DISINFO: Ukraine is a fake country, Ukrainian ideology was created to split the Russian nation
SUMMARY
[…] the ideology of [Ukrainian nationalism, Ukrainians] is aimed at splitting the larger, united Russian nation, separating from its southern, Little Russian branch, and creating a fake state with a fake, destructive ideology. We see that this ideology led to a bloody civil war and attempts to destroy and suppress the Donbas.
RESPONSE
An example of historical revisionism, recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative claiming that Ukraine is an artificial country and that Ukrainians are a part of a larger Russian nation. This publication also promotes the pro-Kremlin narrative that there is a civil war in Donbas waged by Ukraine against the people of Donbas. Ukraine is a well-defined nation-state that has preserved language, literature and identity despite foreign rule for long periods. It is a sovereign state whose borders are guaranteed by international agreements but were violated by Russia through the illegal annexation of Crimea. Ukraine is recognised in international law as a sovereign nation-state, with its own flag, nationality, language and with a democratically-elected president and parliament. The publication refers to a derogatory term 'Little Russians' to identify Ukrainians, which derives from imperial Russian and Russian irredentist ideology that is a favoured pro-Kremlin narrative aimed at weakening the national identity of Ukrainians and undermining Ukraine's sovereignty. The war in Eastern Ukraine is not a civil conflict, but a well-documented act of ongoing aggression by Russian armed forces, since February 2014. Read similar disinformation cases alleging that Ukraine is not a country, but a territory, that Ukraine has never existed as an independent country, that Ukraine is a state formation, and not a country, that Ukraine was artificially created as a state hostile towards Russia, that myth about Ukraine as a separate nation was created in the USSR, or that Ukrainian literary language is an artificial language created by the Soviet authorities.