Between May and Octo­ber 2022, we will be issu­ing a week­ly newslet­ter con­tain­ing the results of our TV and online mon­i­tor­ing, look­ing at the main pro­pa­gan­da nar­ra­tives detect­ed on Russ­ian state tele­vi­sion dur­ing the week as well as the cov­er­age on Russ­ian online media. This will be com­ple­ment­ed by news from inde­pen­dent inter­na­tion­al media sources to dis­trib­ute these insights out­side the coun­try. The newslet­ter will include main spot­lights from Russ­ian and inter­na­tion­al news cov­er­age focus­ing on rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, key pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion nar­ra­tives, sta­tis­tics, quotes, inter­views, expert opin­ions, inde­pen­dent views, as well as oth­er per­ti­nent devel­op­ments.

You can sub­scribe here to the pub­lic newslet­ter Media Insights – War in Ukraine, which will be issued week­ly.

Main Events and Updates

• From May 4–9th, the main events were con­nect­ed to the war in Ukraine and the May 9th Vic­to­ry Day hol­i­day, which com­mem­o­rates the vic­to­ry over Nazi Ger­many in World War II, and the cor­re­spond­ing speech by Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin. This event was report­ed very dif­fer­ent­ly by the Russ­ian and inter­na­tion­al media, as evi­denced in dif­fer­ent sec­tions of our newslet­ter. Oth­er dis­in­for­ma­tion nar­ra­tives and top­ics in the Russ­ian media dur­ing the mon­i­tor­ing peri­od includ­ed crit­i­cism of Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Scholz by the Ukrain­ian ambas­sador to Ger­many, the reuni­fi­ca­tion of Ukraine with the “native Russ­ian” lands, the inhu­mane treat­ment of civil­ians by the Ukrain­ian Armed Forces, the mil­i­tary sup­port from the West being use­less, and Russia’s mil­i­tary advan­tage despite threats from NATO.

• The inter­na­tion­al media reports include the May 9th cel­e­bra­tions and analy­sis of Vladimir Putin’s speech, the inter­na­tion­al mil­i­tary sup­port to Ukraine, the sit­u­a­tion in Mar­i­upol and oth­er top­ics.

• The oth­er sec­tions include the Russ­ian Union of Jour­nal­ists and Media Work­ers call for sup­port of impris­oned Russ­ian jour­nal­ists, some of whom were arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with their cov­er­age of the war in Ukraine, such as Maria Pono­marenko. We also includ­ed celebri­ties who protest­ed the war, such as U2’s Bono who gave a sur­prise per­for­mance at a down­town Kyiv metro sta­tion giv­ing ren­di­tions of hits such as Sun­day Bloody Sun­day, Desire and With or With­out You. 

​Photo of the Week 

Quotes of the Week 

“Putin not­ed that «today our ser­vice­men, like their ances­tors, are fight­ing shoul­der to shoul­der for the lib­er­a­tion of their native land from Nazi filth.» [RIA Novosti, 8 May 2022]

“Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky said Nazis had been expelled in 1945 and Ukraine would not allow any­one to «annex this vic­to­ry.» Very soon, he said, Ukraine would have two vic­to­ry days to cel­e­brate (what was then the Sovi­et Union lost 27 mil­lion lives dur­ing World War Two, with Ukraine account­ing for eight mil­lion of them).” [BBC, 9 May]

Media Insights

What were the main narratives on Russian state media?

Undiplo­mat­ic lan­guage

Mr. Andriy Mel­nyk, Ukraine’s ambas­sador to Ger­many since 2014, through­out his mis­sion has behaved as if the Ukrain­ian embassy in Ger­many is the high­est author­i­ty in the coun­try. His attacks on Berlin have long become the talk of the town. This time, the Ger­man Chan­cel­lor, Olaf Scholz, became the sub­ject of humil­i­a­tion from Mel­nyk. The ambas­sador did not like the fact that Scholz refused to go to Kyiv. “Play­ing an offend­ed liv­er­wurst is not very state-of-the-art,” Mel­nyk announced. [Argu­men­ty i Fak­ty, 4 May]. The First chan­nel also cov­ered the sto­ry say­ing that the Ukrain­ian Ambas­sador called the Ger­man Chan­cel­lor an «offend­ed liv­er sausage». Announc­ing the news, the news pre­sen­ter said: “And now we are mov­ing on to Berlin. The sto­ry is about a boor (refer­ring to Mel­nyk) who is the Ukraine’s Ambas­sador in Ger­many who called the Chan­cel­lor (Scholz) an «offend­ed liv­er sausage». And Andrey Mel­nyk even empha­sized lat­er that he has noth­ing to apol­o­gize for. Ivan Blagoy (TV’s cor­re­spon­dent in Berlin) was try­ing to fig­ure out why do they tol­er­ate such things in Ger­many, and the deep­er he delved, the clear­er it became: the answer was far beyond diplo­ma­cy.” [First Chan­nel, 8 May]

Ukraine will dis­in­te­grate soon / Reuni­fi­ca­tion with the native Russ­ian lands

