Reacting to the results of the second round of the presidential elections in Moldova on November 3, 2024, which were won by Maia Sandu, pro-Russian media and politicians called her the “president of the diaspora”. They justify this formulation by the fact that without the votes of the Moldovan diaspora, the incumbent president would have lost the elections.

According to the Central Electoral Commission, within Moldova, the candidate of the pro-Russian Socialist Party, Alexandru Stoianoglo, who received 51.19% of the votes, actually beat Sandu (48.81%) by 32 thousand votes. However, taking into account the votes of the diaspora, it was Maia Sandu who won a convincing victory in the second round of the presidential elections with a lag of almost 11% (55.35% versus 44.65%).

Such reproaches towards Maia Sandu are part of Russian information influence and a kind of protest, since obviously the victory of a pro-European and pro-Western presidential candidate was not part of the Kremlin’s plans.

The day before, Russia interfered in the elections in Moldova, trying to influence their results. In particular, in Moldova, television showed an investigation by journalists from the Ziarul de Gardă portal about how the Shor pro-Russian party bribed citizens with money from Moscow. As for Russian information influence in Moldova, the Center for Counteracting Disinformation wrote that throughout the election campaign, Russia carried out information attacks on the Moldovan authorities and provocations.

The use of the term “president of the diaspora” by pro-Russian actors is to discredit the victory of Moldovan President Maia Sandu. To affirm that she is now an “illegitimate president”.

Read on Censor.NET: propaganda about elections in Moldova

Ukrainian air attacks on Russian territory have become a common occurrence, although it was hard to imagine in the first months of a full-scale war. Due to Ukraine's resistance to Russian armed aggression, the military actions declared by Putin Special Military Operation have moved to Russian lands in the form of military actions in the Kursk region of Russia and attacks on military facilities. In response, Russian propagandists are trying to downplay the scale of Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory by inventing new terms. One of these is ‘smoke’. This is a euphemism used to replace the concept of a fire or hitting a target within the internationally recognized borders of Russia, which is undesirable for Russian ears. They say that if it is just ‘smoke’, then neither the attack nor its consequences are serious. However, ‘smoke’ does not always harm the Russian army.

For example, on October 9, 2024, Ukrainian UAVs attacked a storage base for about 400 Shahed UAVs located in Russia's Krasnodar Krai. The Ukrainian side recorded a precise hit on the target. A secondary detonation was also observed on the site. At the same time, Russian propaganda sources, responding to this attack, wrote that there was a ‘fire’ in the storage facilities and ‘heavy smoke in Azov’.

By using the term smoke, Russian propagandists are deliberately trying to deny Ukraine's successful strikes on Russian infrastructure facilities, which allow the occupation war to continue. In turn, according to the Kremlin's logic, ordinary Russians should not think that such ‘emergency situations’ are an echo of a real war.

According to propagandists, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, by giving orders to attack Russia's energy, fuel and transport infrastructure, has unleashed an “infrastructure war”. It consists of Ukraine shelling Russian critical infrastructure facilities, such as oil refineries, and Russia, in turn, “hits back”. Zelenskyi allegedly started the “infrastructure game”, knowing full well that he was exposing his people to a large-scale crisis. Accordingly, after this, according to propagandists, the Kremlin seems to have every reason to completely destroy Ukraine's energy infrastructure. However, this is not happening, since Putin “does not want Ukrainians to suffer”.

Propagandists claim that Russia is already engaged in an “infrastructure war” due to Ukraine's fault. But Ukraine, unlike Russia, allegedly cannot attack long-range targets due to a lack of long-range weapons, so it attacks border targets: bridges, energy facilities, railroads, and the like. According to Russian propaganda, once the Ukrainian Armed Forces have this capability, the Ukrainian military will “definitely” attack thermal power plants and thermal power plants in Russia.

According to Volodymyr Zelenskyi, Ukraine never attacks Russian civilian infrastructure. Ukraine uses its drones and UAVs to attack precisely those Russian infrastructure facilities that allow it to continue waging a war of conquest. By attacking the same oil refineries, Ukraine aims to destabilize the domestic Russian fuel market, as well as reduce Russia’s income from oil exports, the only major source of income for this state, which bypasses sanctions from the US, EU, and other partners of Ukraine. According to Bloomberg, in 2023 alone, Russia's net budget revenues from oil and gas amounted to about $99.3 billion. And revenues specifically from oil exports are about 27.5% of the total, which in 2023 amounted to $360 billion, according to one Russian media outlet.

Russian propagandists use the idea of ​​an “infrastructure war” to intimidate people with new Russian attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure in the winter. And they shift the blame for the attacks to Ukraine. They say that the Ukrainian authorities made a mistake when they started hitting Russia's critical infrastructure, so now ordinary Ukrainians will pay for it. That is, the propagandists completely deny Ukraine's right to defend itself. At the same time, Russia began shelling Ukraine's critical infrastructure two years ago, on October 10, 2022.

Since 2014, so-called Walls of Free Creativity have begun to appear in Russia at the initiative of government structures. In this way, the Russian authorities had the goal of “getting closer” to amateur artists creating graffiti on the walls of street buildings and supposedly legalizing graffiti as art. However, this is not exactly about “free creativity”, since artists, for example, in St. Petersburg had to coordinate their street art projects with city authorities. Thus, street art turned into street propaganda. Unwanted murals were painted over by utility workers.

That same year, as part of the project Two Thousand Houses of Russia in Russian cities, they decided to “decorate” two thousand walls with drawings on patriotic themes. The first graffiti was the inscription “Crimea and Russia - together forever” on the facade of one of the Moscow buildings.

Creative jingoism reached its peak on October 6, 2014 – Putin’s birthday. Seven buildings in different cities of Russia were decorated with murals with letters that together spelled out the word “thank you”. Thus, the pro-Kremlin youth project Network decided to congratulate its president on his 62nd birthday. In St. Petersburg, for example, a giant letter P (corresponding to the Russian word “Memory”) was depicted on one of the buildings. The Network project explained this action as “a feeling of gratitude to the president as the main architect of our victories”.

