Propaganda

Explainer: What is a dirty bomb and why is Russia talking about one now?

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals!<<<<

LONDON, Oct 25 (Reuters) – In Russia’s latest advocacy campaign over its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has focused on accusations that Kyiv might be planning to use a so-called “dirty bomb” – a conventional explosive device laced with toxic nuclear material.

Kyiv and its Western allies say there is no truth at all to the accusation, and that the idea that Ukraine would poison its own territory is patently absurd. They say Moscow could be making the allegation to justify an escalation of its own.

Following is a look at dirty bombs and how they might be used in Ukraine, either as a real threat or as the basis of propaganda:

HOW MUCH DAMAGE CAN THEY DO?

Dirty bombs do not create city-flattening atomic explosion but are designed to spread toxic waste. Security experts have worried about them mostly as a form of terrorist weapon to be used on cities to cause havoc among civilians, rather than as a tactical device for use by warring parties in conflict.

Experts say the immediate health impact would probably be limited, since most people in an affected area would be able to escape before experiencing lethal doses of radiation. But the economic damage could be massive from having to evacuate urban areas or even abandon whole cities.

In testimony to the United States Senate during the Obama administration, physicist Henry Kelly, then president of the Federation of Scientists, outlined a wide range of hypothetical scenarios, depending on the amount and type of nuclear material used and how far it was spread.

A bomb using radioactive caesium from a misplaced or stolen medical device might require the evacuation of an area of several city blocks, making it unsafe for decades.

A piece of radioactive cobalt from a food irradiation plant could, if blasted apart in a bomb in New York, contaminate a 380 square mile (1,000 square km) area and potentially make the island of Manhattan uninhabitable, Kelly said.

WHAT DOES RUSSIA ALLEGE?

Moscow sent a letter detailing its allegations about Kyiv to the United Nations late on Monday, and diplomats said Russia planned to raise the issue at a closed meeting with the Security Council on Tuesday.

The head of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection troops, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, told a media briefing Ukraine’s aim for such an attack would be to blame Russia.

“The aim of the provocation would be to accuse Russia of using a weapon of mass destruction in the Ukrainian military theatre and by that means to launch a powerful anti-Russian campaign in the world, aimed at undermining trust in Moscow.”

WHAT IS THE RESPONSE OF UKRAINE AND THE WEST?

Kyiv and its Western allies say Moscow’s allegation that Ukraine would intentionally make some of its own territory uninhabitable is absurd, especially at a time when Ukrainian forces are recapturing territory on the battlefield.

In a joint statement, the United States, Britain and France called the Russian allegations “transparently false” and warned Moscow against using them as a “pretext” for escalation.

The Kremlin warned the West on Tuesday it was dangerous to dismiss Moscow’s position.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy suggested Moscow might be using the allegations as cover for plans for a similar attack of its own: “If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means one thing: Russia has already prepared all this.”

Editing by Philippa Fletcher

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Putin Declares Martial Law in Occupied Ukraine as Evacuation of Civilians Starts

Credit…Nicole Tung for The New York Times

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian occupation officials were moving civilians out of Kherson on Wednesday, another sign that Moscow’s hold on the strategic southern Ukrainian city was slipping, as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sought to reassert control over that and other occupied regions by declaring martial law.

The move by Mr. Putin was an effort to tighten the Kremlin’s authority over Kherson and three other Ukrainian regions he recently claimed to annex, even as his army loses ground in those areas to Ukrainian forces and as Western allies dismiss the annexations as illegal.

As Russian proxy officials in Kherson said they would move as many as 60,000 civilians to the eastern side of the Dnipro River and shift its civilian administration there, they appeared to be girding for a battle for control of the region. Amid a weekslong Ukrainian counteroffensive, the pro-Kremlin leader in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said the relocations would protect civilians and help Russian forces fortify defenses to “repel any attack.”

Ukrainian officials dismissed the plans as “a propaganda show.” Andriy Yermak, the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, accused the Russian proxies of scaring civilians with claims that Ukraine would shell the city. He called it “a rather primitive tactic, given that the armed forces do not fire at Ukrainian cities — this is done exclusively by Russian terrorists.”

Ukrainian forces have been advancing gradually for weeks along both sides of the river in Kherson, a region that Moscow seized early in the war and has declared part of Russia. Since late August, Ukrainian troops have damaged bridges near the city of Kherson, making it harder for Moscow to resupply the thousands of troops it has stationed there.

Western analysts have suggested that the Russian positions in and around the city are untenable without the bridges, and U.S. officials have said that Russian commanders have urged a retreat from Kherson, only to be overruled by Mr. Putin. But Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the Kherson region has moved more slowly than its recent advances in the east, and it was far from clear whether its forces could soon mount a push to retake the city of Kherson.

