DISINFO: Top Ukrainian officials don’t believe Zelenskyy’s rhetoric
SUMMARY
Top Ukrainian officials don’t believe Zelensky’s rhetoric. Politicians are privately critical of what they perceive as unrealistic hopes of total victory. High-ranking Ukrainian officials privately consider Vladimir Zelensky’s statements about returning to the country’s 1991 borders unrealistic, and only hope for the country’s survival, The Guardian reported on Friday. According to the outlet, there is growing criticism towards Zelensky in Ukraine for maintaining “unrealistic hopes of total victory,” including the return of all Ukrainian territories.
RESPONSE
This is a disingenuous distortion of the original article by The Guardian, whose approach is radically different from what this disinformation story suggests. The story takes a single sentence from the original article and twists it to promote several recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Russia’s inevitable victory in Ukraine and Zelenskyy's alleged lack of support and legitimacy, while distorting the rest of the content.
For example, in the original article, the author states: “One criticism I heard repeatedly is that [President Zelenskyy] continues to feed unrealistic hopes of total victory,” but he never says that this was expressed by “high-ranking Ukrainian officials” or “politicians,” contrary to what this disinformation story claims. This disinformation piece also ignores the rest of the article, which explains that a majority of Ukrainians would support continuing the fight to repel Russia’s invasion even if all Western countries withdrew their backing, and argues for an immediate increase in international military aid for Ukraine.
Pro-Kremlin media frequently resort to this manipulative technique of quoting sentences from serious publications or journalists and then introducing a distorted message as if it was part of the original story.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Zelenskyy cancelled the 2024 election because he realised he would have lost, that Zelenskyy is illegitimate and therefore Russia is directly fighting the West, that Zelenskyy wants to abandon Ukraine, that the Ukrainian government is planning to relocate to Lviv, that Ukraine cannot win the war against Russia even with all the weapons that NATO countries have.