After the start of the full-scale invasion, the Walls of Free Creativity continued to exist. For example, in Krasnodar, a major from Anapa, who died in the war in Ukraine, was painted on the wall of one of the buildings. As reported by TV Channel Krasnodar, local residents responded positively to this decision.

The Walls of Free Creativity initiative is a way to “tame” Russian amateur street artists so that they paint graffiti that is not “aggressive” but acceptable to the Kremlin. It is worth noting that not all murals are patriotic, but the mass appearance of pro-Russian drawings is evidence of the success of this Kremlin project.

On August 6, 2024, Ukrainian troops crossed the border and entered Russian territory in the Kursk region. More than a month has passed, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have advanced 35 km into the Kursk region, taking control of about 1,300 sq. km and 100 settlements. Ukrainian forces have also replenished the exchange fund with more than 600 Russian prisoners of war.

At the same time, Russia is positioning the Kursk operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces as an “attempted invasion”. They say that Ukraine has decided to enter Russian territory, but this is nothing more than an attempt. The Russian military-political leadership seems to have everything under control, so ordinary Russians should not worry about the situation in the Kursk region. At the same time, this is indeed the first invasion of a foreign army into Russia since World War II.

Both Russian propagandists on their Telegram channels and official sources resort to rhetoric about an attempted invasion. For example, as of September 10, the Russian Ministry of Defense continues to publish daily information “on the progress of repelling the attempted invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the territory of the Russian Federation in the Kursk region”.

It would be an “attempted invasion” if Russian border guards and other military formations did not allow the theater of military operations to move to Russian territory. However, the reality is different: the Russians are still trying to put the fighting in order on their lands.

With this term, Russian propaganda is trying to devalue the successes of the Ukrainian military in the Kursk operation and calm its citizens. Although the impossibility of driving the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of Russian territory is a real alarm bell for the residents of this state. The Kremlin is unable to protect its own population, which is why it uses such phrases, just so that the Russians do not suspect that the “special military operation” is not going “according to plan”.

Ukraine continues to carry out air attacks on Russian territory, citing the destruction of infrastructure key to Moscow's military efforts and a response to Russia's strikes on Ukrainian territory. For example, on August 22, 2024, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the Russians had repelled a Ukrainian attack and intercepted 28 drones over six of their regions. The governor of the Volgograd region also spoke of a fire on the territory of a military facility. This turned out to be an attack by the Security Services of Ukraine on the Marinovka airfield. Earlier, the mayor of Moscow had also spoken of “one of the largest attacks” by drones on the Russian capital. Although the Ukrainian side did not comment specifically on the Moscow mayor's address, anonymous and pro-Russian Telegram channels began to claim that Ukraine would pay for its actions and would receive so-called “revenge shelling” in response.

Now, in the understanding of propagandists, “revenge shelling” is not a direct and not at all hostile attack on Ukraine, but only a way to pay for the fact that the Ukrainian side “decided” to attack Russian territory in the air and on land.

“The Ukrainian Armed Forces are intensifying the infrastructure war, which increases the risk of corresponding attacks on Ukrainian energy, gas and fuel infrastructure facilities. This will lead to the Ukrainian people becoming hostages of the situation. The black winter in Ukraine could become the largest catastrophe in the entire war”, this is how anonymous telegram users threatened Ukrainians.

In such reports, Ukraine is once again portrayed as the aggressor, and Russia as the victim, which is trying to defend itself. Moreover, if Ukraine can really resort to shelling military facilities in Russia, then Moscow is seething over everything and even calls it a “legitimate target”: this is how the Kremlin has long blurred the boundaries between civilian and military facilities, allowing itself to shell residential buildings, public institutions, kindergartens and schools.

For example, on August 26, 2024, Russia launched its most massive air strike on Ukraine. According to Forbes Ukraine, the cost of the attack is $1.2–1.3 billion. Russia attacked 15 Ukrainian regions, including the Kyiv hydroelectric power station. The station was hit and damaged as a result of the shelling, but there is no threat of a dam break. There are also reports of casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure in other regions.

In short, the occupiers are deliberately committing genocide against Ukrainians, killing them in their homes. At the same time, Moscow is trying to whitewash itself and deny any crimes, hiding it all under the term “revenge shelling”: supposedly the Kremlin is exclusively a victim. But documented cases of Russian terror show what the terrorist country Russia is really doing.

Due to the operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region, local Russians are fleeing their homes. In Russia they call this voluntary evacuation. Residents of the Kursk region allegedly voluntarily leave their homes and property, voluntarily, in a hurry, grab their children with them and voluntarily evacuate. Russian official sources resort to such rhetoric when depicting the situation in the Kursk region. In fact, more than 120 thousand Russians have already evacuated.

Some pro-Russian public pages even sneer at the term “voluntary evacuation”, saying that this is “something like mass entertainment, a new type of active tourism”. They also add that the Russians “listened to the victories of the Russian army and voluntarily evacuated”.

The evacuation itself in the Kursk region is difficult, as evidenced, in particular, by the video appeal of the local residents to Putin with an appeal to help them, since the local authorities are doing nothing. For example, one of these videos was recorded by residents of the village of Huievo, Sudzhanskyi district, Kursk region, complaining that they did not evacuate.

Also, instead of the term “voluntary evacuation”, Russian officials may use the word “displacement”. Thus, on August 12, 2024, the governor of the Belgorod region, Viacheslav Hladkov, announced the activity of Ukrainian troops on the border of the Krasnoyaruzh region and announced the beginning of the evacuation of residents from there. “We are having an alarming morning (...) In order to protect the life and health of our population, we are starting to move people living in the Krasnoyaruzh district to safer places”, Hladkov said in his address on the telegram channel.

Concepts such as “voluntary evacuation” or “relocation” help official structures in Russia curb the panic among its ordinary citizens caused by military operations in the Kursk region. And also to downplay the scale of what is happening, thereby disfiguring Russians’ perception of reality. Accordingly, everyone inside the country should think that the situation is under control and “everything is going according to plan”. However, in fact, the reality is different as the war has come to Russian territory, and the Russian authorities are trying in every possible way to deny this, which is why they resort to such absurd terms.

