FOLLOW & SHARE | RESOURCES
-
Russian propaganda has a strong influence around the world, and unfortunately, New Zealand is no exception. With large financial capital, Moscow spreads pro-Russian narratives through fake news, bribing journalists and opinion leaders, its own English-language media, bots and fake public profiles on social media, and many other hybrid forms of propaganda.
The Russians actively use bots, social media groups, public profiles, and ads (especially on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) to throw in controversial claims that divide the public. In addition to dividing the public and creating extra tension around certain topics and issues, these accounts can be used to directly manipulate public opinions.
All over the world, Russian propaganda about Ukraine has dramatically increased after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In this context, the Ukrainian army, which is deterring Russian aggression and liberating Ukrainian territories from occupation, has become a particular target of Russian provocations. The vilification of this force in the eyes of the Western public, as well as its weakening, is the most important task for the entire propaganda machine of the Russian Federation, as it can help Moscow defeat the Ukrainians. Due to the high motivation and professional training of Azov fighters, the unit became of the main targets of Russian propaganda.
HERE IS A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE MAIN MYTHS ABOUT AZOV BATTALION AND A DETAILED RATIONALE THAT DEBUNKS THEM
-
The Making of Modern Ukraine: A Free Online Course from Yale Professor Timothy Snyder.
Historian Timothy Snyder is teaching a course at Yale University called The Making of Modern Ukraine. And he’s generously making the lectures available on YouTube so that you can follow along too.
All of the currently-available lectures appear on this playlist. A syllabus for the course can be found here. Key questions covered by the course include:
What brought about the Ukrainian nation? Ukraine must have existed as a society and polity on 23 February 2022, else Ukrainians would not have collectively resisted Russian invasion the next day. Why has the existence of Ukraine occasioned such controversy? In what ways are Polish, Russian, and Jewish self-understanding dependent upon experiences in Ukraine? Just how and when did a modern Ukrainian nation emerge? Just how for that matter does any modern nation emerge? And why some nations and not others? What is the balance between structure and agency in history? Can nations be chosen, and does it matter? Can the choices of individuals influence the rise of much larger social organizations? If so, how? Ukraine was the country most touched by Soviet and Nazi terror: what can we learn about those systems, then, from Ukraine? Is the post-colonial, multilingual Ukrainian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?
Website: www.timothysnyder.org
YouTube: Episode 1
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-making-of-modern-ukraine/id1653131950
Substack: https://substack.com/profile/30618158-timothy-snyder
Selected Articles: Putin’s Paranoia (March ’24) | Putin’s Genocidal Myth (February ’24) | Bad Arguments and Good Historians (February ’24) | The State of the War (September ’23) | Russia’s Crimea Disconnect (October ’22) | How does the Russo-Ukrainian war end (October ’22) | Ukraine holds the future (September ’22) | Nazis, Nukes & NATO (July ’22) | The state of Russo-Ukrainian war (July ’22) | Russia’s Genocide Handbook (April ’22) | Lecture on Holodomor (YouTube, Nov ’19)