Talk show host on the Rus­sia 1, Vladimir Solovy­ov, dis­cussed with stu­dio guests a top­ic of Ukraine, ask­ing «which parts of remain­ing Ukraine will join the EU?», pro­mot­ing a nar­ra­tive that Ukraine will dis­in­te­grate soon. [Rus­sia 1 – Evening with Vladimir Solovy­ov, 4 May]

The author­i­ties in the Kher­son region, which has been under the con­trol of the Russ­ian Armed Forces since mid-March, want the “pri­mor­dial­ly Russ­ian lands” to return “to their his­tor­i­cal course.» This state­ment was made by the deputy chair­man of the mil­i­tary-civil­ian admin­is­tra­tion of the region, Kir­ill Stremousov. Rus­sia empha­sizes that the sta­tus of the region will be deter­mined by its inhab­i­tants. The Russ­ian State Duma deputy Kazbek Taysaev sug­gest­ed in an inter­view with Gazeta.Ru that a ref­er­en­dum on the acces­sion of the Kher­son region to the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion could be held soon. [Gazeta.ru, 7 May]

Stremousov added that Ukraine as a state with­in its cur­rent bor­ders would no longer be pre­served. The Russ­ian mil­i­tary forces, dur­ing a spe­cial oper­a­tion to demil­i­ta­rize Ukraine, took con­trol of the entire Kher­son region in the south of the coun­try and the Azov part of the Zaporozhye region. Mil­i­tary-civil­ian admin­is­tra­tions have been formed in the regions, broad­cast­ing of Russ­ian TV chan­nels and radio has begun, and trade ties with Crimea have been restored. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

The inhu­mane treat­ment of civil­ians by the Ukrain­ian Armed Forces

«In Mar­i­upol, the Russ­ian mil­i­tary reopened a human­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dor for civil­ians who remain at the Azovstal plant. Accord­ing to the evac­uees, the rad­i­cals (refer­ring to Ukrain­ian sol­diers) are in no hur­ry to let the civil­ians go and hide behind them using them as human shields.» [NTV, 5 May]. The Ukrain­ian com­mand throws its sol­diers «like meat,» a sur­ren­dered sol­dier said in a video pub­lished by the Russ­ian Defence Min­istry. «In gen­er­al, I hate them — they were thrown like meat,» the pris­on­er of war said. He stressed that the Russ­ian mil­i­tary treats Ukrain­ian pris­on­ers of war «in a humane way». [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

Ukrain­ian units took fir­ing posi­tions at a school and a kinder­garten in Kram­a­torsk, said Colonel-Gen­er­al Mikhail Miz­int­sev, the head of the Nation­al Cen­ter for Defense Con­trol of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. «In Kram­a­torsk, Donet­sk Peo­ple’s Repub­lic, at school No. 20 and kinder­garten No. 87, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are sta­tioned and fir­ing posi­tions are tak­en. At the same time, civil­ians (res­i­dents of near­by hous­es) have been forcibly kept in the base­ment, and all roads to the build­ings are mined,» the gen­er­al said. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

“In the build­ing of a chil­dren’s hos­pi­tal in Kharkov, the mil­i­tants took over, forc­ing out the staff and seri­ous­ly ill chil­dren”, said the head of the Nation­al Cen­ter for Defense Con­trol of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, Colonel-Gen­er­al Mikhail Miz­int­sev. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

Ukrain­ian troops attacked a board­ing school in the Petro­vsky dis­trict of the city of Donet­sk, the head­quar­ters of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al defense of the Donet­sk Peo­ple’s Repub­lic said. «Ukrain­ian Armed for­ma­tions attacked a board­ing school in Donet­sk. As a result of the shelling, the sur­face of school No. 28 in the Petro­vsky dis­trict was dam­aged,» the head­quar­ters’ Telegram chan­nel said. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]. Ukrain­ian troops also fired on the build­ing of a kinder­garten in Gorlov­ka, all win­dows were dam­aged, the head­quar­ters of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al defense of the DPR said in a state­ment. [RIA Novosti, 8 May].

Accord­ing to First chan­nel, the ter­ror­ist tac­tics of the Nazis at Azovstal in Mar­i­upol seem to be used by oth­er units of the Ukrain­ian Armed Forces. Ukrain­ian mil­i­tants at the Azot plant in Severodonet­sk have also shield­ed them­selves with civil­ians. This strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant tri­an­gle of Rubizhne — Severodonet­sk — Lysy­chan­sk is also a huge cen­tre of the chem­i­cal indus­try, includ­ing dozens of enter­pris­es with huge stock­piles of chem­i­cals, and also bur­ial grounds. Our Min­istry of Defence has repeat­ed­ly report­ed that the Armed Forces of Ukraine may be prepar­ing var­i­ous provo­ca­tions here. And today it became known that on the ter­ri­to­ry of «Azot», nation­al­ists deployed heavy weapon­ry. They are hold­ing more than a thou­sand peo­ple in the under­ground of the enter­prise using them as human shields. The chan­nel also report­ed that the neo-Nazis have filled the tanks with chem­i­cal­ly haz­ardous sub­stances (ammo­nia, ammo­ni­um nitrate, nitric acid) in order to blow them up imme­di­ate­ly in case they are forced to aban­don their posi­tions. The imple­men­ta­tion of this cyn­i­cal crime will result in the chem­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of air, ter­rain and water sources. At the same time, there is a par­tic­u­lar dan­ger of potent poi­so­nous sub­stances enter­ing the Sev­er­sky Donets Riv­er, which is the main source of drink­ing water for East­ern Ukraine and the Don­bas republics. [First Chan­nel, 8 May]

Mil­i­tary sup­port from the West is use­less

The Ukrain­ian army can­not main­tain, or repair the mil­i­tary equip­ment pro­vid­ed by the Unit­ed States, ren­der­ing it use­less, the for­mer US intel­li­gence offi­cer Scott Rit­ter said in a col­umn for RT. [RIA Novosti, 8 May].

