Lies fed to the Russian people by Putin-controlled state media are helping to fuel the Ukraine war, a communications expert claims.
And the nation is being fed a daily menu of untruths about the conflict that know no bounds.
We can reveal one report said a beauty blogger daubed in blood was paraded as a ‘victim’ at a bombed Ukrainian maternity hospital.
Another showed charred Russian bodies after a ‘Ukrainian terror attack’ that a trusted website later revealed had been taken from a morgue and blown up.
News outlets claim the ruble is not in freefall – and one Russian journalist compared Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, to Hitler – even though he’s Jewish.
A TV station reported he was a drug addict. There are even claims Ukraine has secret labs funded by the US to develop chemical weapons.
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Political communications expert Joanna Szostek says she has been horrified by the lies from Russian TV stations and newspapers.
Szostek, who has lived in both Russia and Ukraine and revealed the latest bizarre claims, said: “It makes me angry. It’s a war fuelled by lies. People at the top have created this alternative reality for themselves. They swallow too much of their own propaganda.
“The term de-Nazification is everywhere and what we are seeing is the de-humanising of Ukraine.” Szostek says most Russians are duped by the misreporting of the invasion.
“The majority will just see and believe what the state says. But there is a minority, generally younger people on the internet, not so taken in by the lies.”
But they pay a price for speaking out.
Nadya Tolokonnikova of anti-establishment rock group Pussy Riot said friends had ended up in jail after protesting against what the state insists is a “special operation”.
Szostek, who lectures at Glasgow University, added: “Right now you can get a prison term for referring to Ukraine as a war. There have been incidents of journalists being killed. But this parallel reality will crack because the state media can’t hide empty shelves. The economic collapse will break the propaganda war.”
