How the international media covered the Russo-Ukrainian war, May 21

Author:
Sasha Sverdlova
Date:

The Economist writes about a food catastrophe coming as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Both countries are major exporters of grains and vegetable oils, with Ukraine supplying calories to feed 400m people. The war is disrupting these supplies because Ukraine has mined its waters to deter an assault, and Russia is blockading the port of Odesa. Even before the full-scale invasion, the World Food Programme had warned that 2022 would be a terrible year due to climate change affecting India, and lack of rain in other “breadbaskets”. Roughly 25m tonnes of corn and wheat, equivalent to the annual consumption of all 46 of the world’s least developed economies, is trapped in Ukraine. The outlet writes that the most direct solution to the problem would come from breaking the Black Sea blockade. Three countries must be brought onside: Russia must allow Ukrainian shipping; Ukraine has to de-mine the approach to Odesa, and Turkey needs to let naval escorts through the Bosphorus.

American diplomat and journalist Richard Stengel wrote an op-ed in TIME magazine, where he describes the progress Ukraine made countering Russian disinfo and writes of Russian infowar successes outside of Europe and the US. Stengel recalls his visit to Ukraine in 2015 when then-acting information minister asked him what a press conference was. Now Ukraine has its own network of influencers and a state-sponsored IT-army that quite successfully responds to Russian attacks. At the same time, Putin has multiple audiences, including an internal domestic audience, that is on a “steady diet of Nazis in Ukraine”. Russian Channel One has even launched a show called AntiFake that uses typical fact-checking tools like statistics, forensic analysis, and black and white videos to “prove” that claims of Russian atrocities in Ukraine are fake. For African and Middle East audiences Russia uses the narrative of “West versus Russia” to gain sympathy based on the historical negativity towards the western colonizers – Russia is presenting itself as an independent colony. Also, we don’t see much of the information war, as American and Western internet is not the internet in other parts of the world. Chinese internet, per se, used by one of five of the world’s internet users, is pro-Russian. Turkey and India get much of their information about the war in Ukraine directly from Russian state media, resulting in two of the most popular hashtags on the Indian internet are #IStandWithPutin and #IStandWithRussia. At the same time, Stengel urges the readers not to get too distracted by the informational war, when there is a real war going on. “A tank can’t stop a meme, but a meme certainly cannot stop a tank. Memes may wound people’s egos, but they don’t kill them,” he reminds.

Italian Parliament’s security committee has opened a probe into pro-Putin disinformation being spread through news outlets, writes Politico. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kremlin presence in Italian media has increased, with multiple guests on Italian talk-shows hosted by networks in the name of balance. One of the most outrageous examples of exploiting western media for disinformation is Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov appearing in an interview on Silvio Berlusconi owned private TV channel. Adolfo Urso, president of the parliamentary security committee, says Russia has deliberately targeted Italy in a hybrid war fought with fake news and disinformation that pollutes public opinion. Moreover, pro-Kremlin views are also dispersed by seemingly independent voices including some respected Italian journalists and professors. As a result, according to a recent poll, half of Italians think coverage of Ukraine is distorted and Italians are also far less supportive of arming Ukrainians than other Western allies, with only around 30 percent in favor of sending more weapons.