Accord­ing to Russ­ian Defense Min­istry spokesman Major-Gen­er­al Igor Konashenkov, the Russ­ian Armed Forces destroyed US weapons and equip­ment deliv­ered to Ukraine, as well as AFU units near the set­tle­ment of Soledar. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

NATO keeps threat­en­ing, but Rus­sia has mil­i­tary supe­ri­or­i­ty

Accord­ing to jour­nal­ist Ben­jamin Nor­ton, NATO plans to encir­cle Rus­sia and Chi­na through the new mil­i­tary agree­ments with Asia-Pacif­ic (APAC) coun­tries. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]. Com­ment­ing on the same top­ic on his Telegram chan­nel, the head of Roskos­mos Dmit­ry Rogozin said that NATO coun­tries would be destroyed by Rus­sia in a nuclear war in half-an-hour, but urged Rus­sia not to allow it. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

The US rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Nations Lin­da Thomas-Green­field, in an inter­view with CNN, spoke dis­parag­ing­ly about Vic­to­ry Day in Rus­sia, say­ing Rus­sians «have noth­ing to cel­e­brate» on May 9th. «They have noth­ing to cel­e­brate tomor­row. They have not suc­ceed­ed in defeat­ing the Ukraini­ans. They have not suc­ceed­ed in divid­ing the world or divid­ing NATO, they have only suc­ceed­ed in iso­lat­ing them­selves inter­na­tion­al­ly and becom­ing a pari­ah state around the world. So what they are cel­e­brat­ing tomor­row is their lack of suc­cess.» [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

Accord­ing to a vet­er­an of the Great Patri­ot­ic War, 96-year-old Niko­lay Kra­poshin, who lives in Luhan­sk, the Russ­ian spe­cial oper­a­tion must end. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

The Russ­ian Defence Min­istry has launched on its web­site a sec­tion on the des­e­cra­tion of his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry in Ukraine. The min­istry said that the sec­tion describes the bat­tles of the Red Army dur­ing the Great Patri­ot­ic War over the cities of west­ern regions of Ukraine, about the heroes of the Red Army who per­formed feats in these bat­tles, about the his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry, which is pre­served by war­riors’ graves and memo­ri­als in their hon­our, and about the crimes of the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties, who have been try­ing to erase this fra­ter­nal mem­o­ry of the peo­ple by all means. [RIA Novosti, 9 May]

What did independent media say about the main topics?

May 9th cel­e­bra­tion & Putin’s speech

Putin said that Russ­ian forces in Ukraine were fight­ing for the future of their moth­er­land, in his annu­al address mark­ing the vic­to­ry over Nazi Ger­many in WWII. Despite rumours he would make a major announce­ment, his speech focused large­ly on defend­ing Rus­si­a’s inva­sion. Dur­ing his speech at a mil­i­tary parade (which was more mod­est than in recent years) in Moscow’s Red Square, Putin said that “Russ­ian troops in east­ern Ukraine were defend­ing the moth­er­land.» He also spoke of Ukraini­ans as fas­cists, repeat­ing his false claim that the demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment in Kyiv was run by neo-Nazis. Defend­ing the moth­er­land had always been sacred, he said, refer­ring to the east­ern region which is now the main focus of Rus­si­a’s assault: «Today you are fight­ing for our peo­ple in Don­bas, for the secu­ri­ty of Rus­sia, our home­land.» He also made unfound­ed alle­ga­tions against NATO and Ukraine and described the inva­sion as a pre-emp­tive rebuff: «They were prepar­ing a pun­ish­ing oper­a­tion in Don­bas to intrude on our his­toric lands. In Kyiv, they were say­ing they might get nuclear weapons and NATO start­ed explor­ing the lands close to us, and that became an obvi­ous threat to us and our bor­ders.»

There had been spec­u­la­tion that Rus­si­a’s pres­i­dent may be con­sid­er­ing a change of mil­i­tary strat­e­gy, with either a full dec­la­ra­tion of war, rather than the cur­rent so-called spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion, or a mobil­i­sa­tion of Russ­ian men to boost the armed forces. Instead, he said he was sign­ing a decree for fam­i­lies of the dead and wound­ed in Ukraine to receive spe­cial sup­port. There was no men­tion of the speech of Mar­i­upol where a small group of Ukrain­ian forces con­tin­ue to hold out in a maze of tun­nels under the Azovstal steel­works. To date, Rus­sia has been able to claim only lim­it­ed suc­cess by ful­ly occu­py­ing only Kher­son.

