"Deal with Biden", "bad Blinken", "Russian forces simply retreated": Moscow's fake news following Ukraine's counteroffensive in Kharkiv region

The main fake story that reached domestic audiences at the moment when the Ukrainian airborne troops were acquiring trophy tanks and self-propelled guns, was that breakthrough in Kharkiv was apparently just an accident and all part of Shoigu's strategy. He said that this way the Ukrainians will stretch their communications and the Kadyrovs and the Wagner PMC would easily break through the Ukrainian defenses. 

That is why some not-so-scrupulous media, through authors who received orders from the authorities, after a tough conversation with Blinken, spread the news that during the meeting with Zelenskyy, he passed on Biden's message about the need to start negotiations with Putin. In English-language sources, there is no hint of any such proposals from the US Secretary of State to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The only Blinken messages that emerged sounded like this: "With admirable grit and determination, the people of Ukraine are defending their homeland and fighting for their future. Ukraine does not belong to Russia. It belongs to the Ukrainian people, and this, as I said, is the main decisive factor that, in my opinion, we are observing now." Instead, the desire for negotiations was heard only from the Russian Federation - from Slutsky, Medvedev, and Peskov. The latter, two days before  counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region, stated the following: "Russia is ready to hold negotiations with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy on how Moscow's conditions will be met for the termination of the "special operation" and compliance not with the conditions, but with the interests of Russia."

"They will beg for a truce under any pretext, at least for a few days. They need it in order to raise at least some reserves. If we don't do it, they will be destroyed. There are 30,000 of them in the Kherson direction - if we continue our revolutions, then their grouping on the right bank will be broken," a Ukrainian Armed Forces officer from the southern direction said, explaining how dangerous such incursions are.

"If we destroy the Russian meat there, they will have a problem, because there will be nothing to defend Crimea. The 810th Brigade from Sevastopol is already near Kherson. That is why they have resorted to their favorite information and psychological operation - to spread anti-Western hysteria that the US is using us," the serviceman added. 

The second very popular lie was that the Ukrainian Armed Forces' success in the Kharkiv region was apparently the result of secret agreements between Biden and Putin. This is nothing new. It was very similar to the same "agreements'' regarding the north of the Kyiv region, although the Ukrainian shock brigades were still knocking out the Russian invaders from the Chernobyl forests until mid-April. Similarly (''gesture of goodwill") they said about the liberation of Zmiinyi Island.

The photos of the terrain showed that Ukraine's territory returned to Kyiv's control not because of any kindness on the part of the Russian occupiers, but as a result of successful artillery, air, and missile strikes, including from the Bohdan self-propelled howitzer.

Two of the most primitive Russian fakes were spread in our information space, because on the one hand, there was confidence that some Ukrainians would believe it or at least doubt it, remembering, for example, 2014 and Crimea.  At that time, there was really a big problem with international support for Ukraine. But Joseph Biden is far from Obama. But the Russians sought to achieve important goals. Firstly, to increase Ukrainians' mistrust of the largest supplier of defense and other aid — the US. Secondly, to create the illusion that everyone wishes harm to Ukraine, we have no friends, and therefore, the Russian Federation is not an absolute evil, but simply one of its varieties. Similarly, such fakes increase the greatness of Russia, which has not lost anything, and continues as a "great" state to decide the fate of the world and the future of small countries.

Thus, immediately after two Russian information and psychological operations, German media published a comment by Bundeswehr Inspector General Eberhard Zorn, whose direct subordinate, Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, was fired on the eve of February 24 due to a pro-Russian speech regarding Crimea. This is a man who for years had contracts with the Russian army — he expressed doubts about the strength of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. He expressed doubts about Ukraine's ability to conduct a counteroffensive due to the "lack of a threefold advantage." And the Russian fake repeated almost verbatim that it was not a rout, but simply such tactics. This caused a scandal in the German media, most of which are already firmly on the side of Ukraine.

This could not happen if Ukrainians observed information hygiene. There is such a Russian propagandist, an ideologue of the Novorossiya project - he described very well on Telegram why the Russian Federation so actively invests in informational and psychological operations.  The instigator of new repressions and genocide against Ukrainians claims that "the only chance to win is to psychologically destroy kh*khols, to return to them the inferiority complex that we imposed on them for 350 years." Because the ideologues of Novorossiya and the seizure of Crimea are in trouble - Ukrainians are becoming very similar to honorary Poles, even getting closer to them.

This inferiority complex works very well in the question of what Ukrainians listen to, how they disdain their historians, lawyers, bloggers, and consume Russian content.

Two favorites of Ukrainians among the "good Russians" - Mark Feigin and Mark Solonin - were caught on the fake about "deals of Biden and Putin" regarding the Kharkiv region. 

Mark Solonin, a Russian immigrant, expressed a hypothesis as to why, in his opinion, the Russian occupiers were defeated in the Kharkiv region, but there are certain difficulties in the north of the Luhansk region.

"I have the impression that the agreement that Konashenkov spoke about took place, that the Russian army surrenders the districts of the Kharkiv region that it captured in order to transfer forces to Donbas. This is my impression that this is agreement number two - after the departure of the Russian army from the north of Kyiv region," he, quoting the main narrative of one of the key participants in the occupation, said. 

You know, I won't even comment on who says this. I'll just leave a throw-in assessment from candidate of historical sciences, associate professor and teacher of the highest category Svitlana Meshkova.

If Solonin did not have the task of expanding Russia's narrative reach, he should have noticed an important thing. The fact that the Ukrainian troops turned north has a normal military and geographical explanation: Ukraine's Armed Forces reached the Oskil River and turned north because this river now covers the right (eastern) flank. But the north of the Kharkiv region had to be cleared, because otherwise, if the Ukrainian troops continued to advance east, the Russian forces could attack them from the north on the left flank, because there are no natural barriers in the north of the Kharkiv region. If Solonin calls himself a "military historian" - he cannot fail to understand this fact, and therefore deliberately misleads his listeners.

Another lie, from Mark Feigin, sounded like this - the surrender of the Kharkiv region by the Russian invaders was a sabotage by individual generals from Moscow. That the Russian commanders simply stood aside, otherwise the picture would have been different. Such theses are an absolute devaluation of many months of work, for example, of Ukraine's 95th Brigade, which at the cost of unrealistic efforts and sacrifices for several months restrained the advance of the Russians on Slovyansk and Kramatorsk from Izyum. This fake is an attempt to give a human face to the Russian commanders. Like, they are not so bad. 

Also, everyone who has become a victim of these information and psychological attacks even for a short time should ask themselves the question: why do I still watch Russian content? What made me believe that? How should I evaluate the information next time so that it doesn't happen again?

The more and better Ukraine's Armed Forces destroy the Russian invaders, the more such lies will be, the devaluation of Ukrainian heroes and the sowing of doubts about Ukraine's main partners. Russia has never been able to fight effectively and accept defeat on the battlefield.  But it has talents — to create subversive groups and deploy lies that seem to make wishes come true. Russia is also a skillful abuser who will never leave Ukraine in peace as long as there are so many who are hooked on the drug of the lies spread by Russian bloggers or "local experts".