Nadiia Nesterenko: «Russia worked very hard to convince the world… that there was no Russian interference»

Recently, at the Humanitarian Law Centre Kosovo in Pristina, human rights activists from the Eastern Ukrainian Centre for Civic Initiatives presented the book «The City Where the War Began».

This is a work about the ways and methods used by Russia in the occupied territories of Ukraine since 2014. The book is based on the testimonies of residents of the occupied and later liberated Ukrainian city of Sloviansk in Donetsk Oblast. It describes various aspects of the occupied city’s life that were reproduced in each new settlement captured by the Russians.

Nadiia Nesterenko, an analyst at the Eastern Ukrainian Centre for Civic Initiatives, told The Geopost about examples of Russian propaganda and how information was collected to document Russia’s war crimes in the book.

Full interview:

The Geopost: Good afternoon, Nadia. Welcome to Pristina.  On 27 February, at the Centre for the Documentation of War Crimes, you present your book «The City Where the War Began», about the events of 2014. Could you please tell us how you collected the data for this book? How did you come up with the idea to create this collection?

Nesterenko: The collection deals with different aspects of the occupation of a city, primarily Sloviansk, but the same mechanisms were repeated in every new place that Russia occupied, both in 2014 and in 2022, just on a new scale.  Some of the information that was collected was directly from interviews with victims and witnesses. There is also information from open sources.

More information from open sources relates primarily to my chapter on Russian propaganda. And there are many materials that I used there.  This is a collection of news headlines from Russian media, local media, Ukrainian media, which I analyzed for the use of certain vocabulary.

And this is the news that was published throughout the entire period of the city’s occupation in 2014.  And now the book can be called Documenting Russia’s War Crimes Against Ukraine.

The Geopost: And how important do you think it is to bring this kind of information to people?

Nesterenko: It’s also important to understand that by 2022, there is still no clear, formed information, because Russia has worked very hard to convince the world, to convince Ukrainians that we had an alleged civil war, that there was no Russian intervention.

In particular, the materials in this book show a clear influence, a clear interference, and this is also important to record. And as for Russian propaganda, Russian propaganda is quite active now. In terms of Ukraine, they even say, we all know, that Trump called President Zelenskyy a dictator, without saying that Ukraine went to war.

The Geopost: How important do you think it is to fight Russian disinformation and propaganda?

Nesterenko: Look, the book we presented is a book about Sloviansk. And the example from Sloviansk is the example of a crucified boy on a cross in just his knickers. And this is such a textbook example of Russian propaganda, which, unfortunately, is usually considered something so, you know, stupid, so ethereal that it’s hard to believe. In fact, Russian propaganda is very well thought out, and it has also evolved over the years, and we need to be aware of this and be more responsible about it.

The Geopost:  Do you know, for example, about the events in Kosovo, and how Serbian propaganda about Kosovo is related to, and how it repeats, Russian propaganda itself?

Nesterenko:  As far as I know, many examples of the same dehumanization, very similar, the same opposition, and I also hope to hear examples today at the event, actually live, in the discussion.

We remind you of an interview with Volodymyr Shcherbachenko, head of the Eastern Ukrainian Centre for Civic Initiatives.

Read more Volodymyr Shcherbachenko: Propaganda is a weapon of war, a weapon of preparation for war

/The Geopost