
The ‘Your Truth’ television program which airs on Russian state television, began its edition on March 26 by manipulating the statements of some citizens of Mariupol in Ukraine, which has been triggered by Russian bombs and missiles since Moscow began its occupation on Ukraine on February 24.
A woman has claimed that Ukrainian forces are firing on kindergartens as if “in a game”. An angry man has cursed “these fascists, these bastards… and drug addicts”.
Later, the first guest of the show was the editor-in-chief of Russian television RT, Margarita Simonyan, who with tears in her eyes made a series of claims, starting from the fact that Ukrainian forces are targeting children with bombs; that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has banned all private media; that Ukrainians do not consider Russians as people; that Ukrainian doctors have requested the castration of Russian prisoners of war; “Ukrainian ‘Nazis’ are prepared to ‘take their eyes off children, depending on their ethnicity.’ All these claims were made in the first five minutes of the broadcast.
The Russian government falsely insists that the war in Ukraine is not a war, but a “special military operation”, and has said that its main goals are “denazification and demilitarization” of the neighboring state.
The Russian President Vladimir Putin has described Ukraine as an illegitimate state created by Soviet authorities and now run by “neo-Nazis” and “drug addicts” who take orders from Washington. All of these issues are constantly mentioned in programs that support Kremlin policy. “They always lie”, “All television is full of military brainwashing,” said Yelena Rykovtseva, a Russian-based correspondent for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. She added that it is difficult to divide justice within an article on Russian state television, as “hysteria against Ukraine is at its peak.”
Among the information being disseminated is that allegedly in Mariupol, as Russian forces approach the neo-Nazis, the use local residents as shields; that the Nazis are hitting the refugees and that Russian soldiers are rescuing children and helping the wounded. These unsubstantiated allegations are inconsistent with what Western officials and media outlets say – which have had journalists engaged in Mariupol, as well as the townspeople themselves, some of whom have faced bombings from Russia, despite agreements on humanitarian corridors.
On March 29, the TV show “Time Will Tell, which airs on state-run Chanel One television – aired an orthodox church, which does not look damaged but is in ruins. The correspondent stated that this “gives us hope that God is with us.”
The Kremlin narrative also includes unfounded claims that Kiev was ready to launch a major military offensive against Russian-backed separatists in the Ukrainian region of Donbas and that the United States is determined to destroy Russia. The Ukrainian journalist Roman Tsymbalyuk who has worked for many years in Moscow as a correspondent for the UNIAN news agency and has been a frequent guest on Russian state television, told Radio Free Europe that he had learned “exactly how the Russian propaganda works”. “Russian media are not Russian mass media, but information bodies that always lie,” he said.