usnahx

Hello Mr. Lynch, thank you for your brave contribution by shedding light on this disgusting conflict.

I live in Yekaterinburg (Russia) and I've noticed something somewhat interesting.

The general populous has gotten kind of sick of the constant coverage of Ukraine, but they are still for the most part on Putin's side (it really depends on the demographic, but I'll just stick with the older generation for now).

Whenever I get close to de-brainwashing someone on Ukraine, the topic of the arguably infamous Azov battalion comes up and I'm back to square one.

The problem is that I cannot confirm or deny that they are horrible people. Sure, they are one the right side, but the logo and the nazi salute allegations are not doing them any favours. Sifting through tons of information and trying to distinguish propaganda from truth has become almost impossible.

It would be really great if you could provide some insight on the Battalion.

Are they as bad as some say?

Yeah, to expand on my charisma point, what they like to do is to show him as overly sweet/teacher’s pet kind of manner whenever he interacts with a western leader. Auch footage comprises 60% of their coverage on Zelensky.

And it seems that the propaganda machine has temporarily swallowed me when I thought that the volunteer was from Azov. Woohoo.

One more blanket term that they also like to use is “radical”.

Life.ru is pretty much a Putin-praising machine. They produce the Sun-tier content which is quite frankly too embarrassing to link. They particularly like to create scandals out of nowhere. They even went as low as to barge prostitutes into Navalny’s (main opposition leader) HQ and somehow tried to implicate him for that. Their extensive coverage on Ukraine is not accidental, they just really want to make people take their side.

They all want to make patriotism and criticism of Russia’s foreign policy mutually exclusive.

As for your conclusion, yeah definitely. I’ll drink to that.

It was an enriching experience speaking with you.

More eyes need to be on the conflict, thank you for playing a vital role in that and please stay safe.

Thank you for answering! It makes a lot of sense for Azov to do that.

To answer your question:

The Azov battalion is treated the same way the Svoboda party and the Right Sector are in the news: Nazis. Period.

Ukraine as a whole is treated with a bit more context, but only when it suits the "evil Lviv / poor Donbass" narrative.

What is unfortunate is that they show that small minority of Slavic Nazis (a walking paradox lol) and say something along the lines of "See what the Ukrainians are fighting for? If you don't support Crimea you're pretty much a NAHTZEEE!" That way, they are stigmatizing support for the Ukrainian government (and Crimea). It does not really matter that the Right Sector is a small group of radicals whose power has significantly waned over the years, they will push the narrative that they are what the people want. Granted, they have seemingly moved away towards other aspects of Ukraine. But whenever Svoboda or the Sector organize, you bet every state-owned news channels will be blaring it when they get the chance.

Whenever Azov comes up, they like to show crying women and children talking about how their school or home has been destroyed by Azov or the regular army (That is the hardest part to argue about since I can't disprove the footage and just have to cross my fingers that it was either staged or an accident).

They also like to talk about the Ukrainian Government with a patronizing manner. They do it a lot. And by that I mean A LOT. As a rough estimate, ~20% of their nightly news cover Ukraine. From how bankrupt and poorly managed they are, to how close they are with NATO, Russia 1 (main state channel) never seems to run out of content. People are now making jokes that they might as well just be a Ukrainian TV channel.

One prominent example from the top of my head that comes up is when Poroshenko was opening a road, he had selected a road sign to unveil for the ceremony. Russia framed it as he was celebrating an installation of that exact road sign. Here is one of the headlines from that day. They want the viewers to feel schadenfreude and/or anger whenever Ukraine comes up.

Naturally, the president is also targeted. Back then they have portrayed Poroshenko as a Chocolate psycho with no Charisma, now we have a clown backed by Kolomoyskiy with no charisma. They cover Zelensky the same way Fox News cover AOC. In a Patronizing, nitpicky manner that always implies that he cannot be reasoned with and he's pretty much a US puppet. Never mind his explicit calls to peace and dialogue.

That reminds me of something that happened a month or so ago: Zelensky was in the area of conflict and he had gotten in an argument with an Azov operative (Please turn on the English Captions). And sure, the president could have handled it better, BUT OUR NEWS SIDED WITH AZOV JUST SO THEY COULD STICK IT TO ZENENSKY! They called his act "unprofessional" IIRC.

They also liked to approach Poroshenko at international conferences and be outraged whenever he declined to comment. They also did that to Zelensky to some extent but seemingly stopped since he actually commented. Sometimes I feel like they actually rooted for Poroshenko during the elections since he's more hateable.

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But yeah, how is the front line looking? Please stay safe out there man.