Russian Propaganda on Ukraine

There are two elements to the virulent propaganda coming out in Russian organs such as RT (Russian Television in English) and from Russian government officials such as Putin himself and his UN representative. These are first that Russian speakers in Ukraine (who are the majority) are under threat and second that the removal of former President Yanukovich is a coup. Both these claims are complete nonsense. There is zero evidence of threats to Russian-speaking Ukrainians. I know for a fact that there were Russian-speaking Ukrainians participating in the uprising in Kiev. Dnepropetrovsk, which is a city in which Russian is the first language for most residents, had a demonstration of 10,000 people against the Russian invasion on Sunday, March 2 (a friend posted a video on Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, of that demonstration in which the Ukrainian national anthem was sung). Dnepropetrovsk is an industrial city of 2 million people founded by Catherine the Great. Its name was changed from Ekaterinasburg to Dnepropetrovsk during the Soviet period. Certainly, Russian-speaking Crimeans were never under any threat. Again, they are the largest group in the population there and I have seen no reports, even from Russia, of threats to them. So, that is plainly a blatant lie spread by Russia to justify its invasion.

Second, the uprising in Ukraine is no more a coup than was the American revolution. One of the principles of our Declaration of Independence is that an aggrieved people has the right to remove an unjust government. People have an absolute right to exist, but the right of a state to exist is conditional on its behavior. If a state had the absolute right to exist, we would still be living under English rule. Yanukovich was removed when he ordered his snipers to shoot down about 80 protesters from the tops of buildings in Kiev. That horrified Ukrainians, and Yanukovich fled to Russia. Talk of a coup is completely unjustified.

Some left commentators in the US, such as Professor Stephen Cohen, have cited Russian military fears as a Russian motivation, but that is also very far-fetched. Ukraine is a fairly large country and has a large army, but it is dwarfed by the size and military strength of Russia. Ukraine had nuclear weapons when it became independent, but it gave them up (to Russia) under an agreement which guaranteed its security. The idea that Ukraine would or could militarily attack or threaten Russia is preposterous. Putin obviously knows that.

The situation in Ukraine is very fluid, and nobody knows how it will turn out. The Russian invasion is an attempt to shape it in ways that the Russian government, but not the Ukrainian people, would prefer. No matter how loudly Putin shouts and how angry he looks, his actions have no reasonable justification. Putin also alleges that the uprising in Kiev was instigated by Europe and the United States. There is also no evidence of that. Europe and the United States would like to shape the direction of Ukraine just as Russia would like to do so, but they did not and could not instigate a Ukrainian uprising as the US has, for example, in Venezuela. Ukrainians have very strong and very just grievances against their government. They rose up because of those grievances. No outside instigation was required to cause that. Putin makes no mention of those grievances because many of his Russian citizens have similar grievances against him.

Since he has no rational justification for his invasion, it is completely understandable that Putin would order his state organs to disseminate vicious and false propaganda about why he has invaded Ukraine. It is more difficult to understand why some on the American left spread the same sort of false propaganda.