Journalism Studies

ISSN: 1461-670X (Print) 1469-9699 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjos20

Ukraine, Mainstream Media and Conflict

Propaganda

Oliver Boyd-Barrett

To cite this article: Oliver Boyd-Barrett (2017) Ukraine, Mainstream Media and Conflict
Propaganda, Journalism Studies, 18:8, 1016-1034, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2015.1099461

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 UKRAINE, MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND
CONFLICT PROPAGANDA

Oliver Boyd-Barrett

In several recent cases of actual or attempted regime change, Western governments alleged their
opponents’ possession of weapons of mass destruction as pretexts for war. Many such allegations
are now known to have been false or exaggerated. The Ukraine crisis (since 2013) is arguably of a
different order of concern, since it has invoked the participation, in one sense or another, of the
United States, the European Union and Russia, each of which possesses abundant nuclear
weapons capacity. Can Western consumers of mainstream media news, potentially now more
informed of the failures of mainstream media to exercise due caution in the face of their own gov-
ernments’ propaganda, reasonably expect superior future performance? This paper finds little basis
for optimism. Drawing from a broader work that monitors mainstream and alternative media, the
study identifies 10 key narratives that together forge the battlefield for information warfare
between nuclear powers and, with particular respect to mainstream, Western media coverage,
the problematic beliefs, assumptions and presumptions that these media invite their audiences
to ingest. One of the narratives is considered in detail: the events that took place in Crimea,
Odessa and Eastern Ukraine between February and October 2014.

KEYWORDS alternative media; BRICS; international conflict; mainstream media; propaganda;

Ukraine

Introduction: Competing Narratives of the Ukraine Crisis 2014–2015

My overriding interest is in the understanding of contemporary Western propaganda
as it has unfolded since 2001, and the associated role of mainstream Western news media.
There is an equally imperative task to examine the characteristics of non-Western propa-
ganda, including that of Russia and of pro-Russian media anywhere, but my main focus
here is on Western and Western media propaganda.
I shall explore this theme in relation to the Ukraine crisis in the period 2013–2015. My
more general purpose, in follow-up to earlier investigations of the propaganda of pretexts
for war (in relation to crises in Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria—see Boyd-Barrett 2015) is to argue
the importance of reducing news consumer dependency on mainstream for-profit corpor-
ate and State media, and enhancing the countervailing influence of alternative news
sources that have a demonstrable good-faith track record and capability in the provision
of information and opinion, and whose revenues often derive from subscription, non-
profit, foundation and other such sources.
The Ukraine crisis encompassed the forced change of the Kiev government in February
2014, and the succeeding escalation of tension between the coup government and Ukrai-
nian (but substantially ethnic Russian) regions of Crimea (whose people later voted for
annexation with Russia), Odessa and Eastern Ukraine, and between the United States, the
Journalism Studies, 2017
Vol. 18, No. 8, 1016–1034, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2015.1099461
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
 UKRAINE, MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND CONFLICT PROPAGANDA 1017

European Union and Russia, each of which professed to have important security interests in
the unfolding of the crisis.
The topic informs the study of communications in the context of a multi-polar world
shared, on the one hand, between the United States, its traditional allies and vassal states
and, on the other, emerging alliances between the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China
and South Africa). Notwithstanding a still powerful influence of US communications within
the overall ambit of international media communication (Boyd-Barrett 2015), there is little
evidence of a substantial return flow from leading members of the BRICS alliance to the
United States (e.g. Xie and Boyd-Barrett 2015). Analysis of media content flows between
the BRICS economies is in its infancy.
The issue of flow may be less significant than the ways in which the contents of inter-
national communications represent, reinforce or resist phenomena of imperialism or neo-
imperialism (through processes such as indexing [Bennett 1990], framing [Entman 2004]
and counter-framing [Boyd-Barrett and Boyd-Barrett 2010]) and the implications for the
future of international relations. The focus here on Western media representation of the
Ukraine crisis speaks to US and Western attitudes and ambitions in relation to NATO expan-
sion to Russia’s borders and how these in turn relate to perceptions of Russia as a potential
aggressor, potential target (with a possible view to the future fragmentation of the Com-
monwealth of Independent States) or potential competitor in a struggle for influence
over the continental land-mass that separates Western Europe and China (EurAsia).
The one-sidedness of corporate mainstream Western media coverage behind official
Washington pronouncements speaks not to the alleged media pluralism lauded by cele-
brants of digital and social media expansion but to a much older narrative of complicity
with the propaganda aims of imperial power. Princeton scholar of Russia Stephen
F. Cohen commented that whereas in the Cold War “the media were open—the New York
Times, the Washington Post—to debate,” today “they no longer are. It’s one hand clapping
in our major newspapers and in our broadcast networks” (cited by Smith 2015). Such syn-
chronicity reinforces trends that have been widely observed, including in Western main-
stream media coverage of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001, invasion
and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the disputed 2009 elections in Iran, claims that Iran’s
nuclear energy program constitutes a dangerous nuclear weapons threat, and Western-
supported destabilization of Libya and of Syria from 2011.
In my broader work, I identify at least 10 principal plots to the Ukraine crisis, each
attached either to a single episode or phase of the crisis, operating as a lightning rod for
information warfare. I examine the divergent narrative interpretations of such episodes
or phases, between those largely espoused by the Kiev regime and its US and EU allies
and their respective media, on the one hand, and those espoused by Russia, many
Russian media and by many critical, alternative media in the West, on the other. In
making this determination I have been guided by my personal daily monitoring of (1) selec-
tive Western, Russian and Ukrainian mainstream media (Independent, Kyiv Post, Los Angeles
Times, Moscow Times, New York Times and UNIAN information agency), (2) selective Western
alternative media (Antiwar.com, CLG, Common Dreams, Consortium News, Information Clear-
ing House, Huffington Post, Truthout.org and the World Socialist Web Site), and selective
regular reading of (mainstream) (3) Agence France Presse, Bloomberg, BBC, Economist,
Guardian, Reuters, RT, Sputnik and (alternative) (4) Democracy Now!, Fair.org, The Intercept,
MediaLens.org, MintPress News, The Real News Network and Vice News. The alternative
sites mostly but not exclusively represent a range of loosely progressive perspectives
1018 OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT

