Forcefully Relocating 700,000 people, all to Spin more Disinformation

On 18 February, the Kremlin-installed rulers of the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” (“DNR” and “LNR”) ordered to start relocating women, children and elderly persons from the currently non-government controlled areas in the east of Ukraine (Donbas) across the internationally recognised border into the Rostov and Voronezh Oblasts in Russia.

At face value, this “evacuation” might seem like a noble act of humanitarianism to protect innocent people from the ravages of war. Except, there is no threat of war from the Ukrainian Army issued to the separatists. Quite on the contrary, the message of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence has been consistent, loud and clear. All activities conducted in the area are of a defensive nature and solely in response to the threatening and escalatory Russian military build-up on the Ukrainian borders, as well as within the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula and the Russia-backed separatist controlled areas in Donbas.

So, if these orders to relocate are not a proportionate or necessary response, what is really going on?

Well, there are several tell-tale signs to consider here. First, the most obvious explanation came a mere three days later, when on the eve of 21 January, the ruler in the Kremlin announced the recognition of the independence of non-government controlled areas in Donetsk and Luhansk. This blatant violation of international law was almost immediately followed by another well-rehearsed trick in the Kremlin playbook – sending in troops across the border under the guise of “peacekeeping” in all-out violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. Having created a false “humanitarian crisis” days earlier, the Kremlin then quickly used it as a pretext for another outright aggression against Ukraine.

Second, the Russian state media have been steadily intensifying the false allegations that Ukraine is planning to launch a major offensive. While the myth of Ukraine’s aggressive intent has been thoroughly debunked countless times, this insidious narrative remains one of the centrepieces in the manipulative interference campaign enacted by the Russian authorities, their proxies and the disinformation outlets and journalists under their control.

Third, the story of a valiant effort to save innocent civilians from the onslaught of blood-thirsty Ukrainian hordes fits neatly into the persistently peddled disinformation narrative of an ongoing genocide against the Russian-speaking population in the East of Ukraine. Except there are no oncoming hordes and no genocide. This pernicious myth has been exposed, e.g., by Russian independent media.

Russian officials, including at the highest level, have been vocal about the need to protect the so-called Russkiy mir, or Russian World, since before the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. So, it is not hard to see how the resonant message of “saving the innocent” could be used as another step towards building a justification of offensive actions against Ukraine. In fact, you would not even need to “save” many people; just yell about it loudly and label all facts to the contrary as lies.

Fourth, to reinforce the genocide narrative, the Kremlin has once again whipped up the old comparison with the NATO intervention in Kosovo to protect ethnic Albanians. The Kremlin has used this line of reasoning left, right and centre in its effort to justify the illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and the claims of needing to protect the alleged 700,000 or more people in Donbas are likely propagated with similar intent.

Lastly, the recent escalation along the contact line and the ten-fold increase of ceasefire violations, including the shelling of a kindergarten, has been initiated by the Russia-backed separatist forces. It would hardly make sense to attack first and then rush for humanitarian gestures. Unless that is exactly the point – to confuse the intentions and obfuscate the truth; an old page from the Kremlin’s propagandist playbook.

In this light, the orders to forcefully relocate an alleged 700,000 people from separatist-controlled areas might serve a different purpose altogether. It is far more likely that these orders, issued in suspiciously synchronised video messages, and apparently recorded days before the increase in shelling, are in fact a carefully crafted information manipulation tactic to raise the pressure on Ukraine in the Kremlin’s ongoing disinformation campaign against this country.