Ukraine’s “Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security” has issued to the international media a warning that their coverage has not been sufficiently pro-Ukraine. Entitled “World News Agencies and Russian Narratives: What Words Should Not Be Used In Covering War,” it deals with those who, even unconsciously, become collaborators of the Russian narrative, which “legalizes Russian propaganda in the global information space.” Since spreading “disinformation” in a time of war is considered by Kiev to be a war crime, the Western press had better sharpen their game, lest they join those witting Russian collaborators.
It explains that Russia exploits “constant minor manipulation or inaccurate terminology used by the media” to “systematically and sometimes imperceptibly spread lies across the world.” The CSCIS’s long article will carefully explain how to use words. However, the very next sentence begins the lesson on the careful use of terminology: “Russian fascism … attacked Ukraine with the genocidal goal of wiping the country and the nation off the map.” Evidently, Kiev objects to a “minor manipulation or inaccurate terminology,” recommending what—the Hitler “big lie” technique?
The articles insisted some of the words and phrases to be eliminated, such as “Ukrainian nationalists who fought with the rebels of the Donbas.” A proper substitute would be, defending “Ukraine’s borders and its constitutional order from hybrid Russian aggression.” Otherwise, “separatists,” “disputed territories,” “referendum,” “regions of Ukraine that vote for joining Russia” are verboten.
Basically, the unstated premise of the article is that there wasn’t a coup in Ukraine’s capital in 2014 overthrowing the legally elected head of state, to which sections of the country that legally voted in the Party of the Regions candidate refused to recognize. So, that can’t be mentioned. So, anything done in the Donbass was generated from the outside by Russia in a plot to break Ukraine’s unity and constitutional order. (The closest CSCIS gets to admitting that something might have happened in 2014 is: “Russia took advantage of a moment when Ukrainians were agitated by the Revolution, and the central and local governments were critically weakened.") Hence, this explains why the term “separatists” is forbidden—nobody inside of Ukraine in 2014 had problems with the coup beyond some agitation.
CSCIS then provides their proof that Russia conspired to pull Ukraine down in 2013, citing “its doctrine of hybrid warfare, published in 2013 and widely known as the ‘Gerasimov Doctrine,’ political unrest in the adversary’s territory is an instrument of military aggression"—and it quotes from the doctrine. Apparently, the coup was necessary because of Russia’s conspiracy?
What unabashed hypocrisy! A simple search of their provided quote shows that Kiev is quoting from General Gerasimov’s March 2013 speech to the Russian Military Academy of Science, where Gerasimov explains how the West engages in warfare and the increasing significance of non-military instruments for achieving military objectives—that is, the “color revolutions” attempted earlier in Georgia (2004) and Ukraine (winter 2004/5). No “minor manipulation” for CSCIS here, just pure Hitlerian Big Lie technique.
