Moscow fires up propaganda blitz in seized territories in attempt to consolidate gains
RUSSIAN forces have driven lorries with huge TV screens through the streets of Mariupol to pump out Kremlin propaganda to residents.
After a two-month media blackout, citizens in the Black Sea port queuing for food and water had to endure Moscow’s desperate attempt to justify the destruction of their city.
The move was part of a wider propaganda blitz being undertaken by Russia across the regions of Ukraine it has captured.
Mariupol, in the south of the country, was virtually obliterated by a lengthy Russian siege that destroyed 90 per cent of residential buildings and completely hobbled electricity and water supplies.
Russia said on Wednesday that the port of Mariupol, had reopened. Sea mines had been cleared and what it called a “maritime humanitarian corridor” was now open in the Azov sea.
Meanwhile, the head of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic said that Ukrainian fighters may still be hiding in the sprawling Azovstal steelworks – the last holdout in Mariupol – even though Moscow had officially declared it “completely liberated”.
Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, said yesterday that he plans to sue Russia over losses caused by the bombardment of his steel plants in Mariupol. He will be demanding $20billion in compensation, he added.
In a desperate attempt to press home its message in the city, Moscow dispatched lorries to broadcast Russian state TV to the 100,000 people who still live in the area.
Russia’s ministry of emergency situations said yesterday: “Mariupol residents have been in an information vacuum for the past three months due to the electricity blackout.
“The Russian ministry has arranged for three mobile units to inform and alert the population.”
One of the lorries was stationed in the centre of the city while the others cruised around its streets. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, said the city’s Russian overlords had forced schools to cancel summer holidays so that they could prepare children for a switch to Moscow’s education system.
Similar moves were announced in the occupied Crimea, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions, as the Kremlin stepped up its campaign to indoctrinate Ukrainians in the captured territory.
“The main goal is de-Ukrainisation,” said Mr Andryushchenko. “Children will be taught Russian language and literature, Russian history and mathematics all summer long.”
In Crimea, the peninsula annexed from Ukraine in 2014, the pro-kremlin puppet government announced that it would end English lessons in schools.
Vladimir Konstantinov, the speaker of the State Council of Crimea, said: “Why should we blindly follow the path of the English language? Why teach something that is not needed if a person never goes to London?”
Since its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has been critical of Britain because of Boris Johnson’s high-profile support for Kyiv.
In the Kherson region, the Russian military told schools they had to follow Moscow curriculum from Sept 1.
Teachers have been warned that they will be taken to Crimea for “retraining” if they refused to comply.