It was 6 a.m. Moscow time on Feb. 24 when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his "special military operation" in Ukraine.
"The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime," Putin said in a televised address, employing the Russian spelling of Ukraine’s capital city. "To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation."
About 500 miles and a time zone away, residents of Kyiv awoke to the sounds of explosions. In the small eastern city of Sloviansk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, loud booms drove people from their beds in panic. Families packed belongings, swarmed ATMs and gas stations, and tried to flee the Russian invasion in cars, trains, planes and on foot.
One hundred Ukrainian soldiers and civilians would be dead by day’s end.
Hundreds of thousands more would be injured or killed by year’s end.
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The war that Putin launched that day was built on a foundation of lies.
Government lies have abetted the invasion every day since.
Putin joined history’s most brutal authoritarians, deploying a well-worn and highly sophisticated propaganda machine to wage an unprovoked war. More than political rhetoric, spin or occasional lying, this playbook uses coordinated networks — hundreds of websites, state-run media, social...
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