Dur­ing a meet­ing lat­er in the day with the father of a ser­vice­man killed in east­ern Ukraine, he said every­thing was going accord­ing to plan and the «result will be achieved». Parades took place in 28 Russ­ian cities involv­ing 65,000 peo­ple, 2,400 pieces of mil­i­tary hard­ware and more than 400 air­craft. In a sep­a­rate mes­sage marked May 9th, Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky said Nazis had been expelled in 1945 and Ukraine would not allow any­one to «annex this vic­to­ry.» Very soon, he said, Ukraine would have two vic­to­ry days to cel­e­brate (what was then the Sovi­et Union lost 27 mil­lion lives dur­ing World War Two, with Ukraine account­ing for eight mil­lion of them). [BBC, 9 May]

«Ide­ol­o­gy far from real­i­ty» is how Ger­man media com­ment­ed on Putin’s speech

The cel­e­bra­tion of May 9th and the speech of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin received increased atten­tion from the Ger­man media this year. Ana­lyz­ing live on the Phoenix chan­nel the speech of the Russ­ian pres­i­dent, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bonn, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Andreas Heine­mann-Grüder, not­ed that Putin did not for­mal­ly declare war on Ukraine, as many expect­ed, and again changed the expla­na­tion of the rea­sons for the Russ­ian attack on the neigh­bor­ing coun­try. “Inter­est­ing­ly, he didn’t even both­er list­ing the pre­vi­ous excus­es. He didn’t talk about geno­cide, denaz­i­fi­ca­tion, or the demil­i­ta­riza­tion of Ukraine, and the top­ic “we need to pro­tect eth­nic Rus­sians” didn’t play any role. It was more about the return of «his­toric ter­ri­to­ries.»

When asked by the host why Putin made such an obvi­ous empha­sis in his speech on the Don­bas, and not on the whole of Ukraine, Pro­fes­sor Heine­mann-Grüder replied: “It seems that the Don­bas has now become the deci­sive tar­get of the war, and they (the lead­ers of Rus­sia. — Ed .) no longer pur­sue the ulti­mate goal of decap­i­tat­ing Ukraine from its polit­i­cal lead­er­ship, or com­plete­ly destroy­ing Ukrain­ian sov­er­eign­ty.» At the same time, the expert clar­i­fied that it seems to be about the Don­bas in the expand­ed sense, includ­ing, appar­ent­ly, the Kher­son region.

The Russ­ian lead­er­ship, accord­ing to the expert, is send­ing a sig­nal that «we have lim­it­ed mil­i­tary goals.» By doing so, it may be try­ing to con­vince the West to influ­ence Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky so that he com­pro­mis­es on the Don­bas issue, because «then the war can end.» Andreas Heine­mann-Grüder believes that the addressee of this sig­nal is not Zelen­sky, but the West, with which Moscow is going to nego­ti­ate a new demar­ca­tion line, since «for Putin, Ukraine is just a US satel­lite, that is, a pup­pet that does not act inde­pen­dent­ly.»

“In the Kremlin’s nar­ra­tive, his­to­ry is now repeat­ing itself. Rus­sia will again have to save the plan­et from fas­cism, which this time came to this world in the form of Ukraine,” the com­men­ta­tor of the week­ly Der Spiegel not­ed iron­i­cal­ly. Rus­sia, which, in a life-and-death strug­gle, oppos­es the moral­ly cor­rupt­ed West.» Regard­ing the can­cel­la­tion of the air part of the parade in Moscow and oth­er Russ­ian cities, Der Spiegel refers to some com­men­ta­tors who believe that the Krem­lin was try­ing at all costs to avoid embar­rass­ment or acci­dents. After all, the pub­li­ca­tion adds, «the rep­u­ta­tion of the Russ­ian armed forces has already been severe­ly under­mined due to fail­ures and loss­es in Ukraine.» [Deutsche Welle, 9 May].

Mil­i­tary sup­port to Ukraine

US pres­i­dent Joe Biden signed the Ukraine lend-lease act into law, expe­dit­ing mil­i­tary aid. The bill will speed up the send­ing of mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine, as the East­ern Euro­pean coun­try goes into its third month of fight­ing off a Russ­ian inva­sion. Biden vowed the Unit­ed States will con­tin­ue to sup­port Ukraine “in their fight to defend their coun­try and their democ­ra­cy” against Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s war. [Wash­ing­ton Post, 9 May].

All women and chil­dren have been evac­u­at­ed from Azovstal, accord­ing to Iry­na Vereshchuk on the cur­rent state of the human­i­tar­i­an oper­a­tion.

The last Ukrain­ian fight­ers in Mar­i­upol vow to fight ‘as long as we are alive’

As the last civil­ians were evac­u­at­ed from Mariupol’s embat­tled steel plant, the lead­ers of the remain­ing Ukrain­ian fight­ers holed up there took to Zoom to issue a defi­ant mes­sage: They will fight to the end. Russ­ian forces con­tin­ued to besiege the steel plant into Sun­day with airstrikes; artillery bom­bard­ment; tank, drone, and sniper fire, as well as infantry assaults, the fight­ers said. [Wash­ing­ton Post, 8 May].

Russian Personalities/Organisations against the war

What were the main narratives on Russian state media?

