If you don’t give us money, we’ll go to Russia. Ukraine Blackmails West with EU Membership, declared a recent headline in the Russian web publication Inforeaktor. Accompanied by a photograph of Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko this fake story is a classic example Russian disinformation, implying that Poroshenko really said “If you don’t give us money, we’ll go to Russia” while meeting with EU leaders.
The Ukrainian President said no such thing; the video from the EU Ukraine summit proves that.
So who actually uttered this phrase? His name is David Giberman and he’s a political pundit for ultra-right and radical Russian fringe sites.
But first things first.
Inforeaktor story cites an opinion piece on Ukraine-EU relations by one Yevhen Yaroshenko, an analyst from the International Centre for Policy Studies. Writing on the center’s official website Apostrof, Yaroshenko erroneously connects the Association Agreement with EU membership, and concludes that while the latest EU-Ukraine summit didn’t advance Ukraine’s interests in EU membership, it maintains the existing status-quo between Kyiv and Brussels.
Inforeaktor takes Yaroshenko’s weak analysis and declares that Europe’s largesse for Ukraine has dried up, the country will enact reforms with even less commitment and enthusiasm then before and Kyiv’s European future looks very cloudy. Inforeaktor then asks “political analyst” David Giberman to explain how much longer will “Europe endure Ukraine’s antics”, these are Inforeaktor’s words.
In a few years everyone will get tired of this circus and they will return these precious neo-Europeans to Russia, Europe has given Ukraine all the political and economic indulgences it can, soon we will see Ukraine threaten the West, take what it can and enter Russia, Giberman says.
Who is this David Giberman, you might ask.
For the last few months Mr. Giberman, if he is in fact a real person, has been very busy commenting for all sorts of second rate Russian sites such as Anna News, AntiMaydan and Putin Rossiya. There appears to be no trace of him prior to April 2017, we were unable to find any information about who he is or where he works.
But that did not stop other Russian sites such as Mir Tesen, 29ru.net and others from reprinting this fake.
