In war, the first casualty is the truth.
Is CNN supplying images again ?
In fact, I thought the UN noticed it first.
Wait and see.
I had told some of the lying Putinists when they were “reporting” on this with their vile trash on FR that the Russian media had also been falsifying images to place “American mercenaries” into Ukraine. Not surprising then that this also would end up as fraud, as with most things that come out of the Russian media.
The Kremlin is actively running an intense disinformation campaign from all quarters against Ukraine and the United States. This alone tells us that, even though Putin did not act on the pseudoreferendum, we are not yet out of the woods for invasion. He is dehumanizing his enemy and preparing the field of public opinion with his propaganda.
Governments in concert with the media have made Edward Bernays type propaganda the backbone of their disinformation campaign to influence and incite public opinion.
Russia does not have any exclusivity on this as most corrupt manipulative sophisticated governments (including our own) regularly use it.
As you may recall, the official Crimean election results, as reported widely in the Western press, showed a 97 percent vote in favor of annexation with a turnout of 83 percent. No international observers were allowed. The pro-Russia election pressure would have raised the already weak vote in favor of annexation, of course.Yesterday [May 6th], however, according to a major Ukrainian news site, TSN.ua, the website of the President of Russia’s Council on Civil Society and Human Rights (shortened to President’s Human Rights Council) posted a report that was quickly taken down as if it were toxic radioactive waste. According to this purported report about the March referendum to annex Crimea, the turnout of Crimean voters was only 30 percent. And of these, only half voted for the referendum–meaning only 15 percent of Crimean citizens voted for annexation.