From the beginning of the war, Russian propaganda tried to “put on” the image of a victim in the Russian Federation. They said, we didn’t attack, we were forced… We attacked for the defense of our country… Such and similar narratives were promoted by the informational agents of the Kremlin in the first weeks and months of the war. They use the same clichés today, trying to create an image of a victim from Russia after the attack by the Armed Forces of the Kursk region. Further in the material are the statements of the representatives of the Kremlin, and the manipulation hidden in them.
Manipulation / Propaganda
After the attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia, the Kremlin leadership resorted to the following statements. Thus, as reported by the Russian media, Ombudsman Moskalkova “turned to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights with a demand to condemn the “terrorism” of Ukraine in connection with the attacks on the Kursk region.
She noted that thousands of civilians suffered as a result of the Ukrainian attack.
She was supported by the statements of the spokeswoman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Zakharova: “in turn, the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Maria Zakharova stated: “Attacks on residential buildings, explosions of sleeping civilians in their apartments are an indelible ugliness of terrorism.”
As for the words of the Muscovite, she should have started the same UN report on the number of Ukrainians affected by Russian aggression before her statement.
More than 6.5 million Ukrainians became refugees, and 3.5 million became IDPs. This is stated in the analytical report on Ukraine in conditions of armed conflict from the protection cluster headed by UNHCR. Since February 2022, more than 32,100 victims among the civilian population in Ukraine have been recorded. 92% of deaths were caused by explosive weapons, 4% by detonation on mines and explosive devices. http://surl.li/uldrho
As for Sakharova’s message, which reeks of Sovietism about “people sleeping peacefully in their huts”, according to the updated UN report, in July 2024, at least 219 civilians were killed in Ukraine as a result of hostilities, and another 1,018 were injured. This is the highest number of civilian casualties since October 2022. http://surl.li/jyxaow
The UN report emphasizes that the majority of casualties among the civilian population (90%) and damage to educational and medical institutions (86%) still occur in the territory controlled by the government of Ukraine. And this is precisely the answer to another Russian narrative about “they bombed Donbas for eight years.”
The UN also notes that in June and July, the most intensive offensive military operations of the Russian army moved from the north of the Kharkiv region to Donetsk region. As a result, the number of confirmed civilian casualties in Donetsk region increased from 125 killed or wounded in May to 224 in June and 269 in July 2024.
The report singled out a massive Russian attack on Ukraine on July 8, which resulted in the death of at least 43 civilians, 5 of whom were children, and the wounding of 147 people (including seven children) in Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
In January 2024, the UN reported to the Security Council that since the start of the full-scale war, 10,233 Ukrainian civilians had died, and another 19,289 had been injured. More than 100 peaceful Ukrainians died in Russian captivity, one of them was a child. http://surl.li/unkqhk
So the question about the “unthinkable ugliness of terrorism” is clearly not the right place.