and one or two, such as Anti-War.com and the World Socialist Web Site, are affiliated with
political movements (Libertarian Party and Socialist Equality Party, respectively).
From these I have constructed weberian “ideal type” characterizations of the principal
divergent narratives (Weber [1904] 1949). I focus particularly on Western media and what
we can learn from these about the nature of Western conflict propaganda and the beliefs
and presumptions that these invite of audiences amidst the exposure of hypocrisies and
contradictions that propaganda so often entails. My methodology stems from grounded
theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967). I work inductively from a range of texts that represent
the clash of discourses between mainstream Western media accounts, on the one hand,
and competing accounts that come principally from Western alternative media and com-
panion sources that pay sustained attention to the perspectives of ethnic Russians in
Ukraine (Laclau and Mouffe 2014), on the other. Such a clash inevitably tends towards
the destabilization of the hegemonic Western discourse, not in the sense that it entitles
an analyst to declare what is “true” or “false,” but in the sense of being able to detect
the play of ideology amidst apparent contradiction, paradox and hypocrisy.
The 10 main sub-plots or media narratives (some of them are several threads) that I
examine in my broader work have to do with the following episodes or phases of the
conflict:
(1) Cause of the 2014 Crisis.
(2) Character of the new regime in Kiev.
(3) Origin and evolution of the Maidan movement.
(4) Context, inclusion and exclusion.
(5) Significance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as source of financial aid.
(6) The events that took place in Crimea, Odessa and Eastern Ukraine.
(7) Representing Ukraine (heroic) and Russia (threat) to the world.
(8) Shooting down of MH17.
(9) Russia in Ukraine.
(10) Sanctions against Russia.

Here I shall examine a part of one of these media narratives, namely (6): Crimea,
Odessa and Eastern Ukraine. The West and Western media considered that Russia forcibly
seized Crimea and assisted local ethnic Russian thugs in the Donbass to establish separatist
fiefdoms in Luhansk and Donetsk. Russian and alternative Western media, by contrast,
maintained that Crimeans, following long-established historical preference, overwhel-
mingly voted for annexation by Russia. Russia strategically maintained a cool distance
between itself and separatist movements in Eastern Ukraine, other than responding to
urgent humanitarian need and protecting ethnic Russian populations from the worst of
fascist cruelties, but seeking a political, federalist solution to grant a strong measure of
autonomy to the peoples of the Donbass region while preserving it as a component of
Ukraine.
My examination in this article extends up to around October 2014. I do not have
space here to deal in depth with Western allegations of a Russian “invasion” (deeply proble-
matic). I will identify what appear to be the principal propaganda intentions of Washington,
the European Union and NATO, and how these intentions were conveyed through Western
mainstream media. Discussing movements within Ukraine that are opposed to Kiev auth-
orities, I generally refer to them as “separatist,” although some would be better described
as federalist or pluralist, seeking not independence from Ukraine but a more equitable and
 UKRAINE, MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND CONFLICT PROPAGANDA 1019

autonomous status within it. While many may be ethnic Russians who regard Russian as
their first or predominant language, this in itself does not necessarily signify that they are
pro-Russia or anti-Ukraine.

Crimea, Odessa and Eastern Ukraine

Crimea
When, at the beginning, it looked as though the coup attempt might fail, mainstream
Western media had speculated how Kiev could break off the western part of Ukraine as a
separate political entity. They exhibited none of the concerns that caused them such
anguish when the Donbass regions sought separation or autonomy from the Kiev govern-
ment (Nazemroaya 2014a). The New York Times set about smearing the movement for
Crimean secession (Parry 2014a, 2014c). It dispatched correspondent C. J. Chivers (who
in the previous year had helped make what turned out to be the unfounded case
against President Assad of Syria for using chemical weapons), whom it charged to co-
author a dispatch with Patrick Reevell entitled “Pressure and Intimidation Grip Crimea,”
with the subtitle, “Russia Moves Swiftly to Stifle Dissent Ahead of Secession Vote”. The jour-
nalists alleged Russian intimidation, military occupation and electoral manipulation ahead
of the referendum on March 16. In various reports, the Times and other Western media
suggested that Russia had “invaded” Crimea, without clarifying that Moscow already had
some 16,000 troops stationed in Crimea under an agreement with Ukraine that allowed
Russia to maintain up to 25,000 troops to protect its historic naval base at Sevastopol.
Russian troops did support local Crimean authorities in the form of the Supreme Council
of Crimea as these made preparations for a referendum that was to demonstrate over-
whelming public support for secession (Chivers and Reevell 2014; Parry 2014d). A much
more negative expert account is offered, it is true, by Greta Uehling whose perspective is
particularly influenced by her studies of the Crimean Tatars. Uehling claims, without sour-
cing, that Russian troops were used to “help take over” the Supreme Council, installing pro-
Russian Prime Minister Sergei Aksyono whom she asserts had criminal ties (though it is dis-
puted; Speigel first reported mafia connections but based on German intelligence docu-
ments; cf. Bidder 2014), and that the Council then held a referendum (Uehling 2015).
Vladimir Putin was quite open at the time, two weeks before the referendum, that the
Russian troops present in the Crimea would help prevent Crimea being taken over by the
coup regime of Ukraine against the wishes of the Crimean people. Misrepresentation con-
tinued into early the following year when the New York Times ran a story based on a report
that had appeared in opposition Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta (whose very existence,
like that of the English-language Moscow Times amidst others, flew in the face of Western
media attempts to represent Russian media as homogeneously coerced into the pro-Putin
camp). This claimed that conservative Russian oligarch Konstantin V. Malofeev had advised
the Kremlin in advance of the collapse of the Yanukovych government in February 2014
that the government would likely fall and that Russia should exploit the ensuing chaos
to annex the Crimea and South-Eastern Ukraine, making use of the European Union’s
own rules on self-determination. The report offered no evidence of such a memo, nor evi-
dence that it had been applied for policy purposes. Its existence was denied by both the
Kremlin spokesman and by Malofeev. Its contents did not square very well with Russia’s
actual behavior: (1) caution on the question of Crimea, where it acted only until after a
1020 OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT

