], ''[[The Guardian]]'' and The Financial Times, as well as by media in [[Ireland]], [[Australia]], [[Israel]], [[Denmark]], [[Thailand]] and [[Indonesia]]. Images from the training day featured on the front cover of six national British newspapers on February 14, 2022.

Conducting a civilian training operation in the middle of the Donbas city of Mariupol while a crowd of Western journalists looked on, Azov units showed locals how to use rifles. The image of a silver-haired, 79-year-old “babushka” staring down the sights of an [[AK-47]] went viral around the world, allowing the media to construct an “everyone in brave Ukraine is doing their part to oppose an imminent Russian invasion” narrative. The story was covered by a host of outlets, including [[ABC News]], [[MSNBC]], [[Newsweek]], the [[BBC]], ''[[The Guardian]]'' and The Financial Times, as well as by media in [[Ireland]], [[Australia]], [[Israel]], [[Denmark]], [[Thailand]] and [[Indonesia]]. Images from the training day featured on the front cover of six national British newspapers on February 14, 2022.

On March 10, 2022 [[Facebook]] and [[Instagram]] reversed longstanding policies and approved open support for [[Nazism]] on their platforms and modified [[violent]] [[hate speech]] restrictions to allow advocating death to Russians.<ref>https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/10/facebook-and-instagram-say-it-is-okay-to-support-nazism-in-ukraine-and-they-modify-terms-allowing-advocacy-for-death-to-russians/</ref>

On March 10, 2022 [[Facebook]] and [[Instagram]] reversed longstanding policies and approved open support for [[Nazism]] on their platforms and modified [[violent]] [[hate speech]] restrictions to allow advocating death to Russians.<ref>https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/10/facebook-and-instagram-say-it-is-okay-to-support-nazism-in-ukraine-and-they-modify-terms-allowing-advocacy-for-death-to-russians/</ref>

===Propaganda war===community-rallies-help-ukraine-government-comms</ref>  Ukraine’s propaganda strategy earned praise from a [[NATO]] commander who told the ''Washington Post'', “They are really excellent in stratcom — media, info ops, and also

===Propaganda war===

According to Dan Cohen, the Washington DC correspondent for ''Behind The Headlines'', more than 150 public relations firms have joined the Maidan regime's propaganda blitz.<ref>https://www.prweek.com/article/1748159/global-pr-[[psy-ops]].”<ref>https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/16/ukraine-zelensky-information-war/</ref>  The head of Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs digital ecosystem for global communication<ref>https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/turb.png</ref> distributed a dossier folder with materials instructing public relations agencies on “key messages,”<ref>https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/turb1.png</ref> content for debunked propaganda constructs, approved language, and [[Neo-Nazi]] propaganda.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20220305150557/https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QE65-hyob6BzyFwYheQXLZjjlxnNsrrs</ref>  Many elements within the dossier folder use [[xenophobic]] and [[racist]] language, and some are explicit in their praise of prominent Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, including C14 leader Yevhen Karas who boasted that “we have fun killing”, the Pravy Sektor [[fascist]] paramilitary, and the Neo-Nazi [[Azov Battalion]]. Multiple images call for “[[Banderist|Banderite smoothies]]” – a reference to [[Molotov cocktail]]s named for the late [[OUN-B]] commander [[Stephan Bandera]], who collaborated with [[Nazi Germany]] in the [[mass murder]] of [[Jews]] and ethnic [[Polish|Poles]] during [[World War II]]. Another image depicts a book titled the: ''Encyclopedia of Incurable Diseases,'' listing Russia, [[Belorussia]], [[North Korea]], [[Syria]], and [[Eritrea]].<ref>https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/@juliasmal_Book-scaled.jpg</ref>

According to Dan Cohen, the Washington DC correspondent for ''Behind The Headlines'', more than 150 public relations firms have joined the Maidan regime's propaganda blitz.<ref>https://www.prweek.com/article/1748159/global-pr-community-rallies-help-ukraine-government-comms</ref>  Ukraine’s propaganda strategy earned praise from a [[NATO]] commander who told the ''Washington Post'', “They are really excellent in stratcom — media, info ops, and also [[psy-ops]].”<ref>https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/16/ukraine-zelensky-information-war/</ref>  The head of Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs digital ecosystem for global communication<ref>https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/turb.png</ref> distributed a dossier folder with materials instructing public relations agencies on “key messages,”<ref>https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/turb1.png</ref> content for debunked propaganda constructs, approved language, and [[Neo-Nazi]] propaganda.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20220305150557/https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QE65-hyob6BzyFwYheQXLZjjlxnNsrrs</ref>  Many elements within the dossier folder use [[xenophobic]] and [[racist]] language, and some are explicit in their praise of prominent Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, including C14 leader Yevhen Karas who boasted that “we have fun killing”, the Pravy Sektor [[fascist]] paramilitary, and the Neo-Nazi [[Azov Battalion]]. Multiple images call for “[[Banderist|Banderite smoothies]]” – a reference to [[Molotov cocktail]]s named for the late [[OUN-B]] commander [[Stephan Bandera]], who collaborated with [[Nazi Germany]] in the [[mass murder]] of [[Jews]] and ethnic [[Polish|Poles]] during [[World War II]]. Another image depicts a book titled the: ''Encyclopedia of Incurable Diseases,'' listing Russia, [[Belorussia]], [[North Korea]], [[Syria]], and [[Eritrea]].<ref>https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/@juliasmal_Book-scaled.jpg</ref>

“Such Russian clichés like ‘referendum in Crimea’ or ‘will of the people of Crimea’ are absolutely unacceptable,” the dossier states, in reference to the 2014 overwhelmingly successful [[Crimean Annexation]] referendum.  The ddossier deems unacceptable the terms “Civil war in Donbass,” “Internal conflict,” “Conflict in Ukraine” and “Ukrainian crisis” to describe the Ukrainian military’s war with the breakaway republics of the Donbass region.  In place of these phrases, the dossier calls for the use of the terms “Armed aggression by the Russian Federation in Donbass, international armed conflict, Russian war against Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict.”

“Such Russian clichés like ‘referendum in Crimea’ or ‘will of the people of Crimea’ are absolutely unacceptable,” the dossier states, in reference to the 2014 overwhelmingly successful [[Crimean Annexation]] referendum.  The ddossier deems unacceptable the terms “Civil war in Donbass,” “Internal conflict,” “Conflict in Ukraine” and “Ukrainian crisis” to describe the Ukrainian military’s war with the breakaway republics of the Donbass region.  In place of these phrases, the dossier calls for the use of the terms “Armed aggression by the Russian Federation in Donbass, international armed conflict, Russian war against Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict.”