Undiplo­mat­ic lan­guage

Mr. Andriy Mel­nyk, Ukraine’s ambas­sador to Ger­many since 2014, through­out his mis­sion has behaved as if the Ukrain­ian embassy in Ger­many is the high­est author­i­ty in the coun­try. His attacks on Berlin have long become the talk of the town. This time, the Ger­man Chan­cel­lor, Olaf Scholz, became the sub­ject of humil­i­a­tion from Mel­nyk. The ambas­sador did not like the fact that Scholz refused to go to Kyiv. “Play­ing an offend­ed liv­er­wurst is not very state-of-the-art,” Mel­nyk announced. [Argu­men­ty i Fak­ty, 4 May]. The First chan­nel also cov­ered the sto­ry say­ing that the Ukrain­ian Ambas­sador called the Ger­man Chan­cel­lor an «offend­ed liv­er sausage». Announc­ing the news, the news pre­sen­ter said: “And now we are mov­ing on to Berlin. The sto­ry is about a boor (refer­ring to Mel­nyk) who is the Ukraine’s Ambas­sador in Ger­many who called the Chan­cel­lor (Scholz) an «offend­ed liv­er sausage». And Andrey Mel­nyk even empha­sized lat­er that he has noth­ing to apol­o­gize for. Ivan Blagoy (TV’s cor­re­spon­dent in Berlin) was try­ing to fig­ure out why do they tol­er­ate such things in Ger­many, and the deep­er he delved, the clear­er it became: the answer was far beyond diplo­ma­cy.” [First Chan­nel, 8 May]

Ukraine will dis­in­te­grate soon / Reuni­fi­ca­tion with the native Russ­ian lands

Talk show host on the Rus­sia 1, Vladimir Solovy­ov, dis­cussed with stu­dio guests a top­ic of Ukraine, ask­ing «which parts of remain­ing Ukraine will join the EU?», pro­mot­ing a nar­ra­tive that Ukraine will dis­in­te­grate soon. [Rus­sia 1 – Evening with Vladimir Solovy­ov, 4 May]

The author­i­ties in the Kher­son region, which has been under the con­trol of the Russ­ian Armed Forces since mid-March, want the “pri­mor­dial­ly Russ­ian lands” to return “to their his­tor­i­cal course.» This state­ment was made by the deputy chair­man of the mil­i­tary-civil­ian admin­is­tra­tion of the region, Kir­ill Stremousov. Rus­sia empha­sizes that the sta­tus of the region will be deter­mined by its inhab­i­tants. The Russ­ian State Duma deputy Kazbek Taysaev sug­gest­ed in an inter­view with Gazeta.Ru that a ref­er­en­dum on the acces­sion of the Kher­son region to the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion could be held soon. [Gazeta.ru, 7 May]

Stremousov added that Ukraine as a state with­in its cur­rent bor­ders would no longer be pre­served. The Russ­ian mil­i­tary forces, dur­ing a spe­cial oper­a­tion to demil­i­ta­rize Ukraine, took con­trol of the entire Kher­son region in the south of the coun­try and the Azov part of the Zaporozhye region. Mil­i­tary-civil­ian admin­is­tra­tions have been formed in the regions, broad­cast­ing of Russ­ian TV chan­nels and radio has begun, and trade ties with Crimea have been restored. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

The inhu­mane treat­ment of civil­ians by the Ukrain­ian Armed Forces

«In Mar­i­upol, the Russ­ian mil­i­tary reopened a human­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dor for civil­ians who remain at the Azovstal plant. Accord­ing to the evac­uees, the rad­i­cals (refer­ring to Ukrain­ian sol­diers) are in no hur­ry to let the civil­ians go and hide behind them using them as human shields.» [NTV, 5 May]. The Ukrain­ian com­mand throws its sol­diers «like meat,» a sur­ren­dered sol­dier said in a video pub­lished by the Russ­ian Defence Min­istry. «In gen­er­al, I hate them — they were thrown like meat,» the pris­on­er of war said. He stressed that the Russ­ian mil­i­tary treats Ukrain­ian pris­on­ers of war «in a humane way». [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

Ukrain­ian units took fir­ing posi­tions at a school and a kinder­garten in Kram­a­torsk, said Colonel-Gen­er­al Mikhail Miz­int­sev, the head of the Nation­al Cen­ter for Defense Con­trol of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. «In Kram­a­torsk, Donet­sk Peo­ple’s Repub­lic, at school No. 20 and kinder­garten No. 87, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are sta­tioned and fir­ing posi­tions are tak­en. At the same time, civil­ians (res­i­dents of near­by hous­es) have been forcibly kept in the base­ment, and all roads to the build­ings are mined,» the gen­er­al said. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

“In the build­ing of a chil­dren’s hos­pi­tal in Kharkov, the mil­i­tants took over, forc­ing out the staff and seri­ous­ly ill chil­dren”, said the head of the Nation­al Cen­ter for Defense Con­trol of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, Colonel-Gen­er­al Mikhail Miz­int­sev. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

Ukrain­ian troops attacked a board­ing school in the Petro­vsky dis­trict of the city of Donet­sk, the head­quar­ters of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al defense of the Donet­sk Peo­ple’s Repub­lic said. «Ukrain­ian Armed for­ma­tions attacked a board­ing school in Donet­sk. As a result of the shelling, the sur­face of school No. 28 in the Petro­vsky dis­trict was dam­aged,» the head­quar­ters’ Telegram chan­nel said. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]. Ukrain­ian troops also fired on the build­ing of a kinder­garten in Gorlov­ka, all win­dows were dam­aged, the head­quar­ters of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al defense of the DPR said in a state­ment. [RIA Novosti, 8 May].