Crimean referendum confirmed broad popular support for integration of Crimea with
Russia, and (2) refusal to annex other regions, despite strong local requests (MacFarquhar
2015).
There should have been no cause for surprise at the evidence of a strong pro-Russian
tendency (including also a separatist tendency) in Crimea, where Russia’s presence dates
back to the early 1700s. Crimea formally became a part of Russia in 1784. The province
had previously formed part of Crimean Khanata of the Tatars, sometimes said by Tatars
today to have been one of the strongest and most independent powers of Eastern
Europe even though it had been absorbed within the Ottoman Empire. That prior history
continues to sustain Tatar ethnic nationalism. This is influenced even more strongly by
memory of Stalin’s wholesale deportation of the Tatars to Central Asia in 1946
(40 percent died in the process) as punishment for their alleged collaboration with
Germany: they were only able to repatriate in substantial numbers after 1991 and they
today represent a struggling minority.
Fifty-seven percent of Crimea’s 2 million people in 2001 claimed to be Russians and
77 percent were registered as native Russian-speakers (Sakwa 2015, 13). Many of these
ethnic Russians had long resented Soviet Premier Krushchev’s somewhat arbitrary transfer
of their region to Ukraine in 1954. A pro-Russian separatist movement had been strong in
the early years of Ukrainian independence. Although overtly pro-Russian separatist organ-
izations such as the Communist Party of Crimea and the Party of Regions did not do very
well in the elections of the mid-1990s, some studies suggest that separatism remained a
significant possibility. In a 2008 survey by the Razumkov Center, 73 percent of those Crim-
eans who had made up their minds backed the secession of Crimea and Ukraine with a view
to joining with Russia. Various surveys suggested that support for separatism increased
after Euromaidan (Katchanovsky 2015, 83–86). In 2015, a poll indicated that 82 percent
of Crimean people fully supported their region’s inclusion in Russia while only 4 percent
spoke out against it (Kelly 2015).
In the events of March 2014, the Crimean government organized a referendum in
which citizens chose between staying in the Ukraine but with greater autonomy or
joining with Russia. The voter turnout was reported to be 80 percent, and the vote to
return to Russia was 97 percent (Roberts 2014). Following these generous official indications
of the results, a report of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights
later estimated the turnout to have been only between 30 and 50 percent, of whom 50–60
percent voted for unification with Russia, with a higher turnout of 50–80 percent in Sevas-
topol where the overwhelming majority voted in favor (Sakwa 2015, 104). An independent
and balanced scholarly expert on Russian and European politics, Richard Sakwa, concludes,
nonetheless, that it is reasonable to assume that even in perfect conditions a majority in
Crimea would have voted for union with Russia and that in Sevastopol the favorable vote
would have been overwhelming. In a Pew Center survey in April 2014, 91 percent of respon-
dents in Crimea stated that the referendum was free and fair (Pew Center, quoted by Katch-
anovsky 2015, 86). Large sections of Ukrainian military, security service and police forces
switched their allegiance to the separatists and then to Russia. In the September 2014 elec-
tions, the United Russia party of President Putin won 71 percent of the votes in Crimea
although some opposition parties were constrained in how they were able to function at
this time (Katchanovsky 2015, 86–87).
The autonomous RADA of the Crimea had historically been at odds with the Kiev gov-
ernment. A movement to unify Russia and Crimea had always existed. In 2006, the RADA
 UKRAINE, MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND CONFLICT PROPAGANDA 1021