On Tuesday, the general Mr. Putin appointed earlier this month to command the war in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin, said he was ready to make “difficult decisions” about the military deployments in the Kherson region, without specifying what those decisions would entail.

Ukrainian officials have greeted the hints of a Russian pullback of at least civil administrators with caution, saying the announcements could be intended for internal Russian audiences, signaling commitment to protecting civilians or preparation for a Russian military action in the area. Videos released on Russian media showed lines of civilians apparently boarding ferries at a river port to evacuate to the eastern bank of the Dnipro.

The Kherson region spans both banks of the river, with the city of Kherson, the regional capital, lying on the western side. The western bank is an expanse of pancake-flat farmland crisscrossed by rivers and irrigation canals, and one of the most pivotal battlefields of the war.

Ukrainian troops had through the summer whittled away at Russian supply lines by firing American-provided precision guided rockets at the four bridges over the Dnipro River in areas Russia controls. All are now mostly destroyed.

In late August, Ukraine opened an offensive with ground troops, advancing in bloody, slow-moving combat through several dozen villages while driving the Russian forces backward, toward the Dnipro. The Russian announcements of evacuating civilians and the civil administration could signal a faltering of military defenses, presaging a Russian pullback from the western bank of the Dnipro River in what would be a major setback for Moscow — but could also be a ruse.

Mr. Saldo, a Ukrainian politician who had switched sides at the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, told the Russian state news agency RIA on Wednesday that all ministries would evacuate to the eastern bank. The occupation government earlier on Wednesday said it would evacuate from 50,000 to 60,000 civilians across the river and onward to the occupied peninsula of Crimea or into Russia. Residents risked artillery fire from the Ukrainian Army or flooding from the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River, Mr. Saldo said.

Correction:

Oct. 19, 2022

An earlier version of this article misidentified the location that Russian proxy officials in Kherson, Ukraine, said they would move as many as 60,000 civilians to. It is the eastern side of the Dnipro River, not the western side.

— Andrew E. Kramer and Matthew Mpoke Bigg

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Russian Disarray on Display as Ukraine’s Forces Advance on Two Fronts

Credit…Nicole Tung for The New York Times

LYMAN, Ukraine — In front of the mayor’s office in Lyman lay a heap of Russian propaganda posters, apparently freshly torn down and partially burned in a fire that went out in a thin fall drizzle on Sunday.

Decorated in the white, blue and red colors of the Russian flag, they were soggy from the rain. One explained the significance of Russian state symbols, the Russian flag and national anthem. “The national anthem of Russia is loved in our country,” a partially burned poster read.

A day after Ukrainian forces retook control of Lyman, a strategic railway hub in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, a picture began to emerge of the destruction left behind by fleeing Russian soldiers who had occupied the city for months. In a hasty withdrawal, they abandoned official documents, military vehicles and the bodies of their comrades.

After weeks of fierce fighting, Russian forces retreated from Lyman on Saturday, just one day after President Vladimir V. Putin illegally declared the surrounding region to be part of Russia citing what Ukraine and its Western allies have called sham referendums in territories partly under Russian control.

The intense battle for the city was evident on Sunday afternoon. Whole city blocks were panoramic scenes of collapsed brick and corrugated tin roofing. A local bakery, Seagul, was reduced to a heap of rubble. Its bread trucks were still parked in a lot waiting for morning distributions that wouldn’t come.

Credit…Nicole Tung for The New York Times

About 5,000 of the pre-war population of 22,000 remained in Lyman, the police said.

“Look at the destroyed houses,” said Roman Plakhaniv, a lieutenant in the Kramatorsk district police force, who arrived on Sunday to patrol the city. “This was a nice, normal town. People from another country came and destroyed it.”

Signs of Russia’s plans to put down roots were abundant. Inside city hall were notices explaining how to apply for building permits under the occupation authority and with phone numbers to call to apply for a Russian pension. A stamped and signed document left on a table announced “the creation of the committee for reviewing controversial questions in distributing social assistance.” It was formed on Sept. 9.

Copies of a newspaper called Donetsk Republic were scattered about on the floor. An edition dated Sept. 15 ran an article under the headline, “Defense of the Republic and Borders of Russia” — apparently intended to tamp down worry as Ukraine’s counteroffensive gained ground.

“The President of Russia Vladimir V. Putin announced that in the course of the special operation Russia is not losing military strength and will defend its sovereignty,” the article explained.

