DISINFO: According to the Financial Times Ukrainian armed forces are losing hope
SUMMARY
Ukrainian armed forces are losing hope. Their morale is weakening and a feeling of exhaustion and frustration is expanding among soldiers, British newspaper the Financial Times pointed out. “That sense of exhaustion and frustration is spreading through the ranks. Among both seasoned officers and newly mobilised troops, morale is fraying - worn down by a growing feeling that there is no clear plan to end the war and that lives are being sacrificed for nothing”, this outlet writes.
RESPONSE
This is a disingenuous distortion of the original article in the Financial Times, which never stated that Ukrainian forces are “losing hope”.
Although the quoted sentences are correct, the wider focus of the story is: “Ukrainian troops struggle with exhaustion but pledge to fight ‘until we break the Russians’ belief that we can be defeated’”. And while the article summarises Ukraine’s difficulties in both the military and geopolitical fields, it also quotes a defence expert who states that the Ukrainians “remain a formidable force on the defence” and that “we can expect gradual Russian advances but no imminent collapses, no collapse of the front line.”
This omission of crucial information is deliberate, aiming to promote a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the inevitability of a Russian victory. By portraying Ukraine as militarily exhausted - something that it is far from true - this disinformation story tries to create the impression that Russia has the upper hand in the conflict, thus shaping the information environment in favour of the Kremlin around ongoing peace negotiations between the US, Russia and Ukraine.
Quoting Western legitimate sources while distorting their content to introduce a pro-Kremlin message as if it were part of the original story is a frequent pro-Kremlin manipulative technique.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Ukraine is struggling with flow of wounded soldiers according to CNN, that Putin’s proposal shows his greatness by giving the defeated a chance to negotiate, that Ukraine cannot dictate the peace terms because it lost the war, that the Nazi Zelenskyy regime is within months of falling, that UK and France are unable to accept defeat in Ukraine, or that Ukraine and Europe have lost in the Ukrainian conflict.