Russian aggression against Ukraine is conducted by all means, including informational ones, it was pointed out at today's conference on the topic "Development of propaganda narratives about Ukraine" organized on the occasion of the anniversary of the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

The conference, which aims to strengthen cooperation and recognize the needs of the media community, gathered journalists, fact-checkers, media professionals and members of the academic community from the Western Balkans, Eastern Bloc countries, the Middle East and North Africa.

Powerful weapon

The meeting was opened by the head of the Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Johann Sattler, who reminded that a year ago hell began for 42 million Ukrainians, and during the year the world was flooded with terrible images of civilian murders and massacres. But the war does not only happen on the battlefields, says Sattler, but also in other places, including the information space.

- What we saw a year ago, it started much earlier, are the mechanisms developed by the Russian Federation to spread fake news and shift the blame from them to Ukraine, NATO, the European Union and the West globally. It has become a very powerful weapon in this war, and we must confront it - emphasized Sattler.

He stated that objective and professional journalism, the fight against fake news and working according to the highest standards are even more important today than ever before, for which he thanked all journalists and civil society who work every day in the fight against misinformation.

The editor-in-chief of the fact-checking portal StopFake from Ukraine, Yevhen Fedchenko, addressed the conference and said that Russia's information war against Ukraine started nine years ago, and that was a way to recognize how things would unfold on the ground.

Fake news and propaganda

He says that the war is organized on the basis of fake news and propaganda because it would be very difficult to imagine war operations without this important element. Such disinformation is used to continue aggression and invasion with the aim of further dehumanizing and portraying Ukraine as a failed state.

- At the end of the war, Ukrainians hope not only for victory but also for justice against all those behind this system of disinformation, because their responsibility for everything that happens is equal to that of those who fight on the battlefields - concluded Fedchenko.

Some of the narratives that were present in the disinformation world concerned the fake news that Ukraine was developing nuclear and bioweapons funded by the United States and that the Nazis had taken power in Ukraine through a coup d'état, and were transmitted not only by anonymous portals but also by public media.