OPINION: Who Overpowered Russian Forces in Kharkiv Oblast? Countering Russian Disinformation

For the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian government officials have acknowledged defeat on the battlefield. The Russian Ministry of Defense has thus embraced a new information (or more precisely “propaganda”) strategy in openly admitting to the Ukrainian military’s dramatic success in almost completely re-claiming Kharkiv Oblast, Aaron Rhodes & Willy Fautré write in EU Today.

This change in the Kremlin’s information strategy has, in turn, opened new questions for Russian citizens to ponder: What are the reasons for this serious setback? Who is to blame?

Of course, blame cannot be placed on President Putin, the architect of Russia’s illegal, ill-conceived and miserably executed invasion. Instead, NATO, not the Armed Forces of Ukraine, is now being blamed  by Russian propagandists for Russia’s defeats.

See the full article here.

Aaron Rhodes is President of the Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe (FOREF/ Vienna – https://foref-europe.org). He was Executive Director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights 1993-2007.

Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF/ Brussels – https://hrwf.eu) and former ‘chargé de mission’ at the Cabinet of the Belgian Ministry of Education and at the Belgian Parliament.

The authors urge the Russian-speaking readers of this article to republish it on their own websites or blogs and through their social media or to share it otherwise with Russian citizens

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They can be contacted at the following email address: international.secretariat.brussels@hrwf.org