Julia Davis

Russia’s aggressive disinformation campaign about recent events in Ukraine reached epic proportions. For example, Alexander Skryabin (who died of cancer in 2011) was revived by the Russian mainstream media to commit not one, but two sets of separate terrorist acts in Ukraine. Even after this fabrication was exposed, only Russia Today removed the article and published a retraction . It should be noted that Russia’s information war is waged not only through its mainstream media. Years ago, Kremlin recognized the power of social media and decided to exploit it. Government-funded campaigns include expatriate Russian bloggers in Germany, India, and Thailand. American conservative bloggers were also paid to write pro-Yanukovych stories, denouncing the Ukrainian revolution and spreading falsehoods about “fascists and Nazis” allegedly controlling the new government of Ukraine. Elaborate troll farms employ hundreds of paid trolls , hired to spread deceptive imagery and delibe...

Russia’s propaganda war stooped to unimaginable lows with respect to its coverage of the events in Ukraine . Russian media used images and videos from Syria, Chechnya, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Bosnia, India, China and Australia to illustrate alleged atrocities of the Ukrainian government . It claimed that Ukraine no longer exists as a country (including statements to this effect by the head of Russia Today (RT) Margarita Simonyan ), labeling its territory as mystical “Novorussia.” It declared Ukrainian people to be the “occupants” on their own land and actively recruited mercenaries to fight against the military of Ukraine. Russian mainstream media shamelessly claimed that Ukrainian military “harvests organs” from living people , that Ukrainian government is building “concentration camps” and imprisoning all healthy males on the territories that have been recently freed from Russia-sponsored terrorist/separatist forces. This information is also being actively disseminated...