This statement was made by Putin during an interview with pro-Russian journalist Tucker Carlson on February 6, 2024. Like, “Ukrainians still feel like Russians, and in this sense, what is happening is to a certain extent an element of civil war”.

The Center for Strategic Communications and Security denied this information. In fact, the Russian-Ukrainian war is by no means “civil”, because its participants have been citizens of different states for many years.

Yes, Russians really live in Ukraine and some of them are defenders of the Ukrainian state. However, this fact alone destroys the propaganda narrative about the alleged “persecution of Russians” or that ethnic Russians in Ukraine are “waiting for their liberation” by Russia.

Russian propaganda continues to deliberately nourish the narrative of “civil war” and “protection of the rights of Russian speakers”, starting with the occupation of Crimea and the Russian war in Donbas in 2014. The Kremlin sees this as an element of justification for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.