In one office was a poster emblazoned with a Z, a symbol of Russia’s invasion, that said, “We don’t abandon our own.”

The only accessible road into Lyman is muddy and rutted, crossing a pontoon bridge over the roiling water of the Oskil River, which the Russian military had briefly tried to maintain as a defensive barrier last month, before falling back farther.

Dense pine forest surrounding the town had slowed and frustrated both sides in the fighting, and now show signs of the ferocity of the artillery battles in severed branches scattered along the road. Whole villages along the route are in ruins.

At one point, the road into town passed the remnants of what appeared to be a Ukrainian attack on Russian soldiers trying to flee the city in a civilian van. The vehicle’s doors were open and sleeping bags, pads, military coats, rations, shoes and other supplies had spilled out.

Nearby, on the side of the road, were anti-tank mines and the bodies of half a dozen Russian soldiers. A line of Ukrainian military trucks rumbled by, as a demining team checked the bodies for boobytraps, using ropes to tug and jostle them from a distance in case they exploded.

Asked how the Russians had died, one of the soldiers on the demining team shrugged. “They came to a foreign land,” he said.

— Andrew E. Kramer

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

China’s ‘Absurd’ Covid Propaganda Stirs Rebellion

“We have won the great battle against Covid!”

“History will remember those who contributed!”

“Extinguish every outbreak!”

These are among the many battle-style slogans that Beijing has unleashed to rally support around its top-down, zero-tolerance coronavirus policies.

China is now one of the last places on earth trying to eliminate Covid-19, and the Communist Party has relied heavily on propaganda to justify increasingly long lockdowns and burdensome testing requirements that can sometimes lead to three tests a week.

The barrage of messages — online and on television, loudspeakers and social platforms — has become so overbearing that some citizens say it has drowned out their frustrations, downplayed the reality of the country’s tough coronavirus rules and, occasionally, bordered on the absurd.

citywide lockdown in Shanghai this spring, Jason Xue had no more food left in his fridge. Yet when he clicked on the government’s social media account, he noticed that a top city official had vowed to “make every possible endeavor” to address food shortages.

Government assistance didn’t show up until four weeks later, Mr. Xue said.

“I was extremely angry, panicked and despairing,” said Mr. Xue, who works for a financial communications firm. He eventually turned to neighbors for help. “The propaganda was resolute and decisive, but it was different from the reality that we didn’t even know whether we could have the next meal.”

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has made controlling the virus a “top political priority.” Thousands of state media outlets and social media accounts have echoed Beijing’s “zero Covid” policy and praised the sacrifice of workers trying to control Covid-19.

at least 120 Covid-related propaganda phrases have been created since the beginning of the pandemic.

blocking them from seeking safety.

Videos of the episode were posted online and quickly deleted by censors, who said people should “at least bring masks before escaping from buildings,” even when an earthquake is “highly destructive.”

For some, the video was a reminder of how the government had used the pandemic to tighten its grip on their private lives, telling them when they can leave their apartments, what kind of food they can buy and what hospitals they can enter.

Kong Lingwanyu, a 22-year-old marketing intern in Shanghai, was upset that officials used the phrase “unless necessary” when describing restrictions around things like leaving the home, dining out or gathering with others.

The ‘Correctors’

In early April, the agricultural land around Chasiv Yar began to thaw. Mr. Khainus, the pro-Ukraine farmer, drove out to check a sunflower field. A Ukrainian military vehicle raced up. A soldier leaned out the window and fired an assault rifle, the bullets skipping up in the dirt. Mr. Khainus slammed on the brakes.

A Ukrainian commander he recognized, a man whom Mr. Khainus said he had complained about before, jumped out. The commander greeted him with a punch to the head, Mr. Khainus said, and then smashed him in the face with a rifle butt.

He does not remember much after that. He shared photographs of himself lying in a hospital bed with two black eyes. Military and law enforcement officials declined to comment.

The Days Ahead

Few in Chasiv Yar are confident that the town will stay in government hands.

Mr. Khainus said the Russians were steadily moving closer to his sunflower fields. About a week ago, a friend’s house was shelled. A day later, in an online messaging channel, separatist supporters said Mr. Khainus should be next, calling him a “hero” — adding an epithet.

Is he scared?

“Why should I be?” he said. “They’re nobodies.”

Mr. Tsyhankov, the retired dump truck driver nostalgic for the Soviet times, seemed pained by all of the bloodshed but did not blame the Russians or the separatists. “They’re doing the right thing,” he said. “They’re fighting for the Russian language and their territory.”

Ukraine’s action to reclaim Russia-occupied areas in the Kharkiv region forced Moscow to withdraw its troops to prevent them from being surrounded.