had passed anti-NATO legislation banning NATO forces from entering Crimean territory
(Nazemroaya 2014b). Writing for Forbes magazine in March 2015, Kenneth Rapoza cited
several surveys demonstrating that Crimeans of all stripes—ethnic Russians, Ukrainians,
Tartars—overwhelmingly wished to belong to Russia rather than be returned to Ukraine.
The surveys included a June 2014 Gallup poll sponsored by the US government’s Broadcast-
ing Board of Governors, and a February 2015 poll by Germany’s GfK (Parry 2015; Rapoza
2015). One strong practical reason for loyalty to Russia was that Russian pensions were
three times higher than Ukrainian, and that Ukrainian pensions were in the process of
being slashed as the Ukrainian government conceded to IMF demands.
A rare mainstream media offer of full historical context appeared in the British news-
paper, Mail on Sunday, almost a year after Crimea voted for annexation with Russia
(Hitchens 2015). It paid particular attention to relevant events around the time of the fall
of the Soviet Union. In December 1991, the United Nations formally recognized Russia as
the “continuer state,” which technically meant that everything that belonged to the
Soviet Union came under Russian jurisdiction, including Sevastopol—“an object of all-
union significance.” In January 1991, before Ukraine’s independence in August of that
year, the government of Crimea had held a referendum on Crimean autonomy. The vote
in favor was 93 percent of an 80 percent turnout. In March, 87 percent of Crimean voters
voted to stay in the Soviet Union which they anticipated would allow them far greater inde-
pendence than incorporation within Ukraine. Crimea’s parliament, shortly before the final
collapse of the Soviet Union, approved by 153 to 3 a measure that would enable the
region to hold a referendum on its political future. But the newly independent government
of Ukraine, once in power, stopped this referendum from taking place, even though it had
been requested by 246,000 of Crimea’s 2.5 million people.
Moscow, which had done nothing to prevent Ukraine from declaring its own inde-
pendence, did not protest Ukraine’s refusal to allow a referendum vote. Russia’s President
Yeltsin had indicated that Russia would not let republics with large Russian populations
secede from the newly emerging states of the former Soviet Union, but he then backed
down. When signatures for a referendum were being collected in 1992, Ukraine offered
more autonomy for Crimea. The parliament of Crimea voted 118 to 28 for secession on
May 5, subject to confirmation by a referendum. This vote was reversed the following
day amidst threats of bloodshed and direct presidential rule from Ukraine, and the carrot
of greater autonomy. Ukraine declared the May 5 vote unconstitutional and plans for a
referendum were canceled.
Western media largely ignored how the events in Crimea were an inevitable
response to the Western meddling that had precipitated the collapse of the Yanukovyich
regime on February 22 (Smith 2014). Although Soviet President Khrushchev had reas-
signed Crimea to the Ukraine in 1954, Crimea had been part of Russia since the 1700s.
Khrushchev’s gift did not include Sevastopol, site of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. When
Ukraine became independent following the collapse of the Soviet Union, territories that
had previously been Russian but then appended to Ukraine by Soviet rulers were retained
by Ukraine, under Washington pressure. In compensation, Russia was given a 50-year
lease on Sevastopol.
Several legal justifications would support the results of the Crimean referendum to
annex with Russia (Sakwa 2015, 108–110). For example, while secession may have been
unconstitutional with respect to the constitution in force up to February 2014, that consti-
tution was rendered null and void by the February 2014 coup. Procedurally, the 1954
1022 OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT

transfer of Crimea was not correct. There were certainly problems with the circumstances in
which the referendum was conducted: the presence of armed troops, the hurry with which
the referendum was conducted, the absence of independent international observers and
the lack of transparency in counting procedures. But if constitutional behavior had
broken down in Kiev there was no reason to preserve it in Crimea. In addition, the West
had created numerous precedents that in a less partisan environment would have required
their support for the Crimean declaration, e.g. Western support for Kosovo’s unilateral
declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008, which was declared without first
staging a referendum.
Whereas Western media had no apparent difficulty in accepting the legitimacy of
an Iraqi election in 2005—conducted under violent US–UK military occupation, press
censorship and vote-rigging—or Libya’s elections in 2012 amidst the chaotic societal
fragmentation that followed NATO bombing, or the Afghan presidential elections in
2014 under equally non-propitious circumstances, they adamantly refused to acknowl-
edge the legitimacy of Crimea’s referendum, insisting that it was conducted ‘at
[Russian] gunpoint’ (Edwards 2014) or because Crimea was “under military occupation.”
They averted comparisons between Russian action in Crimea and Western support for
separatism elsewhere. In 1999, as we have seen, NATO had fought a war against what
remained of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with the goal of militarily occupying
Kosovo province and prying Kosovo away from Yugoslavia. No referendum on
Kosovo’s separation from Yugoslavia was held (although, to be sure, the measure was
broadly popular in Kosovo). By contrast, in their coverage of Ukraine, the word
“unelected” was rarely attributed to the interim Kiev rulers, and the word “coup” was
almost always used in quotes.
Certainly there was a heavy price to be paid for Crimean independence. For example,
Crimea relied on Ukraine for 85 percent of its water. Ukraine blocked water supplies in 2014,
claiming that consumers had not paid their debts. Eighty-two percent of Crimean electricity
also came from Ukrainian plants. There were issues as to which country Crimean enterprises
should pay taxes and implications for their vulnerability to US and EU sanctions. The infra-
structural re-integration of Crimea would be a lengthy process, with cultural and political
challenges, including an increasingly intolerant attitude towards dissenting journalistic
and other dissident or potentially dissident voices—albeit arguably on a par with Kiev’s atti-
tudes to dissent against the coup regime. The standard of living, employment and pensions
in Crimea were many times superior to those of Ukraine, but Uehling’s chronicle of a drift
towards authoritarianism under Aksyonov (both Prime Minister and head of the Supreme
Council) forced disappearances, searches, and shrinking freedom of the press and speech—
and their implications in particular for Ukrainians and Tatars—cannot easily be dismissed
(Uehling 2015).
Jonathan Cook, former Guardian correspondent, took the Guardian’s Moscow corre-
spondent, Shaun Walker, to task for a long article Walker had written on the Crimean situ-
ation (Cook 2014). Walker had omitted mention of Russia’s two major concerns, namely
Western hypocrisy over Crimea and the threat posed to Russia by NATO expansionism.
In place of talking about Russia’s legitimate concerns about NATO bases encircling
Russia, Walker quoted US diplomats to invent something called “Eurasianism,” an alleged
Russian ambition, for which there was no corroborating evidence, to take over Europe,
using Ukraine as the launch-pad.
 UKRAINE, MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND CONFLICT PROPAGANDA 1023

