WARNING OF FAKE NEWS OVER THE UKRAINIAN CRISIS

The volume of fake news over the Ukrainian crisis as well as Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, fabricated by Western media outlets has grown by many times recently. The collective West is planting more and more reports on the above issue while hypocritically denying the basic fact that Donbass region residents have been suffering from the crimes of the Kiev regime for more than eight years. For all this time, the Western journalists have been turning a blind eye on anything happening in Donbass and to conditions that people had to live in while under constant shelling by Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF), though about 15,000 civilians including women and children, were killed by these bombardments.

Therefore, we would like to provide you with a set of outrageous fakes recently disseminated by Ukrainian ‘fake news factories’ and eagerly acclaimed by Western outlets. While the former spread lies aimed at whipping up russophobic hysteria, the latter do their best to pin that lies into people’s heads.

1. Russian troops shell Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) causing fire at its power unit (numerous publications on social media) with ecological collapse.

The truth. It was the NPP’s training campus, where the fire took place as a result of an attempt by a UAF subversive team to attack the Plant, not the power unit. The fire was quickly extinguished and the power units are currently secure. The incident has not changed the radiation background.

But what is more interesting to note is that Ukrainian troops had deliberately deployed missile launchers right in front of the NPP and opened fire to provoke Russia’s response and blame the consequences on Russia.

2. Russian soldiers shell the Babi Yar memorial complex in Kiev. The truth. Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai has examined the memorial and reported to YNet portal that the complex was not damaged. The information spread by the Western media proved to be a cynical and outrageous fake, though typical of their current anti-Russian information campaign.

3. Russian Army deploying artillery near residential buildings in the city of Severodonetsk.

The truth. The artillery is Ukrainian. The Ukrainian armed forces’ firing position is located at a stadium of middle school №11 of Severodonetsk near a kindergarden. Residential buildings are also nearby. As we said, it is done intentionally to make social infrastructure a target for Russian retaliatory strikes, using civilians as a human shield.

4. The other outrageous fake – the death of journalist Brent Reno in Irpen – allegedly “at the hands of Russian forces”.

The truth. Firstly, Mr. Brent Reno was not a New York Times journalist. The NYT refuted this information right away. There is word on the Internet that journalism and filmmaking were far from being his priorities. As we said, this is open-sourced info. Secondly, the situation in Irpen is controlled by Ukrainian Armed Forces and territorial defense units. According to Brent Reno’s colleague who survived that incident, it were the UAF who fired at their vehicle.

We could continue this fake news’ list on and on, as the example of a large-scale information war against Russia. Western media do not hesitate to present facilities, destroyed in Donbass by Ukrainian Armed Forces and nationalist formations, as consequences of our special military operation in Ukraine, thus replicating fake news about allegedly indiscriminate bombardments of Ukrainian cities. Total censorship of information space is introduced without any attempts to justify it. In such circumstances it is far not easy for people living in Western states to get objective information about the military operation, and recognize pure fakes – like “Russia’s alleged bombardment of the Mariupol maternity hospital”. Later it has been proved by the Russian Defense Ministry that all the photos were absolutely faked. In fact, Ukraine’s Armed Forces kicked out all the personnel and patients of the Mariupol maternity hospital, used the premises as barracks and set up a firing site within the facility. Besides, they took a chance to make all those faked photos showing damages of the building and an “evacuation” of a “patient” who in fact is a Ukrainian blogger. We saw these tricks before: the same stunt has been done by “The White Helmets” when they were staging and filming fake rescue operations in Syria.

In this context we would like to emphasize once again that Russia’s special military operation does not seek to occupy Ukraine or inflict damage on the local population. Russian military pose no threat to Ukraine’s peaceful citizens, they do not fire at peaceful facilities. The target is UAF military infrastructure.

Unfortunately, the Western media however found no words to inform about the recent strike on Donetsk city center by Ukrainian Armed Forces with a tactical missile. Nor did representatives of Western states find any words to talk about it. We should make our Namibian friends aware that at 11:30 a.m. on March 14, 2022, the Ukrainian forces hit a residential neighbourhood in Donetsk city with a “Tochka-U” tactical missile with a cluster munition warhead prohibited under international law. Although intercepted by air defence, preventing catastrophic losses, the downed missile still landed on the peaceful city, killed 20 and seriously wounded 28 people, including children, women and seniors.

On the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Defense official websites, we have a special section where we publish only accurate information based on facts (www.mid.ru/en and www. eng.mil.ru). You could also verify the facts about the Ukrainian crisis at the following website: https://war on fakes.com (available in English, Spanish, French and Chinese).

We wish that journalists be cautious about fake news disseminated by biased Western media outlets. False information will never lead to correct conclusions.