Accord­ing to First chan­nel, the ter­ror­ist tac­tics of the Nazis at Azovstal in Mar­i­upol seem to be used by oth­er units of the Ukrain­ian Armed Forces. Ukrain­ian mil­i­tants at the Azot plant in Severodonet­sk have also shield­ed them­selves with civil­ians. This strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant tri­an­gle of Rubizhne — Severodonet­sk — Lysy­chan­sk is also a huge cen­tre of the chem­i­cal indus­try, includ­ing dozens of enter­pris­es with huge stock­piles of chem­i­cals, and also bur­ial grounds. Our Min­istry of Defence has repeat­ed­ly report­ed that the Armed Forces of Ukraine may be prepar­ing var­i­ous provo­ca­tions here. And today it became known that on the ter­ri­to­ry of «Azot», nation­al­ists deployed heavy weapon­ry. They are hold­ing more than a thou­sand peo­ple in the under­ground of the enter­prise using them as human shields. The chan­nel also report­ed that the neo-Nazis have filled the tanks with chem­i­cal­ly haz­ardous sub­stances (ammo­nia, ammo­ni­um nitrate, nitric acid) in order to blow them up imme­di­ate­ly in case they are forced to aban­don their posi­tions. The imple­men­ta­tion of this cyn­i­cal crime will result in the chem­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of air, ter­rain and water sources. At the same time, there is a par­tic­u­lar dan­ger of potent poi­so­nous sub­stances enter­ing the Sev­er­sky Donets Riv­er, which is the main source of drink­ing water for East­ern Ukraine and the Don­bas republics. [First Chan­nel, 8 May]

Mil­i­tary sup­port from the West is use­less

The Ukrain­ian army can­not main­tain, or repair the mil­i­tary equip­ment pro­vid­ed by the Unit­ed States, ren­der­ing it use­less, the for­mer US intel­li­gence offi­cer Scott Rit­ter said in a col­umn for RT. [RIA Novosti, 8 May].

Accord­ing to Russ­ian Defense Min­istry spokesman Major-Gen­er­al Igor Konashenkov, the Russ­ian Armed Forces destroyed US weapons and equip­ment deliv­ered to Ukraine, as well as AFU units near the set­tle­ment of Soledar. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

NATO keeps threat­en­ing, but Rus­sia has mil­i­tary supe­ri­or­i­ty

Accord­ing to jour­nal­ist Ben­jamin Nor­ton, NATO plans to encir­cle Rus­sia and Chi­na through the new mil­i­tary agree­ments with Asia-Pacif­ic (APAC) coun­tries. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]. Com­ment­ing on the same top­ic on his Telegram chan­nel, the head of Roskos­mos Dmit­ry Rogozin said that NATO coun­tries would be destroyed by Rus­sia in a nuclear war in half-an-hour, but urged Rus­sia not to allow it. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

The US rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Nations Lin­da Thomas-Green­field, in an inter­view with CNN, spoke dis­parag­ing­ly about Vic­to­ry Day in Rus­sia, say­ing Rus­sians «have noth­ing to cel­e­brate» on May 9th. «They have noth­ing to cel­e­brate tomor­row. They have not suc­ceed­ed in defeat­ing the Ukraini­ans. They have not suc­ceed­ed in divid­ing the world or divid­ing NATO, they have only suc­ceed­ed in iso­lat­ing them­selves inter­na­tion­al­ly and becom­ing a pari­ah state around the world. So what they are cel­e­brat­ing tomor­row is their lack of suc­cess.» [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

Accord­ing to a vet­er­an of the Great Patri­ot­ic War, 96-year-old Niko­lay Kra­poshin, who lives in Luhan­sk, the Russ­ian spe­cial oper­a­tion must end. [RIA Novosti, 8 May]

The Russ­ian Defence Min­istry has launched on its web­site a sec­tion on the des­e­cra­tion of his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry in Ukraine. The min­istry said that the sec­tion describes the bat­tles of the Red Army dur­ing the Great Patri­ot­ic War over the cities of west­ern regions of Ukraine, about the heroes of the Red Army who per­formed feats in these bat­tles, about the his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry, which is pre­served by war­riors’ graves and memo­ri­als in their hon­our, and about the crimes of the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties, who have been try­ing to erase this fra­ter­nal mem­o­ry of the peo­ple by all means. [RIA Novosti, 9 May]

What did independent media say about the main topics?

