Why is the Kremlin so hung up on smearing Zelenskyy?
According to the Kremlin: A drug addict, a dictator and a puppet, oligarch, collector of Nazi memorabilia and a Nazi himself, an agent of MI6 and perhaps the CIA . These are not colourful descriptions of a Bond character, but the picture of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy painted by Russian state and pro-Kremlin outlets.
Smearing Ukraine’s democratically elected leaders and institutions has been the bread and butter of pro-Kremlin disinformation. The examples collected in the EUvsDisinfo database are numerous and go back a decade. Before President Zelenskyy, Petro Poroshenko was portrayed as an usurper of power and, of course, a Nazi, by a myriad of pro-Kremlin sources on social media and online.
It is one of the most prominent strands within the Kremlin’s disinformation narratives: smear Ukraine’s democratic leaders to delegitimise its statehood and the very existence of a free Ukraine. And in the context of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, such slander takes on a whole new meaning.
A lot at stake
At the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian people rallied around their elected leader. President Zelenskyy has become not only a natural interlocutor for Ukraine’s friends and allies around the world, but also a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. Breaking it has been the focus of Russian information warfare in order to demoralise, destabilise and divide Ukraine and its allies.
