Russian media is pumping out news reports that carry the false claim of eastern Ukraine being a hotbed of Nazism as way to convince the public that Russia’s invasion of its neighbor is justified, the New York Times reported Saturday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that he sent troops into eastern Ukraine to combat a growing threat of Nazism in the region.
An examination of nearly eight million articles about Ukraine from 8,000 Russian websites since 2014 showed that reporting about Nazism in Ukraine was flat until February 24, the day of Russia’s invasion.
Once the assault began, reports mentioning Nazism spiked, at times increasing tenfold.
The analysis was provided to the Times by Semantic Visions, a defense analytics company. It included major Russian state media outlets and thousands of smaller websites and blogs.
Data showed that a consistent 10-20 percent of news articles about Ukraine have mentioned Nazism in the months since the invasion, compared to infrequent spikes before it started that topped at just 10%.
“It gives a view of Russia’s attempts to justify its attack on Ukraine and maintain domestic support for the ongoing war by falsely portraying Ukraine as being overrun by far-right extremists,” the newspaper said.
Among the false claims made in news stories are that Ukrainian Nazis are planning a genocide of Russians, killing Ukrainian civilians and using noncombatants as human shields.
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