If there are no victories and gains, you have to invent them. If you are running away, you have to come up with the modern-day term “отридцательное наступление”. Russian propaganda operated and continues to operate according to this logic. And especially now after the extremely painful consequences for the Russian Federation of the offensive of the Armed Forces in the Kursk region. In order to demonstrate, even if not their “victory”, but the defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Russian propaganda turned the Ukrainian army into a failure… rumors and experts’ opinions. How this became possible – further in the material.
Manipulation / False
The breakthrough and rapid offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kursk region became a kind of information bomb for the media – both foreign and Ukrainian. Especially since the Ukrainian side kept informational silence about these events for at least the first 2-3 days.
However, the media understood that something incredible and not banal was happening. The reader needs information that is practically non-existent. So ZMU resorted to traditional and well-established schemes – they began to fill the information space with “opinions of experts” – both anonymous and real, public ones.
It was in the first days of the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kurshchyna that the media and experts, based on the analysis of the movement and vectors of the Ukrainian army’s advance, began to generate assumptions that one of the goals of the offensive was to seize not only the gas distribution station in the city of Suja, but also the Kursk NPP.
Then there were already thoughts about what it would give to Ukraine. Then, when the territory freed from the Russian troops in the Kursk region of the Ukrainian Armed Forces increased significantly, there were rumors that Ukraine could exchange these territories for the temporarily occupied territories of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, and the Kursk NPP for Zaporizhzhia.
These are the strategic goals “drawn” by experts for Ukraine in this operation.
But these were all thoughts, rumors, assumptions, reflections. Not more. However, Russian propaganda grasped at this straw. And approximately from August 13-14, a message was launched about the failure of the strategic goals of the Armed Forces in the Kursk region.
On the air of the top propagandist talk show of the top propagandist Skabeeva, the so-called hero of Russia, the commander of the special forces “Akhmat” Apta Alaudinov (the same “Akhmat” who was almost the first to escape from the positions in Kurshchyna) announced the following (further in the original language): “They received interesting materials, the entire operation schedule. On August 11, it was necessary to take the Kurchatov NPP. Today is the 14th. Your 11,900 men and the amount of tanks and equipment that were used did not complete the task. The operation failed…”
That’s it. However, this is a lie and a manipulation – because such “plans” and “schedules” existed only in the opinions of the experts we talked about above and in the fantasies of the Kremlin camarilla.
So what really?
“Ukraine is not interested in taking the territory of Russia’s Kursk region, it is about protecting the lives of Ukrainian citizens who are being fired upon by the Russian army from the territory of this region. The operation of the Defense Forces is taking place without any violations of international humanitarian law, but there are fears that such incidents may be fabricated by Russia,” said the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Georgy Tykhi, at a briefing on August 13. http://surl.li/fquczb
As Tykhiy explained, in order to protect itself from Russian terror, Ukraine is unable to carry out long-range strikes, therefore there is a need to liberate these border areas from Russian military contingents that strike Ukraine with the help of the Armed Forces. Also, according to him, the operation in the Kursk region helps the front: it prevents Russia from transferring additional units to Donetsk region and complicates its military logistics.
According to Tykhi, Ukraine is achieving the relevant goals in the Kursk region and will continue to do so.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi regularly voiced similar theses about the goals of the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s operations in the Kursk region. In his evening video addresses on August 10, 11, 12, 13, it is said that the purpose of the operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kurshchyna is the destruction of the positions, logistics and troops of the Russian Federation, which are shelling Sumyshchyna from the territory of Kursk Region, replenishment of the exchange fund with prisoners for the liberation of Russian capture of Ukrainian defenders. There was no talk of taking over nuclear power plants and there is no talk of it.
So we state once again that in order to show that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are not winning, that they have not completed the entire operation, that the crisis in Kurshchyna is over, Russian propaganda has turned the opinions of experts, versions and assumptions in media publications into “real military goals of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
