Why are the russians falsifying «evidence» of «crimes committed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine»?
The distortion of reality by the investigative committee of the Russian Federation is not only directed against Ukrainian servicemen.
Guest: Oleksandr Klyuzhev, senior analyst of the OPORA Civic Network.
Oleksandr Klyuzhev: The Russians’ fabrications of the «evidence» of the «crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine» are aimed at the domestic Russian audience, European and other countries, as well as people in Ukraine and the temporarily occupied territories. For various audiences, information about the war in Ukraine is presented from various angles.
- By preparing false evidence for Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories, the Russians expect to destabilize and cause disappointment in Ukrainian authorities, in the event of “tribunals» (referendum – ed) that were announced by the Russian Federation.
For the Western audience, they work in two ways:
- To unite authoritarian and undemocratic regimes around the Russian Federation;
- To divert attention from the war crimes of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine.
They need to, in the first case, have internal quasi-legal decisions on who is to blame in such a situation. The response to the war in Ukraine by the investigative committee headed by a Putin associate is seriously embedded in Russia’s general strategy. The Russians are also trying to involve the local population of the occupied territories in their falsification of evidence.
The Russian Federation hopes that, at some point, it will create a «the conflict has 2 sides» situation and that Western elites will want to understand this reality. These elites will want to use this as an excuse for a diplomatic negotiation. The Russians rely on the fact that a certain form of tiredness in supporting Ukraine will emerge from the world, and they will promote pseudo-evidence and cast a shadow over real investigations.