Odessa
When armed protesters took over government buildings in 10 cities of eastern
regions of Ukraine in April 2014, US media repeatedly cited US officials to the effect that
Russia was responsible. One of the first acts of these insurgents was to take over regional
television stations and restore the broadcasts of Russian television that had been cut by
order of Kiev authorities (Sakwa 2015, 150). Ignored were some of the main concerns of
the protestors. Among these was the threat of the coup regime in Kiev to abolish the
status of Russian as an official language (about 30 percent of Ukrainians consider Russian
as their first language and are Russophones). Protestors distrusted the appointment of bil-
lionaire “oligarchs” as regional administrators. They rightly worried that a harsh austerity
plan would likely accompany the IMF “aid” that would now replace the less onerous
loans previously offered by Moscow.
The New York Times released photos in a front-page attempt to prove that Russia was
behind the occupations, despite Russia’s denial. Veteran investigative reporter Robert Parry
told Aaron Woronczuk on Real News Network that at face value the photos—provided cour-
tesy of the US government—apparently showed fighters who had allegedly been in Russia
and who were now present in Eastern Ukraine. But this was hardly proof of Kremlin invol-
vement. Worse, a key photo that the New York Times purported to show how some fighters
later seen in Eastern Ukraine had previously been seen in Russia was declared by its photo-
grapher to have been taken in Eastern Ukraine! The New York Times was forced to retract
(Woronczuk 2014). It began to look as though the “newspaper of record” had not
engaged in the most elementary fact-checking of material handed to it by the Kiev
regime and the US State Department before plastering its alleged ‘evidence’ on its front
page. This raised:
the question of how the Times’ photo report was published in the first place. Either the
Times editors rammed through the piece and its blurry photos without any independent
examination, or the editors did check the story, saw it was a grotesque falsification, and
published it anyway. In either case, the Times functioned not as a legitimate journalistic
outlet, but as a propaganda agency of the state. (Lantier 2014b)
Washington Post reporter Lally Weymouth (2014) referred to “Russians” in occupied
buildings, and at another point called the protesters “terrorists.” No proof had been pre-
sented by the US government that there were Russians taking part in the occupations
(Johnson 2014). After several weeks’ assurances by Western media of deep Moscow invol-
vement behind East Ukrainian resistance to the new Kiev regime and of indignant Russian
propaganda defending against such assertions, the New York Times, upon sending reporters
C. J. Chivers and Noah Sneider into Eastern Ukraine, surprised itself and its readers by not
finding much, if any, evidence of Russians (Chivers and Sneider 2014; Parry 2014e). Inves-
tigating the 12 Company of the People’s Militia, Chivers and Sneider found what appeared
only to be Ukrainians, even if many had affinities, family connections and other ties to
Russia. The Ukrainians had many different views as to what might constitute a good
outcome to the conflict. Weaponry in evidence appeared not to be the sophisticated
Russian equipment that one would expect if Russia had been actively intervening, but
was well-worn and dated. Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post reported on April 17
that the East Ukrainians he had interviewed expressed fears of the IMF austerity package
to which the new regime was committed (Faiola 2014).
1024 OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT

In the tragic events that occurred in Odessa on May 2, so-called local ethnic Russian
or separatist protestors against the Maidan coup d’etat were set upon and their tents
burned in what now appears to have been a well-organized and provocative action. This
involved fascist pro-Kiev paramilitaries from outside of Odessa who had formed units of
the National Guard. Many of them were veterans of the violence at Maidan, and included
police sympathizers (Zeusse 2015). The action’s leader was interim government minister for
security Andriy Parubiy (who had founded the Social National Party of Ukraine in 1991,
mixing nationalist with nazi symbology). His men were recruited to undertake the dirty
work that regular Ukrainian military would not do. Many of their victims were forced to
flee into the Trade Unions building which was then attacked by grenades and set on fire
while their attackers sang nationalist songs and shouted “Burn Colorado, burn” the soubri-
quet for the protestors as “Colorado” beetles, a reference to their flag. Graffiti on the burnt
building included swastikas and allusions to the World War Two fascist Galician S.S. Over 40
died inside the Trades Unions building. Those who escaped were severely beaten by neo-
nazis. A similar atrocity occurred on May 9, when the same thugs burned down a police
station that had been occupied by pro-Russian protestors (these included policemen
who were opposed to the coup regime in Kiev). Between 7 and 20 were killed. US main-
stream media referred to the killers as “volunteers” or “self-defense” forces (Parry 2014b).
Four commissions were established to investigate the Odessa massacre yet much
remains unclear (Sakwa 2015, 98). One analyst concluded:
The lack of commiseration, empathy, or compassion in relation to the death of “Colorados”
in Odessa, “jokes” on the blood of Russian babies on a school charity fair, the openly
Russophobe art exhibition titled “Kill a Coloardo” that took place in Kiev in December—
those are not accidental events. They have been prepared by Ukrainian intelligentsia.
(Pogrebrinksiy 2015, 97)
In an otherwise anti-Russian speech in June 2015, US Ambassador to the United
Nations Samantha Power actually criticized the post-coup regime—noting that
investigations into serious crimes such as the violence in the Maidan and in Odessa [where
scores of ethnic Russians were burned alive] have been sluggish, opaque, and marred by
serious errors—suggesting not only a lack of competence, but also a lack of will to hold
the perpetrators accountable. (cited by Parry 2015)
Writing for alternative media site Global Research, Parsons (2014) observed that
“neither the President nor Secretary Kerry see any contradiction in their applause for the
Kiev government as representing democracy while it was a neo-Nazi coup that ousted a
democratically elected President and that while the President and Kerry were ‘disgusted’
by the violence on the streets of Kiev in mid-February … [they] have no reaction to the
deaths in Odessa and other east Ukraine communities.” If the coup was really about democ-
racy, she asked, what was so democratic about violent attacks on the citizens of Odessa
who did not favor the coup? Besides, what was so wrong with their protest that it deserved
such a vicious response? Had they not employed the very same tactic that the coup leaders
themselves had used in Maidan—peaceful occupation of a public building—while insisting
on a referendum to consider a more autonomous future? Unlike Crimea and the Donbass,
and despite the high proportion of ethnic Russians among its citizens, Odessa remained
under the control of Kiev. In June 2015, Ukraine President Poroshenko appointed to the
governorship of Odessa the ex-president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili. Saakashvili, a
 UKRAINE, MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND CONFLICT PROPAGANDA 1025

