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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

Nazis. Terrorists! Satanists!? Putin's Rollout Of Big Lies Is Losing Its Punch

The Russian president has resorted to a string of changing lies to justify his war on Ukraine. He has shown contempt along the way for the Christian values he claims to defend. But like arms and ammunition, a regime can also run out of lies.

photo of vladimir putin clapping his hands

Putin in Moscow on Wednesday

© Mikhail Metzel/TASS via ZUMA
Héctor Abad Faciolince

-OpEd-

BOGOTÁ — In time, lies are bound to implode. They'll crash faster than a troubled currency in a financial storm. When a deceitful government can no longer pull the wool over people's eyes, it is forced to seek more lies. That is what Russia's Vladimir Putin and his spokesmen have been doing: looking for new methods of bluster to justify his invasion of Ukraine.

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When launched last February, the official explanation was the shameless lie of wanting to liberate the Ukrainians from a Nazi-style regime. Simultaneously, Putin claimed Ukraine was no country but a mistaken gift of the Soviet Union, which had provisionally granted independence to its 40 million inhabitants and 600,000 square kilometers!


When the Nazi nonsense lost its charm — because even in authoritarian regimes, media are not entirely immune to doubt — the government had to find another lie to justify its war. As the invaded (and apparently non-existent) country had failed to receive Russian troops with flowers and songs, but fought them instead, the Ukrainians stopped being Nazis and became "terrorists."

What despots hate most

They had to be deemed terrorists after they sank one of Russia's prestige warships in the Black Sea, the Moskva, practically blew up an entire air fleet parked in the Crimea, and brought down a bridge. The invaders began posing as victims. They were being attacked. They claimed the territories being annexed were now part of the Russian Federation, and the Ukrainians were about to invade Russia.

A fantasy as ridiculous as it was short-lived. What's next?

This fantasy was as ridiculous as it was short-lived, so another lie was needed. Putin tried this one: this was a Christian crusade by Mother Russia, the home of Orthodoxy, against a diabolical West. Forget the Nazis and terrorists: Russia was facing down Western Europe's "satanic" ideology, which permits aberrations like gay marriages, the redefinition of families and recognition of sexual and gender anomalies and transitions.

In this version, Ukraine's Western allies are trying to impose on Christian Russia, through war, such abhorrent novelties as gender ideology, homosexuality, pedophilia, and any other "filth" they can dredge up.

Would-be Christian Russia 

Putin says he must now defend Russia's frontiers and traditional values from an invasion of Western depravities. Strangely, Russia has had to defend these values with the most unchristian acts, such as bombing power stations ahead of winter.

The Russian parliament recently voted unanimously (and it's always unanimous with these regimes) to ban all books, films or declarations that describe or promote homosexual relations or "non-traditional sexual attitudes." As far as Christian Russia is concerned, people are somehow taught to be gay.

In the fight against lies, we are simply dealing with some plain truths Russian hypocrisy has sought to hide. Putin's battle is not a war against satanism but against what despots hate most: freedom. And the worst attack on freedom is a perverse power's bid to impose its distortions and lies as the truth.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

Report: Wagner Group Is Back Fighting In Ukraine For First Time Since Aborted Coup

After a sighting by a Ukrainian drone operator, details emerge of how the Russian mercenary group has been redeployed in the strategic Ukrainian city of Bakhmut it had helped conquer earlier this year. That was followed by the dramatic coup and departure from Ukraine led by Wagner's now late leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Photo of a Ukrainian soldier walking past a destroyed building

A Ukrainian soldier earlier this month walking in front of a damaged building

Agenstvo

Fighters affiliated with the Wagner Group have once again been spotted on the battlefield near Bakhmut in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region, according to a Ukrainian drone operator. This confirmation supports earlier reports from Russian sources regarding the resurgence of Wagner mercenaries near the strategic city in eastern Ukraine.

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“Wagner is here,” the drone operator said, adding that the Wagnerites had “quickly changed commanders and returned.”

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