When freight trains involved in military logistics derail on Russian railways, official reports often say it is the result of “intervention by outsiders”. Thus, with just three words, railway workers in Russia are distorting Russians’ perception of news about accidents. Indeed, in fact, often the reasons for the derailment of freight trains used for military purposes are attacks by Ukrainian drones or the work of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

For example, on May 14, 2024, pro-Kremlin media, citing Russian railway workers, stated that in the Volgograd region, due to “interference by outsiders” in the operation of railway transport, freight train cars derailed. However, the real cause of the accident was precisely the attack of Ukrainian UAVs, and not abstract sabotage. As a result, at least nine fuel tanks derailed, two of which caught fire and one exploded.

Also, when 19 freight train cars derailed in the Riazan region in November 2023, the official channel of the Moscow Railway wrote that the reason for this was nothing more than “interference by outsiders”. In fact, the accident at that time was caused by the Ukrainian GUR in order to complicate the logistics of Russian troops in the area. But there is not a word about this in official communications.

So, every time pro-Kremlin sources resort to rhetoric about “intervention by outsiders” in the operation of the railway, they seek to hide the real cause of the accidents. According to the logic of federal propaganda, ordinary Russians should not think that incidents on Russian railways are an echo of a real war (and not the so-called “special military operation”), which has already come to the territory of Russia itself.

The Kremlin says that it is taking Ukrainian children from the temporarily occupied territories for “rehabilitation”, although in fact this term, as well as similar terms such as “treatment” or “rest”, does not mean anything other than deportation.

According to the Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, the Russians took about 20 thousand children. Of them, 800 were returned to Ukraine. Children are taken directly to the territory of Russia or through Crimea or Belarus, where they supposedly “rest” in camps for several weeks beforehand. This practice has been going on since 2014, but it became widely known only after the cases of illegal transportation of Ukrainian children and adolescents by Russia increased sharply in 2022.

On June 24, 2024, EU countries approved another package of sanctions against the Russian Federation. In particular, it introduced sanctions against the International Children's Center Artek, which organizes camps for children from Ukraine, including in illegally occupied territories. The restrictive measures also affected the Kadyrov Foundation, which is conducting a program of “re-education” of Ukrainian children and adolescents, and the Belarusian Republican Union of Youth, which is actively deporting Ukrainian children from illegally occupied territories. Some of their famous representatives were also blacklisted.

The First Deputy Chairman of the Kherson Regional Council, Yurii Sobolevskyi, shared how the process of deportation of Ukrainian children takes place under the pretext of “rehabilitation” at the Kherson region: “What is connected with the removal of children cannot be called evacuation or, as the occupiers call it, rehabilitation — it is deportation. These are elements of genocide, this is a completely war crime. They were able to take out a certain number of children in this way, and then prevented these children from returning to the Kherson region. Parents were also forced to leave for their children and stay in the territory of the Russian Federation”.

In Russia, Ukrainian children are placed in shelters and placed in foster families. And the second one then ends with the illegal adoption of children, which in the future makes their return to Ukraine practically impossible. Identification of Ukrainian children after adoption becomes impossible, as all the personal data of the child changes - starting with last name, first name and patronymic, date of birth, place of birth, etc.

In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian dictator Volodymyr Putin and the so-called Russian Children's Rights Commissioner Mariia Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of war crimes - deportation and displacement of the population, including children, from the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine.

The term “to Macron” first appeared in the Ukrainian information space at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. This concept comes from the name of French President Emmanuel Macron, who at the beginning of the great war was remembered by many Ukrainians not for real help, but only for “deep concern” about the situation in Ukraine. Accordingly, in the Ukrainian lexicon the term “to Macron” is used to mean “showing a worried look regarding a certain situation, but not actually doing anything”.

In the Russian information field, this concept appeared a little later. First in 2022 with the semantics of “calling continuously, repeatedly and to no avail” amid Macron’s constant phone calls to Putin in the hope of stopping the war with diplomacy. And already in 2024, the term “to Macron” in the Russian dictionary acquired a different meaning: “constantly throwing in unrealistic, eccentric, sometimes opposite in content theses to fill the agenda”. And the appearance of such semantics of this word can be called a response of Russian propaganda to the strengthening of the rhetoric of the French President regarding the protection of Ukraine and assistance to it. In particular, this concerns Macron’s statements about the possible dispatch of French troops to Ukraine.

Thus, one can notice some trends. During the time when the French president more or less satisfied the Russians with his cautious policy on the war in Ukraine, they used the term “to Macron” rather in a derisive sense. However, as soon as Macron began to form a new vector against Russian aggression in Ukraine, he openly began to infuriate the Russians. Accordingly, this is how a new semantics of the word “to Macron” arose.

So, Russian propaganda seeks to discredit the French President and devalue his supposed “escalatory statements”, as it makes them, regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war. Russian propaganda may also argue that Macron’s increased rhetoric about the war in Ukraine is a bluff, stupidity, or even crossing Russia’s imaginary “red lines”. However, in reality, this reaction of Russians, in particular the spread of the term “to Macron” with new semantics, rather looks insulted and infantile.

Russian propagandists use the term “Ukrobeshenka” to describe Ukrainian migrant women who, in their opinion, behave “inappropriately” abroad and, as a result, allegedly create problems. By resorting to this concept, Russian propagandists seek to discredit the image of Ukrainian women abroad, as well as directly cause pain to members of this social category. It is about slur - an offensive word that hides discrimination against a group of people based on race, sexual orientation, gender, illness, etc. and is used, in particular, to demonstrate a lack of respect.

The National Democratic Institute (NDI) notes that not all hate speech, threats or gender-based attacks against women are cases of gender misinformation, but all fall within the definition of online violence against women.

Thus, pro-Russian resources distributed a video of a conflict that occurred in Germany between a Ukrainian migrant and a Russian man, who assured her that he himself was a “German”, since he had been living in this country for 25 years. However, the clash itself between them arose because the son of a Ukrainian woman exclaimed “Glory to Ukraine!” while playing with other children, and the Russian did not like this. Propagandists began distributing this video online with the following caption: “Ukrobeshenka in Germany hysterically defends the Nazi slogan “glory to Ukraine”. At the same time, it was the man who began to aggressively express his complaints against the boy’s mother, saying, “What the glory of Ukraine?” and “Are you fascists or what?” He also tried to offend the Ukrainian woman, claiming: “What kind of woman are you? You are “ukrop”! During the conflict, the woman reacted with restraint to the Russian’s reproaches, and also assured him that it was the Russians who were fascists, since they attacked Ukraine.