neo-conservative who had dragged his country unsuccessfully into war with Russia in 2008,
was wanted in his home country for human rights abuses and abuse of government funds.
Disgraced, he had spent the interim period in Brooklyn, New York (Parry 2015).
The New York Times reported on May 23 that buildings in Mariupol Makeyevka had
been “recovered” by steel workers and other employees of Ukraine’s richest billionaire,
Rinat Ahkmetov—one-time enforcer for a Donetsk crime boss who had used extortion
and physical violence to seize control of former state-owned property and whose
businesses in 2014 accounted for 25 percent of Ukraine’s Gross Domestic Product. Yet
other papers, including the Washington Post and the Financial Times, saw no evidence of
this. Rather, as Van Auken argued, the New York Times had gleaned its information from
releases issued by Akhmetov’s press agents and that in fact
the occupied administration building in Mariupol was not “recovered” by miners and steel-
workers; it was gutted in a brutal assault from the Ukrainian military and Right Sektor fas-
cists in which at least 20 civilians were murdered in a hail of automatic weapons and tank
fire. (Van Auken 2014)

Donbass
The Crimean referendum was followed on May 11 by referenda in provinces of
Eastern Ukraine, although ultimately Russia discouraged cries for the annexation of these
provinces with Russia (where Sakwa [2015] argues the prevailing sentiment was in favor
of greater autonomy within Ukraine, not separatism nor annexation) and despite Russian
pressure for these to be postponed. In fact, Russia had good reason to tread very carefully
with respect to the Donbass. The idea of “Novorossiya,” writes Laruelle, has become the
engine of the so-called Russian Spring, a totalitarian movement that proclaims not only
revolution against Kiev but also against the existing regime in Moscow (Laruelle 2015).
In Donetsk, protesters had proclaimed the Donetsk People’s Republic on April 7 and a
Luhansk People’s Republic was formed on April 27. In the May 11 referenda, turnout in both
regions was reported to be 75 percent, with 89 and 96 percent, respectively, voting for
independence (Sakwa 2015, 154). A month later, on May 24, the two entities established
a union known as the Novorossiya Republic.
Neither Kiev nor the West recognized the May 11 ballots as legitimate. Western
sources and media routinely condemned them as farcical. The West now supported the
deployment of an “army against their own population,” argued Escobar (2014), the very
action used by NATO as pretexts for interventions in Libya and Syria but apparently
quite acceptable in Ukraine. Richard Sakwa considers that the ferocity of the Kiev reaction
reflected a long-standing prejudice in Western Ukraine that those who lived in the Donbass
region were not “real Ukrainians” but were Russians who had been sent in the 1930s, firstly
to replace those who had died under Stalin’s collectivization program and secondly to
industrialize Ukraine. His analysis suggests that the votes for independence were to be
seen not as bids to leave Ukraine (since separatist aspirations were not supported by the
majority here as they had been in Crimea) but as claims for a more pluralist, federalist
Ukraine. He refers to polls of early 2014 showing that sizable majorities in the west and
south supported Ukrainian unity and only small minorities in favor of secession or accession
to Russia (Sakwa 2015). But discussion of ideas such as federalization had been dismissed
from mainstream discourse in greater Ukraine (Pogrebrinksiy 2015, 97–98).
1026 OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT

The challenges were obvious: rush organization amidst violent civil war and threats
from the post-coup regime. Yet these circumstances were scarcely less dire than the
Western-induced post-Gadhafi elections in Libya in 2012 which Western sources and main-
stream media naturally applauded as a fine display of democracy. Despite the challenges
cited, turnout in the Donbass was huge and the victory was a landslide. Transparency
was impressive: “a public vote, in glass ballot boxes, with monitoring provided by
Western journalists—mostly from major German media but also from the Kyodo News
Agency (Japanese) or the Washington Post” (Escobar 2014).

War Crimes
When two Russian journalists were killed by mortar shells fired directly at them by
Ukrainian government forces attacking the rebel-held town of Metallist, in the Luhansk
region, eye-witness reports indicated that the reporters had been deliberately targeted,
suggesting, offered Grey (2014), “that their deaths were the latest in a series of anti-
Russian provocations carried out by the Western-backed regime in Kiev.” This was
shortly after pro-Russian separatists in Luhansk, the easternmost region of Ukraine border-
ing Russia, shot down a government military transport, killing all 40 soldiers and 9 crew
members.
The Kiev government had begun its major offensive in April against regions of the
Donbass under the control of the separatists, leading to the deaths of at least 950 civilians
in this phase of the conflict. At every stage, the Ukrainian government had been working
closely with Berlin and Washington (Dreier 2014). When a missile hit the regional adminis-
tration building in early June, US mainstream media dutifully reported the Kiev govern-
ment’s version of events as fact, namely that the anti-Kiev forces had blown up their
own headquarters, just as several weeks earlier Kiev had claimed that the anti-Kiev
forces in Odessa had set themselves on fire. It is clear, McAdams (2014) wrote, “the Kiev
government lied about the attack on Luhansk and that those lies were accepted as fact
by the US government and the vast majority of the US mainstream media.” Kiev forces
had also bombed hospitals, kindergartens, and residential areas. None of this had been
condemned by Washington, which had been so eager in 2003 to berate Saddam
Hussein for having purportedly used poison gas on his own people. In July, Human
Rights Watch (2014) directly reported war crimes against civilians. Washington called for
more sanctions against Russia, which most countries of the European Union, including
Germany, willingly joined, even though European economies were negatively impacted
by the loss of business and the continent was drifting back into recession (which it
touched by January 2015). A financial analyst observed that Kiev’s army would come to
an instant halt without access to the $35 billion of promised aid from the IMF, EU and
US treasury (Stockman 2014).
Early in July, amid “a virtual blackout in the American media” (Lantier 2014a), and fol-
lowing weeks of artillery bombardment, Ukrainian regime forces retook the cities of Sla-
vyansk and Kramatorsk, which occupied strategic positions along roads from Western
Ukraine to Donetsk. They then marched on the major cities of South-Eastern Ukraine,
Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council spokesman
Andrei Lysenko made clear that Kiev did not intend to take any prisoners among opposition
 UKRAINE, MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND CONFLICT PROPAGANDA 1027

