Russians portray Ukrainians as fascists to deprive them of international support – StopFake Editor-in-Chief Fedchenko

There are numerous reports of Russian soldiers using prohibited weapons. What is the purpose of the Kremlin accusing Ukraine of what Russia is actually doing? Is it an attempt to distract the audience or is there another goal?

Yeah, I think the answer is that they really want to discredit Ukraine and the Ukrainian Armed Forces, on the one hand. On the other hand, they are just repeating their own practice, because in fact the Russian Armed Forces have used many times those types of weapons that are prohibited by international law, and by accusing Ukraine, they are, as I said, just repeating what they usually do. They want to use any opportunity to discredit the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and they have been very active in using the concept of euthanizing Ukraine with chemical weapons, biological weapons, or even preparing nuclear weapons as a precondition for launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine before the full-scale invasion. So, they just want to use these weapons of mass destruction as a way to spread a discourse of fear to make sure that people around the world perceive Ukraine as a threat, and that's what they want to achieve with these tactics.

But are the Russians succeeding? 

It depends on the region. If we talk about the countries of the global North, the propagandists have not been very successful so far because of a very large campaign of fact-checkers who have been trying to explain and correct all these fakes for years. Also, they have a very critical level of perception of the Kremlin's rhetoric, and the Kremlin and its disinformation machine have been completely discredited, and no one believes them. On the other hand, we have a different situation in the countries of the global South, where we still find a lot of audiences that try to believe at least partially in what the Kremlin wants to spread, and this is exactly the region where Ukraine needs to pay a lot of attention and try to talk to local media and local politicians to explain all these sins and also try to organize a campaign that would prove our point and also debunk Kremlin disinformation in this region.

What does Russia want to achieve by spreading news about the allegedly failed sowing campaign in Ukraine?

I think there are two potential audiences for this narrative. The first one is inside Ukraine, to again spread fear in countries that Ukraine may face food problems in the future because of this. On the other hand, they clearly blame the international agreements that Ukraine has reached and is fulfilling by supplying surplus food to international markets, including the countries of the Southeast. So they want to reach out to these countries as well, so that they can again blame Ukraine for food shortages in the future, just as they are doing now. So every time we see news about food shortages in the countries of sale, Russia tries to blame Ukraine, not Russian aggression against Ukraine, for the food shortages. And once again, Russian disinformation is trying to completely exaggerate the food crisis as one of the side effects of aggression against Ukraine.

And the last question: how does the strategy of dehumanizing Ukrainian governments help Russia in its information warfare?

This is not a new approach. They have been doing this since 2014 or even earlier. They have really worked very hard to spread it among different audiences to make sure that Ukrainians really look absolutely dehumanized, that they will not receive any support from allies and partners, that Ukraine will not be able to receive any arms supplies, any financial or moral support, because the image of Ukrainians as fascists who came to power in a coup d'état, who are carrying out an alleged genocide against the local population, and other stories that they have constructed. All of this worked together to demonstrate that Ukrainians are not really real people and should not receive any real support, which was the main goal of this campaign.