In the end, with the start of the full-scale invasion, the situation of Ukrainian women changed: there were many times more internally displaced persons and refugees, single mothers, widows, relatives of veterans and military women. Women who previously fought for their rights are now fighting for their physical survival and that of their children. And Russian propaganda continues to regularly attack Ukrainian women, in particular refugees, with the aim of influencing their morale.

The Detector Media team conducted a separate large-scale study of how propaganda is trying to discredit Ukrainian women. One can read it at the link.

In Russia, a “foreign agent” is a person who is considered to receive funding from abroad and participate in the political activities of the country, disseminate information as media on the territory of the Russian Federation, or collect military-technical information. The Putin regime has carried out systematic repression in Russia in recent years, for example by censoring the media or banning rallies. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the persecution of dissent in Russia intensified even more, and citizens disliked by the authorities increasingly began to be included in the so-called register of “foreign agents”. That is, this term is used to attack the opposition, in particular.

Russia's “foreign agents” law, passed back in 2012, requires any non-profit organization allegedly receiving financial support from outside Russia or being “influenced” by other countries to register and declare itself a “foreign agent”. Russian legislation does not specify what exactly should be considered foreign influence. The law has been heavily criticized both in Russia and internationally as a violation of human rights and as a tool used to suppress civil society - especially groups opposed to Putin. We are also talking about pressure on press freedom in the Russian Federation, because projects, for example, Radio Svoboda (Liberty), Voice of America, etc., are included in the register.

Today, a similar law “On the Transparency of Foreign Influence” is being tried to be adopted in the Georgian parliament. Georgian deputies even voted for it in the second reading. Before final adoption, the bill still has to pass the third final reading, as well as overcome the veto of the country's president. However, back on March 7, 2023, mass peaceful protests began in Georgia, which continue today, due to parliamentary support for the law on “foreign agents” initiated by the Georgian “Power of the People” party. The protesters call it an analogue of the Russian law on “foreign agents” and believe that it will remove Georgia from joining the EU.

Previously, only organizations were included in the Russian register of “foreign agents”, but from the end of 2020, individuals allegedly under foreign influence began to be included there — it is no longer necessary to establish the fact of financing from abroad. As of April 2023, there were more than 260 people on the register of “foreign agents”. Almost half of the “foreign agents”, according to the Russian authorities, are journalists: there were 119 of them in the register. For example, already in April 2024, the Russian journalist Ivan Filippov, who runs a telegram channel with an audience of 61.5 thousand subscribers, was added to the register of “foreign agents”. In particular, it contains critical reviews of publications by Russian pro-war telegram channels. Another large group in the register is political and public figures: 79 people.

Also, 18 human rights activists, lawyers and jurists acquired the status of “foreign agent” in Russia; 14 representatives of show business; 13 political scientists, historians, sociologists and philosophers; 11 publicists and publishers; 5 artists, directors and film distributors; 5 businessmen and economists; 2 athletes and even one physicist.

So, today the Russian authorities allow themselves to persecute not only organizations, but also citizens they dislike, working in the field of education, culture, healthcare, ecology, human rights protection, etc., labeling them as “foreign agents”. This term is intended to discredit these individuals and their views or activities to the public.

In Russia, the participation of the Russian military in the war against Ukraine is called “heroism”. The so-called “heroes” illegally cross the border of another state, occupy part of it, thereby allegedly “liberating Ukraine from the Nazis”. They kill Ukrainian civilians, rape, and loot. At the same time, it is precisely such actions that are presented in Russian propaganda as “heroism”.

In addition, the Russian military receives state awards for this. Thus, Putin, for example, noted the “heroism and courage” of the 64th separate motorized rifle brigade of the Russian Ground Forces, which carried out a massacre in the city of Bucha, Kyiv region. The head of the Kremlin gave this brigade the name “Guards” for “heroism and courage, steadfastness and courage shown by the brigade’s personnel in combat operations to defend the fatherland and state interests in armed conflicts”.

Also in Russia, children are raised by promoting the cult of war and cultivating their willingness to imitate the “heroism” of the participants in the Russian-Ukrainian war. That is, in this way, there is a legitimation of the occupation, encouragement to violate the laws and customs of war, and the commission of actions that international justice regards as war crimes. This is evidenced, for example, by special ideological lessons, in particular, “Conversations about what is important” and the so-called “Lessons of Courage”; cadet classes; opening memorial plaques in schools to Russian soldiers who died in the war against Ukraine; opening of the “heroes' desks”.

In particular, the rhetoric about the “heroism” of Russian “liberators” is intended to justify the war crimes of the Russian army, to give this war a different, righteous content.

Read also: “The Crucified Boy” became the “hero Fiodor”: How Russian propaganda invents heroes – MediaSapiens.

Russian propaganda traditionally resorts to rhetoric about the “Ukrainian trace” to explain the causes of internal problems or tragedies on Russian territory. They say that all dangers for Russia are necessarily somehow connected with Ukraine. Yes, official Moscow searched and supposedly even found a “Ukrainian trace” in the Jewish pogroms in the Caucasus, the terrorist attack at Crocus City Holi in the Moscow region, etc.

In particular, during a telephone conversation between Russian Defense Minister Serhii  Shoihu and the newly appointed French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu on April 3, 2024, the former spoke about the information available in Russia about the “Ukrainian trace” in the Crocus terrorist attack. However, in response, Lecornu said that France does not have any information to establish a connection between this terrorist attack and Ukraine. He also called on Russia to stop any instrumentalization of this event. The United States also stated that Ukraine was not involved in the terrorist attack, and Putin’s inner circle does not believe that Ukraine was involved in the terrorist attack in the Moscow region. It is also known that the Islamist terrorist state ISIS claimed responsibility for the shooting at Crocus, however, in this situation, Russian propaganda insists on various versions with a “Ukrainian trace”, which in some places contradict each other.

