Disinfo: Europe has forbidden Ukraine to save its industry

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative on EU-Ukraine relations. The EU is Ukraine's largest trading partner, accounting for more than 40% of its trade in 2019. Ukraine is the 18th largest trading partner of the EU accounting for around 1.1% of EU's total trade. Total trade between EU and Ukraine reached €43.3 billion in 2019. Ukrainian exports to the EU amounted to €19.1 billion in 2019. The main Ukrainian exports are raw materials (iron, steel, mining products, agricultural products), chemical products and machinery. This is a considerable increase of 48.5% since 2016. The number of Ukrainian companies exporting to the EU has increased at an impressive rate, from approximately 11,700 in 2015 to over 14,500 in 2019. Since 23 April 2014, Ukraine benefits from the EU Autonomous trade preferences (ATP) which were introduced by the Regulation (EU) No 374/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 as an element of a broad package of the EU economic and financial support of Ukraine. The above-mentioned preferences eliminate EU import duties on 94.7% of industrial goods and 83.4% of agricultural goods and foodstuff originating in Ukraine. It also foresees the application of the duty-free tariff quotas towards a number of agricultural products. See other disinformation cases in our database relating to the statehood of Ukraine: that the West controls the Ukrainian economy and pumps out its resources, that the EU Association Agreement made Ukraine a colony of the EU, that Ukraine is a fake country and Ukrainian ideology was created to split the Russian nation, and that Ukraine is a collapsing, degrading state with no sovereignty and rule of law.

Conspiracy theory. No evidence is provided to support the article’s claim that liberalism (or the “liberal world order”) is seeking to suppress Western culture and to cancel great Western thinkers. This message is consistent with the recurring pro-Kremlin narrative that seeks to discredit liberalism claiming that liberal societies are (or are becoming) totalitarian systems ruled by “globalist elites” and “shadow governments”. This narrative portrays the liberal societies of the West as ideological dictatorships that have imposed a dominant “liberal globalist” ideology and alleges that “the elites” and mainstream media in these societies censor and persecute anyone who expresses views that dissent from dominant “politically correct” liberal-globalist thinking. The article also repeats the pro-Kremlin disinformation theme about the West’s moral decadence, materialism, perverted values and hostility to traditional values and religion, which Western governments allegedly seek to undermine and to replace with pseudo-religions (such as LGBT ideology). The article claims that a recent op-ed in The New York Times states the need for cancelling Aristotle. The New York Times op-ed states precisely the opposite. Although it criticises Artistotle because the latter defended slavery and opposed the notion of human equality, the op-ed stresses that “we have no reason at all to cancel Aristotle”, that “Aristotle’s place in philosophy syllabuses should be defended” and that “his ethical system may capture truths — for instance, about the importance of aiming for extraordinary excellence”. Furthermore, liberalism does not espouse the “cancellation” of the great philosophers and thinkers of Western or non-Western civilisations. Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the principle of freedom of conscience and expression, consent of the governed, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), and equality before the law. One of the major achievements of the liberal-democratic societies, and of Europe in particular, is the institutionalisation of tolerance and pluralism, which means the peaceful coexistence of different religions, world-views and value-systems within the same society. Read similar cases claiming that Europe has long lost its civilisation abandoning its Christian roots and its culture and that the West seeks to degrade and discredit traditional values.