Ukraine conflict shows Europes weakness for Moscows propaganda The Kremlins use of disinformation has been laid bare after the shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane on 17 July. Europeans must confront the grotesque propaganda machine on which President Putins authoritarian rule depends, William Horsley writes. William Horsley is a former BBC European Affairs correspondent and co-founder of the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield. Europe may at last understand that the Ukraine crisis is a global one; at stake is the post-Cold War settlement which requires acceptance of a rules-based system of international relations. Russias annexation of Crimea, its assertion of a right to intervene to protect its kinsfolk in Ukraine, and its overt and covert support for illegal autonomous regimes in eastern Ukraine all show contempt for the rules that Moscow has signed up to through the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Those violations have been accompanied by an unprecedented barrage of false and manipulative propaganda from the Russian state and state-controlled media. That asserts an alternative narrative in which Ukraine is painted as a fascist-led and ungovernable state, and Russia is the aggrieved party which is upholding international law. Time and again President Putin and his government have announced one course of action -- like his early denial that Russia would annex Crimea and recent denials about sending Russian heavy arms into cross into Ukraine -- and then done the opposite. Yet mainstream Russian media, under heavy Kremlin influence, can no longer fulfil the basic role of journalism -- to question the veracity of what political leaders say. Those who attempt to hold power to account, such as Russian election monitoring groups, civil rights NGOs, and the political activist and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, have faced harassment or total exclusion. The lack of checks and balances is having serious consequences. The Russian narrative on Ukraine has also found a ready audience among some political circles and parts of the public in Europe. That matters because as long as President Putin believes he can claim a measure of international support as well as popular approval within Russia, he is more likely to continue disrupting the international order and destabilising neighbours - especially Ukraine. It seems that it was only after the horror of the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in mid-July that Vladimir Putins alternative narrative was seriously discredited in some European minds. That shift was reinforced by TV images of thuggish behaviour by self-proclaimed leaders of the Donetsk Peoples Republic towards the OSCE monitors who visited the crash site, and the separatists lack of respect for the forensic evidence or for the 298 people who died. But still a sizeable minority of Russlandsversteher (apologists for Russia, including those in Germany) and others who think that Russia deserves to be exempted from the normal rules continue to argue Mr Putins case in Europe.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 10:26:21 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015