May 9th cel­e­bra­tion & Putin’s speech

Putin said that Russ­ian forces in Ukraine were fight­ing for the future of their moth­er­land, in his annu­al address mark­ing the vic­to­ry over Nazi Ger­many in WWII. Despite rumours he would make a major announce­ment, his speech focused large­ly on defend­ing Rus­si­a’s inva­sion. Dur­ing his speech at a mil­i­tary parade (which was more mod­est than in recent years) in Moscow’s Red Square, Putin said that “Russ­ian troops in east­ern Ukraine were defend­ing the moth­er­land.» He also spoke of Ukraini­ans as fas­cists, repeat­ing his false claim that the demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment in Kyiv was run by neo-Nazis. Defend­ing the moth­er­land had always been sacred, he said, refer­ring to the east­ern region which is now the main focus of Rus­si­a’s assault: «Today you are fight­ing for our peo­ple in Don­bas, for the secu­ri­ty of Rus­sia, our home­land.» He also made unfound­ed alle­ga­tions against NATO and Ukraine and described the inva­sion as a pre-emp­tive rebuff: «They were prepar­ing a pun­ish­ing oper­a­tion in Don­bas to intrude on our his­toric lands. In Kyiv, they were say­ing they might get nuclear weapons and NATO start­ed explor­ing the lands close to us, and that became an obvi­ous threat to us and our bor­ders.»

There had been spec­u­la­tion that Rus­si­a’s pres­i­dent may be con­sid­er­ing a change of mil­i­tary strat­e­gy, with either a full dec­la­ra­tion of war, rather than the cur­rent so-called spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion, or a mobil­i­sa­tion of Russ­ian men to boost the armed forces. Instead, he said he was sign­ing a decree for fam­i­lies of the dead and wound­ed in Ukraine to receive spe­cial sup­port. There was no men­tion of the speech of Mar­i­upol where a small group of Ukrain­ian forces con­tin­ue to hold out in a maze of tun­nels under the Azovstal steel­works. To date, Rus­sia has been able to claim only lim­it­ed suc­cess by ful­ly occu­py­ing only Kher­son.

Dur­ing a meet­ing lat­er in the day with the father of a ser­vice­man killed in east­ern Ukraine, he said every­thing was going accord­ing to plan and the «result will be achieved». Parades took place in 28 Russ­ian cities involv­ing 65,000 peo­ple, 2,400 pieces of mil­i­tary hard­ware and more than 400 air­craft. In a sep­a­rate mes­sage marked May 9th, Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky said Nazis had been expelled in 1945 and Ukraine would not allow any­one to «annex this vic­to­ry.» Very soon, he said, Ukraine would have two vic­to­ry days to cel­e­brate (what was then the Sovi­et Union lost 27 mil­lion lives dur­ing World War Two, with Ukraine account­ing for eight mil­lion of them). [BBC, 9 May]

«Ide­ol­o­gy far from real­i­ty» is how Ger­man media com­ment­ed on Putin’s speech

The cel­e­bra­tion of May 9th and the speech of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin received increased atten­tion from the Ger­man media this year. Ana­lyz­ing live on the Phoenix chan­nel the speech of the Russ­ian pres­i­dent, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bonn, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Andreas Heine­mann-Grüder, not­ed that Putin did not for­mal­ly declare war on Ukraine, as many expect­ed, and again changed the expla­na­tion of the rea­sons for the Russ­ian attack on the neigh­bor­ing coun­try. “Inter­est­ing­ly, he didn’t even both­er list­ing the pre­vi­ous excus­es. He didn’t talk about geno­cide, denaz­i­fi­ca­tion, or the demil­i­ta­riza­tion of Ukraine, and the top­ic “we need to pro­tect eth­nic Rus­sians” didn’t play any role. It was more about the return of «his­toric ter­ri­to­ries.»

When asked by the host why Putin made such an obvi­ous empha­sis in his speech on the Don­bas, and not on the whole of Ukraine, Pro­fes­sor Heine­mann-Grüder replied: “It seems that the Don­bas has now become the deci­sive tar­get of the war, and they (the lead­ers of Rus­sia. — Ed .) no longer pur­sue the ulti­mate goal of decap­i­tat­ing Ukraine from its polit­i­cal lead­er­ship, or com­plete­ly destroy­ing Ukrain­ian sov­er­eign­ty.» At the same time, the expert clar­i­fied that it seems to be about the Don­bas in the expand­ed sense, includ­ing, appar­ent­ly, the Kher­son region.

The Russ­ian lead­er­ship, accord­ing to the expert, is send­ing a sig­nal that «we have lim­it­ed mil­i­tary goals.» By doing so, it may be try­ing to con­vince the West to influ­ence Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky so that he com­pro­mis­es on the Don­bas issue, because «then the war can end.» Andreas Heine­mann-Grüder believes that the addressee of this sig­nal is not Zelen­sky, but the West, with which Moscow is going to nego­ti­ate a new demar­ca­tion line, since «for Putin, Ukraine is just a US satel­lite, that is, a pup­pet that does not act inde­pen­dent­ly.»

“In the Kremlin’s nar­ra­tive, his­to­ry is now repeat­ing itself. Rus­sia will again have to save the plan­et from fas­cism, which this time came to this world in the form of Ukraine,” the com­men­ta­tor of the week­ly Der Spiegel not­ed iron­i­cal­ly. Rus­sia, which, in a life-and-death strug­gle, oppos­es the moral­ly cor­rupt­ed West.» Regard­ing the can­cel­la­tion of the air part of the parade in Moscow and oth­er Russ­ian cities, Der Spiegel refers to some com­men­ta­tors who believe that the Krem­lin was try­ing at all costs to avoid embar­rass­ment or acci­dents. After all, the pub­li­ca­tion adds, «the rep­u­ta­tion of the Russ­ian armed forces has already been severe­ly under­mined due to fail­ures and loss­es in Ukraine.» [Deutsche Welle, 9 May].

