Russia has dotted occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts [occupied Donbas] with ‘monuments’ pushing lies about events since 2014, with Kyiv presented as ‘aggressor’, responsible for the deaths of Donbas citizens. According to the Eastern Human Rights Group, these monuments, which have appeared in all major populated areas of occupied Donbas, are used for propaganda and ‘educational’ purposes, with schoolchildren regularly brought to them. This is part of Russia’s aggressive indoctrination, ‘russification’ and militarization of Ukrainian children, with one of the direct objectives of such anti-Ukrainian narrative being to convince children on occupied territory that they should want to ‘defend’ the Russian aggressor state against their own country and people.
The Eastern Human Rights Group has posted some of the examples of these monuments. One of them even has a kind of weeping mother / Madonna figure, with the words underneath reading: ‘Monument in memory of the dead victims of Ukrainian aggression since 2014”. Essentially all of the monuments refer to ‘Ukrainian aggression’ or ‘aggression of the Kyiv regime’. One grotesque monument has the words: “Eternal memory to the brothers and sisters who gave their lives for the liberation of Debaltseve from the Ukrainian punishers in 2014-2015”. By ‘brothers and sisters’ should, in fact, be understood the Russian soldiers whom Moscow sent in to seize control of strategically important Debaltseve. This was despite Russian leader Vladimir Putin having just signed a ceasefire agreement with the leaders of Ukraine, France and Germany.
Russia has been aggressively pushing such narrative since 2014 – on occupied territory, at home and abroad. It has been disturbingly successful in countries without significant restrictions on freedom of speech, especially, although not solely, among the far-right with whom Moscow has been developing close ties. The ease with which historical truth can be turned on its head and totally distorted has been seen over recent months, with, for example, US President Donald Trump and his administration blaming Ukraine and its President for Russia’s full-scale invasion.
If this was possible in democratic societies, how much more so in Putin’s Russia, and on territory where Russia immediately imposed strict control and an effective information blockade, while, at the same time, spending vast amounts of money on propaganda and indoctrination methods.
Since early 2014, Ukrainian channels of information have been cut as soon as Russia seized control of an area, with Russian propaganda media brought in to replace it. In occupied Donbas, you can get stopped in the street, and children regularly get checked at school, to see if they are accessing Ukrainian Telegram channels, etc. Having mercilessly bombed Mariupol in 2022 and destroyed most of the city’s infrastructure, the Russian invaders proceeded to bring in mobile screens on which they broadcast propaganda amid the devastation and queues for bread.
That all the Goebbels-level propaganda was directed from the Kremlin was confirmed back in 2015 by former employees of Russia’s state-controlled television channels.
Russia has also moved to destroy all aspects of Ukrainian identity on occupied territory. Ukrainian literature is removed from schools and libraries and labelled ‘extremist’. The Ukrainian language is also removed, both from the curriculum and from public life, while monuments, for example, to the Victims of Holodomor, the manmade famine, of 1932/33 or to the great Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus, have been dismantled and removed.
Although the indoctrination in schools in occupied Donbas and Crimea began in 2014, both the distortion and the level of propaganda, indoctrination and militarization have increased dramatically since Russia launched its full-scale invasion. The ‘textbooks’ from which children are supposed to learn ‘history’ are as full of lies as the worst Soviet years, with Russia having ‘liberated’ the areas it razed to the ground or entered on tanks, brandishing machine guns. The worst crimes are either muffled completely, or are blamed on Ukraine. Those who do write the truth about Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine end up serving sentences of 7 years or more under draconian silencing laws rushing into legislation ten days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Even Russia’s fabricated ‘trials’ of Ukrainian prisoners of war have often been aimed at turning everything upside down, so that Ukraine is the aggressor and Ukrainian defenders – the perpetrators of horrific atrocities. These shocking untruths are now, literally, being set in stone monuments glorifying invaders and vilifying their victims.
