Giving a cold shoulder to propaganda

The Kremlin-manufactured information lies and propaganda continue to pour dirt on Ukraine. Russian channels broadcast fake news, edit their stories as they please without any regard for reality, and literally invent stories about the “Ukrainian punitive expeditions.” Sometimes their lies are just absurd. The latest gem of the Russian propaganda is video claiming that Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the Donbas have each been promised “two slaves and a plot of land.”

To satisfy their curiosity and conduct an experiment, journalists of Odesa TV channel Dumska.TV Olha Kytyk and Yevhen Yachmentsev, posing as reporters working for the Russian propaganda channel Russia-24, asked residents of Odesa to comment on these issues.

Ukrainian journalists asked Odesites where slave market was and what punitive expeditions troops were. However, they mostly did not even get to the questions themselves, for as soon as Odesites heard the name of Russia-24, they moved away from the microphone and ignored journalists or politely said “Sorry, I do not like Russia-24, and therefore will not provide any comment,” or “We have no punitive expedition troops, just the Ukrainian army.” Some of the less refined interlocutors showed “Russian” journalists the famous obscene gesture with a middle finger.

“I personally hoped that people would not want to talk to Russian TV, as they had got repeated warnings that their interviews might be distorted and the Russian propaganda industry might change the content of their messages. However, residents of Odesa are friendly people, who, perhaps because of their naivety, tried to convince ‘Russian journalists’ that no ‘punitive expeditions’ were sent to the Donbas,” local journalist and maker of these videos Kytyk told The Day. “The Odesites are open-hearted and trusting people; fortunately, nobody was harmed during our experiment. Russian TV is unavailable in Odesa, but we all remember the Euromaidan events and our boys are dying in the anti-terrorist operation area as well. The Odesites do not want what is happening in Donetsk and Luhansk to repeat here. Our preferred scenario calls for a peaceful Ukraine, which, of course, will allow local peculiarities to exist unmolested. However, having heard a few stories about the crucified boy and girls sold for 10 hryvnias, even our humor-friendly city did not appreciate these ‘jokes,’ and negative response of our residents comes from it.”