Mil­i­tary sup­port to Ukraine

US pres­i­dent Joe Biden signed the Ukraine lend-lease act into law, expe­dit­ing mil­i­tary aid. The bill will speed up the send­ing of mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine, as the East­ern Euro­pean coun­try goes into its third month of fight­ing off a Russ­ian inva­sion. Biden vowed the Unit­ed States will con­tin­ue to sup­port Ukraine “in their fight to defend their coun­try and their democ­ra­cy” against Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s war. [Wash­ing­ton Post, 9 May].

All women and chil­dren have been evac­u­at­ed from Azovstal, accord­ing to Iry­na Vereshchuk on the cur­rent state of the human­i­tar­i­an oper­a­tion.

Maria Pono­marenko is one of the 18 Russ­ian jour­nal­ists cur­rent­ly behind bars. Pro­vid­ing cov­er­age of protest actions, Pono­marenko had been repeat­ed­ly fined for par­tic­i­pat­ing in such actions and for voic­ing protest sen­ti­ments. On April 24, she was arrest­ed on charges of pub­lic dis­sem­i­na­tion of false infor­ma­tion about the actions of the Russ­ian armed forces and for pub­lish­ing a post about the Mar­i­upol the­atre bomb­ing. She is now fac­ing up to 10 years in prison. 

Alek­san­dra Skochilenko, artist, ex-mem­ber of the Buma­ga media team, St Peters­burg. Skochilenko had replaced a few price tags at a shop with anti-war pam­phlets. For doing this, she was charged with pub­lic dis­sem­i­na­tion of delib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion about the use of the Russ­ian armed forces (Art. 207.3, Part 2). She is fac­ing a poten­tial 10-year jail sen­tence. Skolichenko is being held in St Petersburg’s Pre­lim­i­nary Deten­tion Jail No5. 

Mikhail Afanasyev, Novyi Focus news­pa­per edi­tor-in-chief, Khakas­sia. Afanasyev has been charged with pub­lic dis­sem­i­na­tion of false infor­ma­tion about the state of the Russ­ian armed forces (Art. 207.3, Part 2, Para “a”) for pub­lish­ing infor­ma­tion about 11 offi­cers of the Nation­al Guard Spe­cial Task Force refus­ing to go fight in Ukraine. He is fac­ing up to 10 years’ impris­on­ment. Afanasyev con­tin­ues to be held in deten­tion.

Sergei Mikhailov, founder of Lis­tok media out­let, Gorno-Altaysk. Mikhailov is being pros­e­cut­ed on charges of pub­lic dis­sem­i­na­tion of delib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion about the state of the Russ­ian armed forces (Art. 207.3, Part 2, Para “d”) for re-post­ing arti­cles cov­er­ing the devel­op­ments in Ukraine in his edition’s Telegram chan­nel. Mikhailov con­tin­ues to be impris­oned.

Anti-war/peace protests

As report­ed by var­i­ous West­ern media, there were small anti-war acts and protests in Rus­sia on May 8th. The pro­gramme guides of smart TV users were hacked with an anti-war mes­sage say­ing, «The blood of thou­sands of Ukraini­ans and hun­dreds of their mur­dered chil­dren is on your hands. TV and the author­i­ties are lying. No to war.” The mes­sage was said by social media users to have appeared on Sun­day night ahead of Vic­to­ry Day. The hack affect­ed view­ers of chan­nels trans­mit­ted by MTS mobile oper­a­tor, NTV Plus, Ros­t­ele­com and Wink. Three of the providers are owned by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment while MTS is owned by bil­lion­aire Vladimir Yev­tushenkov. [Inde­pen­dent, 9 May]

The front page of news web­site Lenta was also sab­o­taged with 10 detailed sto­ries with head­lines includ­ing «Rus­sia leaves the corpses of its sol­diers in Ukraine.» [Wash­ing­ton Post, 10 May]

On May 9th the Pulitzer Prizes board hon­ored the jour­nal­ists of Ukraine with a spe­cial cita­tion “for their courage, endurance, and com­mit­ment to truth­ful report­ing” dur­ing Russia’s inva­sion and “pro­pa­gan­da war.” “Despite bom­bard­ment, abduc­tions, occu­pa­tion, and even deaths in their ranks,” the Pulitzer board wrote online, “they have per­sist­ed in their effort to pro­vide an accu­rate pic­ture of a ter­ri­ble real­i­ty, doing hon­or to Ukraine and to jour­nal­ists around the world.” [Wash­ing­ton Post, 10 May]

Anti-war mes­sages in Rus­sia pub­lished by peo­ple on Telegram

Celebrities against the war

The Irish rock star and U2 front­man gave a sur­prise per­for­mance at a Kyiv down­town metro sta­tion giv­ing ren­di­tions of hits such as Sun­day Bloody Sun­day, Desire and With or With­out You. Bono also sang along­side a local ser­vice­man who called on the world to sup­port Ukraine amid con­tin­ued Russ­ian attacks on the coun­try. [BBC,9 May]