Opinion | Ukraine lied about the Poland strike, so what else?
By Tom Fowdy
Yesterday, the world experienced a brief moment of shock and fear as a missile strike landed on Polish territory near the border of Ukraine, killing two people. In less than no time after, Ukrainian President Zelensky began immediately blaming the strike on Russia, and encouraged NATO to intervene in the conflict. Similarly, the western mainstream media also amplified this narrative aggressively, with outlets such as the Associated Press and Sky News directly stating that a "Russian missile" had struck the NATO country.
But as the dust settled, this narrative has aged extraordinarily poorly, even for the standards established by this conflict. Despite an "unnamed official" adding petrol to the bonfire and telling the press that the missile was Russian, the Presidential administration itself was in fact highly cautious and soon after, acknowledged that the projectile (which photos had since revealed to be an S300 air defence missile) was in fact Ukrainian. Poland, who had also taken the opportunity to lambast Russia, soon quickly climbed down and acknowledged to save face that they "could not confirm the source" of the attack.
For contextual purposes, the missile was fired by Ukraine as a reaction to a routine bombardment of the country's electricity infrastructure by Russia yesterday, which involved over 100 purported cruise missiles. On attacking the western city of Lviv, Moscow sought to cut off Ukraine's energy ties with the continent, having also shut down Moldova's electricity with the same attacks. Ukraine's air defence subsequently fired at the incoming Russian attacks, and one of the missiles went wayward and struck people in Poland instead.
That however, didn't stop Ukraine from launching an opportunistic narrative attempting to lull NATO into the war. Thankfully, it wasn't successful. But this surely must raise the question to impartial observers, if Ukraine willingly and opportunistically lied about this, then what else have they lied about with respect to this conflict in a desperate bid to pull in more western support? It's a serious question, some many will not like to hear, and unfortunately the list is so long, and so extensive that it cannot be exhaustively covered here.
Just to name a few things: Ukraine lied that they had attacked the Kerch Bridge linking Crimea, despite having already admitted doing so, they have frequently accused Russia of massacring civilians and dumping them into "mass graves" in occupied territories, despite the fact many of these sites were clearly military cemeteries. This has included Izyum and Bucha, to name a few. Every single target Russia strikes in Ukraine is likewise never coincidentally a military one, but is always a school or a hospital. While obviously given the reality of a brutal war this is not implausible, the reality is Ukraine has perpetuated falsehoods on a grand scale and the western media has repeatedly amplified them uncritically.
The western narrative, especially that of the UK, likes to push the idea that Ukraine is an innocent, spotless and righteous victim who is the victim of surreal aggression from the evil, expansionist, and criminal Russia. Hence, the UK Ministry of Defence has posted on its Twitter account every single day that the invasion is "unprovoked". But this simple binary rendering overlooks the more callous and dark reality of this brutal conflict whereby Ukraine's extreme nationalism, increasingly authoritarian government and heavy-handed approach to Russian speakers are ignored. A member of Zelensky's cabinet told the Daily Mail outright that Ukraine planned to expel 800,000 ethnic Russians from Crimea when they "liberated the territory".
The picture is quite clear that the less favourable, less tasteful, and less than romantic side of Ukraine is wilfully ignored time and time again. If Russia is known for its deliberative misinformation, it should never be forgotten that Ukrainian statecraft for all intents and purposes, institutionally derives itself from the same point of origin. Thus if Ukraine says the sky is red, the western media will tell their audiences that it is indeed, red, and the shenanigans surrounding this S300 missile are demonstrative of the willingness of the western media to actively lie to its people on Kyiv's behalf concerning the goings on in this country.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
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