Distortion of history Archives

8 minute read

Analysis

Trump says Putin wants peace. Russia’s Orwellian history textbook tells a different story

While the US peace plan grabs the headlines, Russia is quietly molding a war-hungry generation that could plunge the world into chaos for decades after Trump’s hasty deal.

byBohdan Ben

7 minute read

Opinion

Trump’s “60 million Russian deaths”: the dangerous myth behind his Ukraine peace plan

Behind that inflated death toll lies a carefully crafted Soviet myth that made Russia look like the sole victor over Hitler. Today, that same myth threatens Ukraine's survival.

byYuriy Lukanov

11 minute read

Timothy Snyder: Putin’s essay on Ukraine creates mythical history to cover foreign policy failures

Address by Timothy Snyder, Historian, Richard C. Levin Professor at Yale University, at the Kyiv Security Forum Good…

byUkrainian media sources

6 minute read

Putin’s essay on Russia and Ukraine about far larger issues than that, Yavlinsky says

That it was a fundamentally imperialist challenge to the existence not just of Ukraine but of all Russia’s…

byPaul A. Goble

Rafael Khakimov, Kazan historian and former advisor to Tatarstan president Mintimir Shaymiyev (Photo: Sultan Iskhakov for Milliard.Tatar)

4 minute read

Putin’s tale about unity of Russians and Ukrainians prompts Kazan scholar to speak about real unity of Turkic peoples

“Historically,” Khakimov says, “the Turkic peoples formed on the territory of the Turkic khanate … extending from the…

byPaul A. Goble

A Putin billboard with a propagandist slogan "Crimea. Russia. Forever" installed in the Crimean city of Kerch after the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula defaced with black paint. September 2015 (Photo: social media)

7 minute read

Russian Aggression

Putin’s fixation on Ukraine is demagogic, delusional and dangerous

One impression from the lengthy and stylistically incoherent text is that the author is deeply involved with the…

byThe Jamestown Foundation

3 minute read

The Arctic Ocean was once the Tatar Sea, Khakimov says

They have managed to convince many that the Volga is a Russian rather than a Tatar river and…

byPaul A. Goble

6 minute read

Why the West should be paying close attention to Putin’s article

This thinly veiled ode to Pan-Slavism attempts to bind the fate of Russia and Ukraine together in a…

byEuromaidan Press Contributor

14 minute read

Alternative history: how Russia seeks to annex Kyivan Rus

"For the Kremlin, history is not something to be studied and remembered. It is something that must be…

byCenter for Strategic Communications and Information Security

3 minute read

Vitaly Portnikov: For Putin, Ukraine does not and will never exist

One of Vladimir Putin’s final statements in his long article is that the “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible…

byVitaly Portnikov

'The Leaders of the Stalin Period' by Igor Obrosov

6 minute read

Moscow moves from justifying GULAG to glorifying it

Indeed, Viktoriya Nikiforova says, Russians should not accept the widespread myths about Stalin’s camps that have been spread…

byPaul A. Goble

3 minute read

Like KGB in Soviet times, FSB ‘curators’ assuming expanded role in Russian academia

The special departments in educational institutions that existed in Soviet times and were headed by the KGB were…

byPaul A. Goble

Ukrainians in Russia’s Far East carrying the portrait of national poet Taras Shevchenko. The original caption reads, “Khabarovsk City, 1 May 1917, International Workers’ Day, Demonstration of Ukrainians.” Source: my-krai.ru

4 minute read

Russia intentionally ignores the fact that Ukrainians, Belarusians, Balts populated the Russian Far East, not Russians

But from that time forward, Soviet and then Russian institutions have sought to Russify these groups and their…

byPaul A. Goble

3 minute read

Hybrid War

“Black is the new orange”: Pro-Kremlin conspiracies on color revolutions

The pro-Kremlin media can never resist playing up the “color revolution” theme. The West is thus accused of…

byEU East StratCom Task Force

7 minute read

Putin and Milosevic: Blood brothers

Slobodan Milosevic and Vladimir Putin are cut from the same cloth. Just as the West’s experience with Milosevic…

byThe Adriatic Report

6 minute read

Hybrid War

Russia’s “ping pong” policy on Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Read also: The real reason the Kremlin will never completely disown the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact In late May, Aleksey…

byEU East StratCom Task Force

4 minute read

Hybrid War

COVID-19 conspiracies, WWII revisionism, schadenfreude at US protests: Russian propaganda last week

Last week’s cases take us on a frenzied ride through several topics that have been preoccupying the pro-Kremlin…

byEU East StratCom Task Force

6 minute read

Russian embassy calls Baltic States privileged under Soviet occupation

This time, the kick-off came from the Twitter account of the Russian embassy in Estonia, sharing an article…

byEU East StratCom Task Force

Back to basics: Ukraine, revisionism, and russophobia in this week’s propaganda narratives

4 minute read

Hybrid War

Back to basics: Ukraine, revisionism, Russophobia top Kremlin’s propaganda narratives again

That’s not to say that we’ve seen the last of coronavirus-related disinformation – far from it. COVID-19 will…

byEU East StratCom Task Force

8 minute read

Hybrid War

In the shadow of revised history: Kremlin’s war on remembrance continues

Attacking the local authorities in Prague, the pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets chose to ignore the historical facts, as they…

byEU East StratCom Task Force