In addition, the Kremlin can talk about the “Ukrainian trace” in the event of crisis events outside Russia, often directly affecting it. Insisting that “all the ills of the world” are to blame for Ukraine. So, for example, in the case of the Nord Stream explosion, the emergence of weapons from the Hamas terrorist group from the Russian-Ukrainian war (allegedly Ukraine “sold” Western weapons to terrorists) and many others.

For example, Russian Presidential Press Secretary Pieskov spoke about Ukraine’s possible involvement in sabotage on the Nord Streams: “Ukrainian traces of this sabotage and terrorist act are increasingly appearing in various reports, investigations, and media reports. This is true”. In fact, there is no real evidence to confirm this, except for some additional “details”. In addition, in the West questions are being asked, “Why did Ukraine need to blow up gas pipelines that were already under sanctions and were not working?”

Consequently, Russia’s rhetoric about the “Ukrainian trace” in certain troubles of Russia or the world is aimed, first of all, at fixing in the minds of as many people as possible the associative series: “Ukraine = terrorism”. And this while Russian terror against the Ukrainian population continues. Also, in this way, the Kremlin seeks to strengthen anti-Ukrainian sentiment among its own population, in particular. And in this way, Russian propaganda discredits Ukraine at the international level and throws another “argument” into the information space to justify aggression, which sounds like “protection from terrorism on the part of Ukraine”.

“Voienkor” (short for “war correspondents”) are propagandists who pretend to be journalists. Although they work in a combat zone, in fact the so-called “military correspondents” are full-time employees of Russian military information units serving aggression.

In modern Russia, the concept of “military correspondent” began to come into everyday use in 2014, when the Russian-Ukrainian war began. Then many patriotic Russians began to cover the events taking place in Donbas. With the start of a full-scale war in 2022, “military correspondents” became a phenomenon, and the term itself became entrenched in the Russian-language segment of the Internet. During the first months of a full-scale war, Russian “military correspondents” gained great popularity, since the Russian audience needed alternative sources of information about the progress of the war, other than the official ones. And above all on telegram as a convenient platform.

In fact, “military correspondents” have become such a significant and widespread phenomenon that the Russian State Duma even proposed equating “war correspondents” covering the war with combat veterans. In addition, some Russian military officers were awarded medals supposedly for their dangerous work in the combat zone.

Despite their feigned criticism, the “military correspondents” always remain in line with the key Kremlin narratives. When necessary, they extinguish indignation and panic. When necessary, on the contrary, they raise the temperature to the required level, looking for the culprits among military commissars, commanders or governors. The main thing is that Putin is never among the culprits of the problems that military correspondents write about. He’s good, it’s just that everyone deceives him and doesn’t tell him the whole truth.

Most military correspondents, after the flight of the Russian army from the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions, sharply shifted their focus to events in other regions where the Russians had at least some success. “Kyiv was not and could not be the main direction”, “Regrouping is a military necessity, often contrary to political expediency”, “the main thing is the South, where there is grain and access to the Black Sea - Odesa, Mykolaiv”. This was followed by hundreds of messages that convinced that the civilians killed in the Kyiv region were a “staged act”. One of the popular Russian “military correspondents”, Kots, positioned himself as an “eyewitness” who did not see the bodies of the dead.

And a similar principle followed whenever the authorities needed the help of “military correspondents” to divert attention or reduce the level of public disappointment due to bad news from the battlefield. For example, while Zmiinyi Island was in Russian hands, it was a “strategic object” that gave Russia control over almost the entire Black Sea. However, when the Russians were kicked out of there, the “military correspondents” at first did not write anything, but about a week later they began to talk about Zmiinyi as “a territory that is important only with complete control over Odesa and Mykolaiv”. And the Ukrainian banner on the island was called a “PR campaign”.

By resorting to rhetoric about “independence and sovereignty”, Russian propaganda ironizes and seeks to challenge both the independence and sovereignty of the Ukrainian state. Propagandists often write this phrase according to Russian transliteration, thereby demonstrating their disdainful, frivolous attitude towards Ukraine. They say that the Ukrainian government is illegitimate, and the country is led either by the “collective West”, or by “overseas masters”, etc. And, accordingly, all important decisions regarding Ukraine are made somewhere in “Western offices”.

This term was also used in a religious context, when in 2022 the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) announced the alleged severance of ties with Moscow, proclaiming this “independence and sovereignty”. However, at that time there was no talk of either autocephaly or autonomy, which could be considered a real achievement. Therefore, Archbishop of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) Yevstratii Zoria emphasized that the corresponding statement of the UOC-MP really serves as a cover for its lack of independence and sovereignty in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).

On August 24, 1991, the Verkhovna Rada of the then Ukrainian SSR adopted a historical document - the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine. The independence of Ukraine was also recognized by the international community - in December 1991 alone, more than 40 countries did so. Then a new independent state appeared on the geopolitical map of the world - Ukraine. In addition, in the Constitution of Ukraine, Article 1 reads as follows: “Ukraine is a sovereign and independent, democratic, social, legal state”. Therefore, the rhetoric of Russian propagandists who doubt the sovereignty of Ukraine is, in particular, another justification for their imperial ambitions to conquer their neighboring country.

About 1600 years ago, Germanic tribes migrated to the British Isles. Today these tribes are known as the Anglo-Saxons. In the terminology of Russian propaganda, this word is used in relation to the British, residents of Great Britain, Americans, Australians, Canadians and representatives of other nations who speak English. Moreover, the term “Anglo-Saxons” designates English-speaking Westerners specifically as “evil”, “warlike”, and “morally corrupt”. “Arrogant Saxons” is a word with the same meaning as “Anglo-Saxons”, but with an additional emphasis on the supposed arrogance, rudeness and insolence of citizens of Western countries.

