Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD) began recently issuing regular reports countering alleged “sophisticated Russian propaganda” aimed at destabilizing the Ukraine regime. Its latest such piece, an Aug. 8 article titled “How Russia Undermines Ukraine from the Inside,” reveals that Zelenskyy’s National Security and Defense Council (of which CCD is a part) fears it is becoming sufficiently discredited in the eyes of the Ukrainian people, that it needs to publicly answer the dissent.
“In the near future, the Kremlin plans to provoke an internal Ukrainian crisis in order to disrupt the pace of counteroffensive operations in the fall and winter. They are trying to shift public opinion to unconstructive criticism of the military command and the search for `culprits,’ ” CCD warns. It worries that the Russian propaganda campaign “instills in the Ukrainian consciousness the narrative that the Ukrainian government is primarily to blame for the war.”
But in listing the four “main lines of division of Ukrainian society” which it alleges “Russian propaganda” plays upon, CCD makes clear that the regime’s problem is not “Russian propaganda” spread by alleged “controlled Ukrainian and foreign ‘leaders of public opinion,’ ” but the existence of those divisions, which are growing. The CCD warns:
• of resentment over the relative safety of authorities in Kyiv, protected by air defense systems and living off Western aid, as compared to life in the regions;
