It’s no secret that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet colonial empire, the collapse of which he once described as the greatest catastrophe in Russian history. It is therefore not surprising that the alleged preliminary final results of the sham referendums staged by Russia are reminiscent of Soviet times.
Between 87 percent (Kherson) and 99 percent (Donetsk) of Ukrainian citizens are said to have voted for their region to be annexed to Russia – with voter turnouts approaching 100 percent. This is of course a farce.
“Russian officials predetermined and falsified the approval ratings and turnout of their sham referendums and forced Ukrainian civilians in the occupied territories to vote for Russian annexation for show,” writes the Institute for the Study of War in its daily report on the Russian war.
Everyone who has seen pictures and videos from the occupied territories had to come to this conclusion: “election workers” accompanied by armed soldiers came to the apartments of Ukrainian citizens and supervised them when they ticked the right box ” became.
In other pictures from the electoral offices distributed by Russia, it could be seen that the ballot papers, which were said to have been dumped on the table for counting, had not been filled out at all. Not to mention that a significant portion of the Ukrainian population either fled the occupied territories or were deported to Russia by the occupiers, in violation of international law.
In fact, independent polls in the newly occupied territories before the war showed that only a small part of the population had any sympathy for Russia. These are likely to have fallen further as a result of the brutal actions taken by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians.
The so-called “referendums” are obviously just a lying propaganda staging to justify an annexation of the territories to Russia. The Ukrainians living there actually never had a real choice.
It is therefore all the more incomprehensible that some media and news agencies use the term “referendums” for this farce and often do not even put the word in quotation marks – as WELT does. Not only is this a breach of the duty of truthfulness, but it promotes Russian propaganda because it at least raises doubts as to whether the votes could not have been genuine in some way.
Sowing doubts in Western societies is something that Putin’s propaganda machine has perfected in recent years. According to the EU observatory “EU vs. Disinfo”, the efforts of the Kremlin are also very much focused on Germany.
It is the duty of journalists to educate about the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns, rather than simply adopting its rhetoric. Especially when it comes to terms that obviously distort reality and already carry the poison of disinformation.