In November 2021, the press secretary of the Russian President Pieskov, commenting on publications in the American press that Russia was preparing an invasion of Ukraine, said that “the Anglo-Saxon media are whipping up hysteria”. In January 2022, Pieskov again resorted to similar rhetoric: “The Anglo-Saxons, of course, are significantly increasing tension on the European continent. Here we Europeans have something to think about”. In these two cases, one can trace the tactics of reflection typical of Russian propaganda, used, in particular, to divert attention from the real state of affairs.

In 2022, while presenting the World Cup match between England and the USA, a “journalist” from a Russian TV channel called British football players “arrogant Saxons”,  thus demonstrating his disrespect for them. And he did it twice in half a minute. It is not surprising in fact, because a few months earlier in the mentioned incident, the same “journalist-TV presenter” called the Polish football players who refused to play with Russia in the selection for the 2022 World Cup “vile creatures”. It is significant that he said this with a “Z” symbol on the T-shirt - a symbol of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The use of the words “Anglo-Saxons” or “arrogant-Saxons” serves to reinforce narratives of supposedly Western imperialism and interventionism, portraying these countries as orchestrators of events or policies that harm Russia and perhaps even its allies. That is, the “Anglo-Saxon world” in the minds of Russian propaganda is trying to conquer and dominate.

Contrasting the Western community and Russians, propaganda also resorts to the term “Westerns”. As a negative universal term, the word “Anglo-Saxons” is also widely used by propagandists in the context of conspiracy theories. The Detector Media has a section with the appropriate name, the materials of which can be viewed here.

The appointment of Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on February 8, 2024 led to a new surge in popularity of the word “vyrus” on pro-Russian resources. This is what propagandists call a person of Russian ethnic origin who has “lost his Russian identity”. According to propagandists, Syrskyi is trying to seem like one among strangers, however, for example, for the Ukrainian military he will allegedly always be an outsider because he has Russian roots. For Russia, he is a “corrupt collaborator”.

The reason for the “denazification” of the new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was that he was born in Russia (Volodymyr region) and graduated with honors from the Moscow Higher Combined Arms Command School in 1986. It should be noted here that after his studies, Syrskyi served in Lubny, Poltava region, and Chuhuiev, Kharkiv region. And after the declaration of independence of Ukraine, he continued to serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Previously, the term “vyrus” was more of a jargon and was used in subcultural movements, but in recent years it has become the norm among the general public. For example, propagandist Simonian uses this word to call those Russians who ridicule Russia.

Also in Russia, the term “vyrus” can be used to designate a person who “breaks his native language about a foreign language”, that is, uses broken Ukrainian when he spoke Russian from birth. They say that this is self-humiliation for a person, because in this way he “expels “Russianness” from himself”. This word, in particular, can be applied to officials or people in the media space who have switched from Russian to Ukrainian.

Russians explain the imaginary existence of the “vyrus” by the influence of “Ukrainian propaganda”, as well as commercialism and miscalculations of “corrupt collaborators”. Propagandists include the current Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksii Danylov, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klymkin, ex-Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov, and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov and many others as the “vyrus”. In particular, in relation to them in Russia they are promoting the message that “Galicians do not perceive them as real patriots.”

The purpose of calling Ukrainians of Russian ethnic origin “vyrus” is nothing more than to sow discord among the people of Ukraine, as well as to cast doubt on Ukrainian civic identity. Propaganda seeks to assure that there is only one identity - Russian, and that any attempts to communicate in Ukrainian, to live in Ukrainian space, are classified as ignorance of Russia.

However, if you look into the past, in particular, to the creation of the USSR, the deportations and destruction of entire nations, it is not surprising that many can be born in Russia, but with Ukrainian roots or not. People are ready to choose any country to live in, and this also proves that Ukraine exists as a separate sovereign state.

On February 22, 2022, two days before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the self-proclaimed President of Belarus Oleksandr Lukashenko, Putin’s henchman, addressed the Ukrainian people and the country’s leadership with a call that “the Slavic peoples must live in peace and harmony”. At the same time, he suggested that Ukraine “should brush aside its overseas masters”, since they supposedly would not bring any happiness to the Ukrainians.

Russia claims that Ukraine cannot resolve a single important issue of its domestic and foreign policy without agreement with its “overseas masters”. And on one Russian website they even offer synonyms for this phrase: “Western leadership”, “agents of influence”, “a sect of lepers, rootless parasites”.

By the term “overseas masters”, propagandists mean “Washington and London”, in particular, because of their allegedly selfish policy towards Ukraine for quite a long time. However, Ukraine is an independent and sovereign state, and the reproaches of propaganda depending on Kyiv from the “overseas masters” are aimed at declaring the fictitiousness of the Ukrainian government and discrediting it in the eyes of the whole world. In addition, in this way Russia wants to assert that Ukraine is a country of error (“country 404”), and therefore its existence as a whole is supposedly unacceptable.

The assistance provided to Ukraine by the United States and Great Britain can be measured in tens of billions of dollars. They transfer weapons and military equipment, therefore, as a result, they allegedly allow themselves to set a “simple task” for Kyiv: to fight at any cost. Ukraine, in the eyes of propaganda, is a chessboard and supposedly realizes the interests of its “overseas masters”. All its actions are the fulfillment of the will of the latter, and the Russian-Ukrainian war is a proxy war, and not a struggle for independence and upholding the Euro-Atlantic course. According to the conclusions of Russian propaganda, the West’s position regarding Ukraine is aimed at destroying Russia, and so it is “defending itself”. Moscow's retaliatory rhetoric serves as yet another justification for bloody aggression and an unprovoked war.

Yes, without the military support of the West, it is unknown whether Ukraine would have survived the war against Russia. At the same time, this does not give grounds to assert that the Ukrainian state is subject to someone “from overseas”, since it defends the democratic values of the entire civilized world and that is why allied countries continue to support it.

According to the Russian version of Wikipedia, “strike” (or second strike) is a nuclear strategy concept that means a massive nuclear retaliatory strike against an aggressor. However, Kremlin propaganda rather uses this term, as well as the phrase “retaliation operation”, not in a nuclear context. Moscow resorts to such rhetoric when it talks about shelling the territory of Ukraine with its “high-precision weapons”, supposedly in response to the “unprovoked” actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Thus, the Russian Ministry of Defense called the Russian massive missile attack on the temporary deployment points of Ukrainian Armed Forces units in Kramatorsk on the night of January 8, 2023, an “operation of retaliation”. As a result, they allegedly managed to eliminate more than 600 Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel. This Russian attack was a response to the “insidious attack of the Kyiv regime” on the vocational school building in Makiivka on the night of January 1, 2023, which resulted in the death of about 400 Russian military personnel.