fighters and dismissed any possibility of creating a corridor that would allow Donetsk
People’s Republic forces to leave the region.
The attacks forced a massive dislocation of citizens. According to UN High Commis-
sion on Refugees (UNHCR) figures, as of June 27, 2014, 110,000 people had fled to Russia
and 54,000 had been internally displaced within Ukraine. Human Rights Watch condemned
the illegality of Ukrainian actions in Eastern Ukraine and blamed Kiev for the rising death
toll in the Luhansk Region, which by local estimates had reached 300 since May. Human
Rights Watch visited the city on August 20–22, interviewing locals who in one way or
another had been impacted by the heavy bombardment, which had people cowering in
fear in basements for weeks without water or electricity. Many attacks failed to distinguish
between civilians and combatants, as was evident in the use of weaponry not designed for
areas where precision was required. Human Rights Watch findings indicated that a large
majority of attacks on the city were carried out by Ukrainian government forces, while
the insurgents were responsible for far fewer and targeted government positions on the
outskirts of Luhansk.
The seriousness of the set-backs to ethnic Russian separatists notwithstanding,
the Ukrainian army victories appeared short-lived as, within days, alternative sources
were claiming that Kiev’s strategy was in tatters “because a highly-motivated and adapt-
able militia has trounced Obama’s troopers at every turn pushing the Ukrainian army to
the brink of collapse, causing the Ukrainian Army to retreat almost everywhere” (Whitney
2014). This gave rise to rumors of a mooted anti-Poroshenko coup by outraged Nazi
nationalists. By the end of October, elections in the eastern oblasts of Donetsk and
Luhansk created the first parliament of the Donetsk People’s Republic. The republic
would serve as the de facto autonomous region, and also the potential government if
it were to secede outright. Kiev’s response, in early November, was to order a halt to
all transfers of public funds to the areas dominated by separatists in Eastern Ukraine,
thus impacting schools, hospitals, government agencies and state enterprises (Schwarz
2014).

Identifying Principles of Western Conflict Propaganda

Typically in Western media, propaganda does not announce itself as such but, as
Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky among many others have argued, achieves the pur-
poses of propagandists through the ways in which issues are framed; emphasis and omis-
sion; privileging of certain sources, perspectives, information over possible alternatives; and
in the uses of language (verbal and visual) that assist these effects (Boyd-Barrett 2015;
Herman and Chomsky 2002; Jowett and O’Donnell 2015). In this paper, I focus on some
of the understandings (propaganda claims) about Russia, Ukraine and the West that the
propagandists—the Western powers whose voices, values and preferences are privileged
by Western media—hope will prevail among members of the public. Through close
reading as illustrated by my treatment of Western coverage of events in Crimea, Odessa
and Donbass, I identify preferred understandings—the desired propaganda beliefs—by
reference to their principal topics. I do not have sufficient space to incorporate all of the
propaganda themes that emerge from examination of this particular narrative, and some
of those that I have selected also relate to other narratives. I have attempted to formulate
1028 OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT

these themes as emergent principles of propaganda as these apply to particular topics, as

follows.

Attack by an Army Against its Own People

If a regime that is favored by the West deploys its army against its own people, as
happened when the authorities of Kiev attacked and ravaged the separatist movements
of the Donbass, then that is perfectly excusable and is also a pretext for Western aid to
that regime against regime opponents. If the regime is not favored by the West, as in
the case of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Muammar Gadhafi’s Libya or Bashar al-Assad’s Syria,
then evidence of such deployment, whether real or fabricated, is an acceptable pretext
for Western humanitarian intervention and democracy promotion whose purpose is
regime-change.

Context
In covering the official claims of Western governments as to their policies towards
countries that have been targeted for cooption into the NATO security sphere, such as
post-coup Ukraine, including condemnation of Russian “aggression” and support for
democracy, Western media need not consider as relevant the long-standing weaknesses
of these countries (including, in the case of Ukraine, its economic basket-case status) and
the contribution to them of the excesses and non-democratic instincts of their oligarch
classes. Nor need they consider as relevant to Western motivations the loot for Western cor-
porations that are consequent on IMF and other Western loans, involving as these typically
do the privatization of infrastructure, shipping and rail, and the legalization of market
access for foreign interests in traditional and GMO (genetically modified organism) agribu-
siness and other spheres.

Democracy
A state that has acquired power by a Western-supported coup, is largely run by
oligarchs and whose democracy is based on political parties that are affiliated with the
interests of different oligarchs (e.g. Ukraine) should be supported by Western powers so
long as it can exhibit the trappings of modern democracy such as regular elections, diver-
sity of choice, etc. A state that has many oligarchs but whose power nonetheless is con-
tested by a strong executive within a democratic, multi-party framework (e.g. Russia)
cannot be regarded as an acceptably functioning democracy when Western powers do
not like the interests that it represents or advances.

