“Ambassador of Russian Propaganda”. How the Russian UN Ambassador Turned into a Major Propagandist

On 6 December, the Ambassador of the Russian Federation stormed out of the chamber during the UN Security Council meeting.

By Dzvenyslava Shcherba, for UkraineWorld

However, he made a speech before doing so in which he managed to combine approximately all existing Russian propaganda narratives, putting the responsibility for the war on Ukraine and the West.

On 6 December, the UN Security Council held a meeting to discuss peace and security of Ukraine. Ukraine has been facing regular bombings of the energy infrastructure that has caused mass shortages of electricity, heating, and water supplies, along with rolling blackouts in many cities.

Russian UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya began his remarks by saying, “[w]e should talk about the reason for today’s severe crisis – years-long crimes committed by Ukraine against peaceful civilians and children of Donbas.” He repeated the narrative of Russian propaganda which appeared right at the beginning of the war as a way to legitimize Russia’s invasion as a revenge for “crimes against civilians in Donbas which had been committed for 8 years.”  The Ambassador further stated that “the West hides these facts and persecutes those who speak about them.”  This message has long appeared in the Russian media as a way to depict the West as dishonest and antagonistic. Russia also uses this argument to talk about efforts  to stop the reproduction of fake news abroad. Therefore, the accusation either of the UN and UNICEF or the West in general are logically linked to it.  Nebenzya then remarks on how “perhaps this is the reason why the page about the Alley of Angels was deleted from the English version of Wikipedia, the memorial complex in honor of Donbas children who had been killed by the Kyiv regime since 2014.” This “Alley of Angels” is another propagandistic ploy by Russia to justify its aggression against Ukraine through emotional manipulations about  the deaths of children in a war started by that very Russian aggression.  Continuing on the topic of children affected by the war, Nebenzya also appealed to Russian statistics about “children killed in Donbas by the Ukrainian Army” in order to shift the focus away from Russia’s victimization and kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

We should also note Nebenzya’s accusation that “Ukrainian children have become a target audience for neo-Nazi russophobic propaganda.”  This message about “Ukrainian children turning into Nazis under the influence of the West and Ukrainian nationalists” is not new, and was created by Russian propaganda in 2014. It was used to further arguments about “Nazism in Ukraine” appealing again to the emotional topic of children.  This narrative has led to unexpected consequences. They can be seen in Nebenzya’s assertion that “finally, a generation of children and teenagers has grown up in Ukraine influenced by neo-Nazi russophobic propaganda whose aim is to kill everyone connected with Russia.” This message comports with a new idea spread by Russian propaganda – that “all Ukrainians are Nazis and need to be either re-educated or liquidated.” It has had an impact on the public opinion, and has sometimes transformed into extreme forms. For example, Russian TV presenter Anton Krasovskiy said on his show that “Ukrainian children who don’t support Russia need to be drowned.”  To further this narrative, Nebenzya claimed that “children from Donbas dream that they will get an end to bombings for New Year, whereas Ukrainian ask for a gun machine to kill Russians and burn the Kremlin.”

Nebenzya also references a narrative about how the West is fighting Russia “to the last Ukrainian.” Russia has been saying things like this since the beginning of the war, but the Ambassador decided to add  some new features. Firstly, he included a message about Russia’s readiness to start negotiations and “eliminate the reason which made us begin the special military operation in Ukraine.” He added that this action was “supported by all countries, except of the collective West and Kyiv regime.” Despite portraying Russia as a “victim of the West,” it also became a new reason for the war crimes in Ukraine under the justification “we can do nothing except continuing to reach goals set for the special military operation.”

Secondly, after Ukraine’s victories in Kharkiv and Kherson Regions, Russia has strengthened its narrative about “the West providing Ukraine with arms without control,” which “either escalates the conflict in Ukraine or destabilizes the situation in the European continent.” Russia has claimed that “weapons for Ukraine have appeared now in criminal gangs in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe,” and thus put the whole world under danger. This messaging comports with Russia’s goal of showing Ukraine to be “a failed state” as well as a “terrorist state” in order to decrease international support for Ukraine’s struggle and legitimize Russian losses on the battlefield as the result of “a war with the whole West.”  Nebenzya also acknowledges his country’s numerous attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine as a deliberate military strategy. The Ambassador Nebenzya not only stated that Russia will continue targeting civilian infrastructure “until we make [Ukraine’s] military potential and the Zelensky regime weaker,” but also accused the Ukrainian military of causing damage by “locating the military equipment near civilians.” On this point, he also discussed “the West’s double-standard in the context of Serbia of the 1990’s and Ukraine today.” This strategy has appeared many times when Russia reacts to outrage over its war crimes in Ukraine: every time Russian war crimes are discovered, Russian officials and media try to invoke crimes supposedly committed by the West in other countries. They use this argument not only to justify their own actions, but to appeal to the sensibilities of other countries which are opposed to the West.

Lastly, Nebenzya repeated a narrative blaming the West, NATO, and the USA for starting  the war and named “traditional” examples of “russophobic actions of Ukraine: genocide in Donbas, lionizing of Nazi criminals and their accomplices, and persecutions of the Russian-speaking population of the own country.” At the end he stated that “If it is not possible to do it peacefully, to turn Ukraine into peaceful, neighborly state which will not threat Russia, than this goal will be achieved by military means” and left the meeting before the speech of the Ambassador of Ukraine Serhii Kyslytsia, accusing him of “russophobia.”  The Russian Ambassador’s whole speech was a repetition of long-cited Russian propaganda narratives about the West as a “sponsor of crimes committed by Ukraine against everything Russian” and Ukraine as a “failed terrorist state,” which is established even in how he only speaks of a “Kyiv regime” instead of “Ukraine.” However, his final point about Russia continuing its attacks in order to “reach the goals of the special military operation” confirms again that the Ambassador and his country have no intention of stopping their aggression and will continue to attack Ukraine.

By Dzvenyslava Shcherba, for UkraineWorld