However, Advisor to the then Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksii Kopytko said that Russia’s statement about a “retaliatory strike” is an IPSO. It was aimed at “killing the negative” from the attack on Makiivka. In this case, the Russians resorted to reflexive tactics. The information itself about the death of more than 600 Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers in Kramatorsk was fake - it was refuted by foreign media, the Ukrainian military leadership and even Russian “patriotic channels”.

The missile and drone attack on Mykolaiv and Odesa already on the night of July 18, 2023 was called by the Russian Ministry of Defense a “group retaliation strike” in response to the explosions on the Crimean Bridge the previous night. However, then military-political observer Oleksandr Kovalenko said that too little time had passed since the explosions on the Crimean Bridge (one day) for Russia to be able to prepare such an attack as a “retaliation strike”. In fact, the Kremlin gave it away as such. Cruise missiles and kamikaze drones, then flying towards two Ukrainian cities, had to be given coordinates and target objects, and a route built - this should have taken about 48 hours, Kovalenko added.

That is, after the Kremlin experiences any crushing blow, it resorts to rhetoric, saying, “we have everything under control” - this is a “strike of retaliation”. Thus, propagandists console the internal population of Russia, blur their eyes, and in fact cover up the defeat of the Russian army at the front with new so-called “achievements”.

The Russians first started talking about a “dirty bomb” on the eve of a full-scale invasion. In December 2021, a fake video was posted on one of the propaganda resources, allegedly filmed by the Ukrainian National Corps, demonstrating some kind of “radioactive-filled device”. The video stated that such weapons would be used if Russian troops advance across Ukraine. At the beginning of February 2022, this story was picked up in a slightly improved form by other pro-Russian media and telegram channels. Subsequently, in the first days of March 2022, after the start of a full-scale war, propagandists claimed that “on the secret order of Zelenskyi”, work was underway in Ukraine to create a “dirty bomb” at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Allegedly, the increased radiation background characteristic of the Chornobyl zone, which was a consequence of the 1986 tragedy, made it possible to hide the conduct of such work, so the Russians attacked Ukraine, thus delivering a “preventive strike” and protecting themselves.

However, the story of the “dirty bomb” gained the most publicity in October 2022. The Russian Defense Minister Serhii Shoihu telephoned the defense ministers of France, Great Britain, Turkey and the United States to say that Ukraine was preparing a provocation with a “dirty bomb”. France, Great Britain and the United States responded to this with a joint statement in which they called Russia's message a lie.

In fact, Ukraine has never developed a so-called “dirty bomb”, and all statements by propagandists on this topic are fake. The Russian propaganda explanation as to why Ukraine would detonate a “dirty bomb” on its territory is baseless. Russia claims that Ukraine allegedly wanted to increase the number of Ukrainian refugees abroad in this way (for an unknown reason), as well as to pass off a “dirty bomb” as the explosion of a tactical nuclear charge to Russia itself in order to accuse the latter of using nuclear weapons. Then the international community should have condemned such actions by the Kremlin and introduced new sanctions, perhaps even expelling Russia from the UN Security Council, as well as increasing arms supplies to Ukraine.

Russia is speculating on the use of a “dirty bomb” to sow distrust in Ukraine and force the world to waste resources on refuting accusations from propagandists. An IAEA commission came to Ukraine to check whether a “dirty bomb” was really being developed at the facilities that Russia claimed - the Eastern Mining and Processing Plant in Zhovti Vody and the Institute of Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The result of the inspection was that the Agency did not identify any signs of such weapons at Ukrainian nuclear facilities.

A report from the American Institute for the Study of War says that Russian propaganda claims about the development of a “dirty bomb” are needed to slow down the process of arms supplies to Ukraine. At the same time, analysts believe that Russia is unlikely to detonate the so-called “dirty bomb” itself: this is just another attempt to “test” the international community in order to find out a possible reaction to the use of nuclear weapons by Russia.

After all, Ukraine has long insisted that Russia be recognized as a terrorist state. The fake news about Ukraine creating a “dirty bomb” is a mirror response from Russia, the purpose of which is to try to convince the world that it is Ukraine that is acting as a terrorist group. This, by the way, is one of the most common messages of Russian propaganda, constantly trying to accuse Ukraine of terrorism, saying that it itself fires at Ukrainian civilians and launches missile strikes on its own critical infrastructure.

In the run-up to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin and Russian propagandists have increasingly spread the narrative that Ukraine is the aggressor in the war, which began back in 2014. They say that then the Ukrainian Armed Forces began shelling the civilian population of the Luhansk region and Donbas. This Russian propaganda narrative intensified in late 2021 after more than one year of a so-called “comprehensive truce” that Russia repeatedly violated. In this regard, it was decided to allow the Ukrainian military in the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) zone to return fire to the occupiers without the approval of senior leadership. Thus, in particular, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi deprived the military of the need to fill out unnecessary documents. However, according to propaganda, Ukraine allegedly “sabotaged the truce”. Moreover, according to propagandists, sooner or later Ukraine would have attacked “defenseless” Russia, since it was also increasing weapons production.

The rhetoric of the Russians that Ukraine is the aggressor can in no way be justified, since it is our country that has been suffering from a war unleashed by a neighboring country for more than nine years. Russia's armed aggression against Ukraine began on February 20, 2014, when Russian troops without insignia entered the territory of the Crimean Peninsula with the aim of occupying it. Only after this did the Ukrainian military begin to resist Russian attempts to seize military installations in Crimea by force. Some time later, at the beginning of April 2014, the Russian military, under the cover of the newly formed quasi-state entities - the DPR and the LPR - declared their intention to establish control over the Donbas by armed means. That is, in the war against Ukraine, from the very beginning it was Russia that was the aggressor.

