CHICAGO (NewsNation Now) — TikTok videos, propagandized headlines and tweets are being pinged out across screens around the world and it’s confusing millions on how the Russia-Ukraine battle is unfolding on the ground.
Across Twitter and Telegram, a social media and messaging platform popular in Eastern Europe, Russia’s attack on Ukraine was either “unprovoked” or “necessary,” depending on the sender of the message.
Russian state media is echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments across its platforms, with RT News blasting the Russian version of events to hundreds of thousands of followers on Telegram.
Liz Wahl, an American and a former correspondent for RT News, a channel available on numerous American cable systems, says she’s all too familiar with this dangerous Russian propaganda.
“For me, it’s watching like 2014 on steroids,” said Wahl during a Thursday appearance on “Dan Abrams Live.”
Wahl worked for the United States affiliate of RT News from 2011 to 2014, when Russia initially invaded Crimea, an area that had belonged to Ukraine for decades. She says over that course of time, she saw the network take a very dark turn.
“A Russian news director would look over my scripts,” Wahl said, “making sure that I framed questions a certain way. For example, taking out the word ‘invasion,’ framing it as if it was a ‘peacekeeping’ mission by Russia … [and] the framing (of) Ukraine as neo-Nazis. And so basically, we’re seeing the same thing happening today.”
Wahl said after she left the network, her goal was to help warn the world or whoever would listen about the dangers of Russian propaganda and the way it was using even Western voices.
People are consuming these misleading claims because they are desperate for information, Wahl noted. She also said the same sort of dangerous rhetoric is being broadcast by American figures, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“You see people like Tucker Carlson, they mimic, they mimic RT now. They are indistinguishable. And for people that are watching, and people that don’t want to be duped, they really need to be careful about the kind of content that they consume online.”
Carlson recently came under fire this week after being seen as supportive of Russia’s military invasion into Ukraine, especially of leader Vladimir Putin. His monologue was then shown on RT with Russian subtitles and posted onto their website. Still, Abrams maintained that Fox, for all its problems, isn’t broadcasting the sort of openly pro-Putin propaganda of the sort commonly found on RT.
Over the last few days, Putin and Russian media have ramped up false accusations that Ukrainians are committing genocide, and implying that people with Nazi leanings are rampant in the country. Last week, for example, RT’s news director claimed on live television, without evidence, that Ukrainians might start gassing their own people.
Wahl said the narrative that Russia needs to protect people from Nazis is just what Putin wants.
“I think when it comes to something like Ukraine, where Russia has a very high political stake, and it’s a military operation since 2014, that was kind of the beginning of the new era Russian information and war, Wahl said. “And we’ve seen that along with their kinetic military strategy. So this is part of Putin’s military strategy is having this creating kind of like this fog of war.”