Elections
Elections for independence that take place under the rule of authorities who do not
enjoy the approval of Western powers will be considered less than legitimate by those
powers and their media, especially when they occur in periods of conflict and unrest (as
in Crimea). Elections for independence that take place under the rule of authorities that
 UKRAINE, MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND CONFLICT PROPAGANDA 1029

are approved by Western interests may not even be necessary (as in Kosovo) or, if held, are
reassuring signs of democracy even in the most unpromising of circumstances (as in the
presidential elections in Ukraine that elected Poroshenko to the Presidency, and the parlia-
mentary elections that were held in August).

Evidence
Events whose status as initially reported by Western media as somewhat uncertain
and needing qualification become indisputable “facts” by dint of mere repetition and
the slow simplifying conversion from ambiguity to certainty. Thus, there was some dither-
ing, at first, as to the status of Russia’s new influence in Crimea, but soon the dithering was
simply replaced by such words as “seized” or “invasion.” Likewise claims that Russia had
invaded or was about to invade—the distinction seemed less important over time—
Ukraine and that the separatists or independents in Eastern Ukraine were simply proxies
for Russia. The absence of evidence is never an insurmountable problem for Western pro-
paganda: it can be construed as the devilish cunning of the enemy’s capacity for
subterfuge.

Fascism
Dependence by a Western-supported coup regime on fascist forces backed by corrupt
oligarchs—forces whose activities are not subject to control by the political and military
mainstream, that are often criminal, and that have links with and support from radical Islamist
movements—is not a source of significant concern for Western governments or media. By
contrast, alleged criminal links of political and military leaders of resistance to a Western-
support coup regime, as in the Donbass, are widely trumpeted as “evidence” of insincerity,
corruption and inefficacy, and the entire separatist movement is smeared with frequently
contestable claims of its dependence on Russian support and assistance.

Humanitarian Support
Actions taken to provide humanitarian support for the victims of an aggression com-
mitted by a party that enjoys the support of Western powers is inherently suspicious, treated
as some form of military action in humanitarian disguise. This was the case with Western
reaction to Russia’s preparations of aid convoys for desperate peoples in the Donbass.

Invasions
An invasion may be said to have occurred even if the country’s troops were already and
legitimately present in a region of the “invaded” country (e.g. Crimea), a substantial majority of
whose voting population expressed its fear of aggression from its “own” government—the
coup regime in Kiev—and their desire to be taken under Russian protection. Once such an
“invasion” has occurred (regardless of how weak the claim or how uninvestigated the
actual circumstances), the cry of “invasion,” pending or otherwise, can then be levied
against the country in question whenever that country does anything, or perhaps nothing
at all, that the Western powers do not like, so that the country in question continues to be
vilified and its leaders demonized.
1030 OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT

Protests
When protestors take to the streets to demand a change of government and more
democracy, they have the support of Western powers when those powers are hostile to
the existing regime (as in Kiev in February 2014); when protestors take to the streets to
demand a change of government and more democracy, they will be disowned by
Western powers when those powers side with the existing regime (as in Western attitudes
to the protestors in Odessa in May 2015).

Secession
When a region of an established country wishes to secede from that country, and the
leadership of that region enjoys Western favor, then Western powers and their mainstream
media will be supportive of secession. This was evident in mainstream contemplation of
what might happen if the February 2104 coup failed and Kiev broke off Western Ukraine
from the rest. It was evident in Western support for Kosovo’s assertion of independence
from Serbia. Because the leadership of Crimea and the Donbass regions did not enjoy
Western favor, their respective bids for secession were condemned.
If a region seeks to secede from a coup-installed regime that has the backing of
Western powers, even when the regime threatens to criminalize that region’s language
and makes evident its disdain for the ethnicity of a large proportion of the region’s popu-
lation, its aspirations for autonomy are unworthy. They are deemed even less worthy if the
region seeks to annex with a major neighboring power with which it is affiliated ethnically
and culturally. Western support for such a region is permissible when the region in question
(as in the case of Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia) has the support of
Western powers and when the country from which it secedes is disliked by Western
powers, in which case not even a referendum for secession is deemed necessary.

Suffering
The sufferings of a people which is attacked by a power allied to Western interests
attract more attention, are more likely to be ennobled, than the sufferings of people
who are attacked by a power that is not allied to Western interests. In this second case, suf-
fering need not invoke intense sympathy, nor be covered in detail, because such people
have brought their suffering upon themselves through unwise choice of leaders or alliance.
Similarly, killings and assassinations of figures who are opponents of regimes that the West
does not like, such as Boris Nemtsov, are automatically to be cast as noble fighters of the
good cause. Killings and assassinations of figures who are opponents of regimes that the
West likes, such as the dozens killed among opponents to the coup regime of Kiev follow-
ing February 2014, require little or no attention or sympathy.

Conclusion
In this paper, I have identified leading press frames and discourses of the Ukraine
crisis and its associated conflicts between the Kiev authorities and the authorities of separa-
tist movements within Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union. I have
noted the Manichean forms that these discourses take. The paper dwells mainly on one
 UKRAINE, MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND CONFLICT PROPAGANDA 1031

of the 10 frames identified and analyzed in my broader work. Guided by my own close
reading of press and alternative media sources, I have determined the principal arguments,
presumptions and intentions of propaganda as these reflect the interests of Western
powers and the forms by which they are conveyed through Western mainstream media.
These considerations help demonstrate the propaganda-of-pretext that suffuses Western
media accounts of conflicts in which their own countries are engaged or may have
incited. It counsels the universal importance for news consumers to attend to a much
broader diversity of knowledgeable viewpoints than are typically provided by institutions
whose business models and political alliances do not permit them to move beyond a
very limited range of discourse.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Journalism and Public Relations, Bowling Green State University, and
California State University Channel Islands, USA. E-mail: [email protected]