By spreading the thesis that “Ukraine is the aggressor”, Russian propaganda is trying to justify Russia’s bloody war against Ukraine, in particular, the presence of Russian troops on the territory of our state. They say that if the “liberators” had not come, the “oppression” of Russian-speaking Ukrainians and the killing of Donbas residents by the Ukrainian Armed Forces would have continued. Ultimately, Russia must answer for all war crimes committed in Ukraine and pay reparations for the harm caused to our country.

According to Russian propaganda, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have allegedly regularly committed war crimes since the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014. For example, propaganda resources blamed the Ukrainian side for the downing of a civilian Boeing 777 passenger plane near Donetsk in the first year of the war, while denying Russia’s guilt. Then 298 people died - all on board.

In conditions of a full-scale war, propagandists continue to use “reports” and “interviews of residents” who allegedly managed to leave the combat zones as evidence of “crimes of the Ukrainian Armed Forces”. They say that the Ukrainian military, for example, is firing at the cars of people who are trying to evacuate along humanitarian corridors, or they say that civilians are allegedly being used as “human shields”. Or, say, when in March 2022, the online publication Sky News took a comment from the Kremlin Ambassador to the UN Vasyl Nebenzia about the overthrown air bomb on the drama theater in the center of Mariupol, he denied Russia’s involvement in this.

The court in The Hague concluded, in particular, that the Boeing 777 aircraft mentioned in the text was shot down by a missile from the Buk anti-aircraft missile system and belonged to the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade of the Russian Armed Forces. As for Mariupol, investigations by a number of foreign organizations unanimously indicate that it was a Russian plane that dropped an aerial bomb on the Drama Theater in the center of the city on March 16, 2022, where about 600 people could have died. The atrocities of Russians in Bucha and Gostomel in the Kyiv region, in Izium in the Kharkiv region and in other de-occupied territories have been confirmed and documented by journalists from the world's leading newspapers - and these are war crimes that Russia commits in Ukraine every day.

The October 2023 UN report on war crimes by Russia and Ukraine in the war for the period from February 1 to July 31, 2023 contains information that during this time six murders of Ukrainian prisoners of war and not a single murder of Russians in captivity of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were recorded. There is also no confirmed information that the Ukrainian Armed Forces fired at civilians trying to leave dangerous territories.

By resorting to newspeak, in this case, Russian propaganda aims to shift responsibility for the war crimes of the Russian army onto the Ukrainian army. Like, “evil in the form of the Ukrainian Armed Forces must be punished”, and “peaceful Ukrainian citizens must be protected”. Deportations of civilians, their torture, massacres, the use of cover for the Russian military (“human shields”) - these and other violations of international humanitarian law by Russia are documented in the 50-kilogram book “Crime Without Punishment”, created in Ukraine and already represented in NATO and the European Parliament.

One of the factors that supposedly symbolizes the unity of Russian society and the state is the “great Russian culture”. In them, domestic literature is an important component of culture, the spiritual habitat of the people. This is about Pushkin, Dostoievskyi, Chekhov, Chaikovskyi, Gogol or Tolstoi in particular.

Russians use the term “great Russian culture” in fact with the goal of overcoming their inferiority complex and artificially exalting it in the international arena. They say that the cultures of different countries and peoples have the right to exist, but the “great” one, that is, with an exceptionally rich heritage, is Russian.

For centuries, Russia destroyed Ukrainian culture: language, history, customs and traditions, cultural elite, and this is not an exhaustive list. The Russians distorted facts and appropriated Ukrainian writers and cultural figures, for example, the writer Mykola Gogol or the artist Kazymyr Malevych. Ukraine is allegedly a territory that has always belonged first to the Soviet and now to the Russian heritage.

Russia's war against Ukraine showed the true face of the aggressor. It turned out that the “great Russian culture” can massively educate murderers, rapists and marauders who have thousands of war crimes to their credit. Russians also show the “greatness” of the culture they grew up with by physically destroying monuments of Ukrainian cultural heritage.

For example, in the town of Ivankiv in the Kyiv region, the occupiers fired at and set fire to the local history museum, which housed almost 20 works by the world-famous Ukrainian artist Mariia Prymachenko. In the Kharkiv region, Russian troops destroyed the National Museum of Hryhorii Skovoroda with a direct missile hit. In the Zaporizhzhia region, Russians robbed and destroyed the Vasylivskyi Historical and Architectural Museum “Popov’s Estate”, which is a national monument. The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy claims that in total, the Russians have damaged 664 cultural heritage sites in Ukraine as of July 2023.

The position of Russian culture as great has always had the goal of justifying violence and disregard for others, which is one of the manifestations of xenophobia. Of course, one can be proud of one’s own culture, but when it actually appropriates the achievements of others of its own kind and tries to rewrite history, then talking about the “greatness” of that culture, in our case Russian, makes no sense. It turns out that there is no “great Russian culture” - this is a fiction, rather aimed at emphasizing the supposed superiority of this culture over all others.

During the times of the Soviet Union, the names of some countries differed from the names we are used to today. For example, the current country of Moldova is then “Moldavia”, Belarus is “Belarussia”, and Kyrgyzstan is “Kyrgyzia”. Allegedly, out of habit, the former names of these countries continue to be used in the Russian media space. Kyrgyz people consider it an insult to their national dignity and sovereignty that after more than 30 years of independence, their country is still called “Kyrgyzia”, since its official name is now the Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyzstan).

In the first half of 2023, a creative team of web designers from Kyrgyzstan developed a browser extension that crosses out the country's former colonial name with a red line and shows the official one. Considering that Kyrgyzstan has been independent for several decades, the team members decided to raise an issue that concerns many of its citizens and separate the Soviet past from the country's present and future.

Russia considers the Kyrgyz Republic, like the rest of the countries that were once part of the USSR, to be its “zone of influence”, that is, a territory where it can dictate its own conditions. It is worth noting that in Soviet times, the Kyrgyz were not spared the constant repression and leveling of identity. Terms like Kyrgyzstan are already outdated and are used only in Russia, in particular in the media, to emphasize the imaginary belonging of these territories to Russia. This is one way of cultivating nostalgia for the Soviet Union, as the older generation hears familiar phrases.