Moscow’s UN envoy compared the barrage of ‘fake news’ about the Ukraine conflict to city shelling
Vassily Nebenzia © Lev Radin / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images
Amid the Ukraine conflict, Western countries are waging an information war not only against Russia but also the entire international community, Vassily Nebenzia, the nation’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a presentation at the UN of the RT documentary ‘Journalists Under Fire,’ the top diplomat noted that Russia had found itself under massive media pressure after it launched its military operation in Ukraine in late February.
Nebenzia noted that Western coverage of the conflict is typified by “a huge number of ‘fakes’ about the activities of the [Russian] military, as well as about the goals, objectives and motives” of its campaign in Ukraine.
“It’s no secret that the West has launched a real information war against us, which affects not only the residents of Russia and Ukraine but also people around the world,” he reiterated.
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He went on to compare Western media coverage with actual Ukrainian bombings of civilian infrastructure. “Just as Western weapons are now targeting cities in the Donbass and the liberated territories, Western propaganda is firing ‘information shells’ at its own citizens,” he claimed.
According to Nebenzia, the media onslaught is harmful to ordinary people, who “are losing touch with reality, become distressed and confused” when being overwhelmed with an endless barrage of falsehoods. They also lose the ability to think critically, he claimed.
After Russia launched its military operation against Ukraine, Western countries unleashed an unprecedented crackdown on Russian media abroad, with the European Union banning RT and Sputnik channels. Moscow has repeatedly criticized the move, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claiming that it has shown the world the true worth of so-called Western values.