Ukrainian troops on Sunday successfully pressed their swift counteroffensive in the northeastern part of the country, even as a nuclear power plant in the Russia-occupied south completely shut down in a bid to prevent a radiation disaster as fighting raged nearby.

Kyiv’s action to reclaim Russia-occupied areas in the Kharkiv region forced Moscow to withdraw its troops to prevent them from being surrounded, leaving behind significant numbers of weapons and munitions in a hasty retreat as the war marked its 200th day on Sunday.

A jubilant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mocked the Russians in a video address Saturday night, saying that “the Russian army in these days is demonstrating the best that it can do — showing its back.”

He posted a video of Ukrainian soldiers hoisting the national flag over Chkalovske, another town reclaimed in the counteroffensive.

While most attention was focused on the counteroffensive, Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator said the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, was reconnected to Ukraine’s electricity grid, allowing engineers to shut down its last operational reactor to safeguard the plant amid the fighting.

The plant, one of the 10 biggest atomic power stations in the world, has been occupied by Russian forces since the early days of the war. Ukraine and Russia have traded blame for shelling around it.

Since a Sept. 5 fire caused by shelling knocked the plant off transmission lines, the reactor was powering crucial safety equipment in so-called “island mode” — an unreliable regime that left the plant increasingly vulnerable to a potential nuclear accident.

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation at the plant in a call Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron, the Kremlin said.

Ukraine’s military chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyy, announced that its forces had recaptured about 160 square miles since the counteroffensive began in early September. He noted that Ukrainian troops are only about 30 miles from the border with Russia.

Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Ukrainian troops have reclaimed control of more than 40 settlements in the Kharkiv region, noting he couldn’t give a precise number because the operation is still unfolding.

Defense Minister Anna Malyar said Ukrainian forces are firing shells containing propaganda into areas where they seek to advance.

“One of the ways of informational work with the enemy in areas where there is no Internet is launching propaganda shells,” she wrote on Facebook. “Before moving forward, our defenders say hello to the Russian invaders and give them the last opportunity to surrender. Otherwise, only death awaits them on Ukrainian soil.”

The Russian pullback marked the biggest battlefield success for Ukrainian forces since they thwarted a Russian attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, at the start of the nearly seven-month war. The Kharkiv campaign came as a surprise for Moscow, which had relocated many of its troops from the region to the south in expectation of a counteroffensive there.

In an awkward attempt to save face, the Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday the troops’ withdrawal from Izyum and other areas was intended to strengthen Moscow’s forces in the neighboring Donetsk region to the south.

The explanation sounded similar to the justification Russia gave for pulling back from the Kyiv region earlier this year when they failed to take the capital.

The Russian forces around Izyum have been key for Moscow’s effort to capture the Donetsk region, and their pullback will dramatically weaken its capability to press its offensive on Ukrainian strongholds of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk to the south.

A map released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday showed its forces retreating to a narrow patch of land along the border.

Igor Strelkov, who led Russia-backed forces when the separatist conflict in the Donbas erupted in 2014, mocked the Russian Defense Ministry’s explanation of the retreat, suggesting that handing over Russia’s own territory near the border was a “contribution to a Ukrainian settlement.”

The retreat drew an angry response from Russian military bloggers and nationalist commentators, who bemoaned it as a major defeat and urged the Kremlin to step up its war efforts. Many scathingly criticized Russian authorities for continuing with fireworks and other lavish festivities in Moscow that marked a city holiday on Saturday despite the debacle in Ukraine.

Just as the Russian forces were hastily pulling back from Izyum under Ukrainian fire on Saturday, Putin attended the opening of a huge Ferris wheel at a Moscow park, although it reportedly closed for repairs soon thereafter. He also inaugurated a new transport link and a sports arena.

The action underlined the Kremlin’s narrative that the war it calls a “special military operation” was going according to plan without affecting Russians’ everyday lives.

Pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov criticized the Moscow festivities as a grave mistake.

“The fireworks in Moscow on a tragic day of Russia’s military defeat will have extremely serious political consequences,” Markov wrote on his messaging app channel. “Authorities mustn’t celebrate when people are mourning.”

In a sign of a potential rift in the Russian leadership, Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed head of Chechnya, said the retreat resulted from blunders by the Russian military leadership.

“They have made mistakes and I think they will draw the necessary conclusions,” Kadyrov said. “If they don’t make changes in the strategy of conducting the special military operation in the next day or two, I will be forced to contact the leadership of the Defense Ministry and the leadership of the country to explain the real situation on the ground.”

Despite Ukraine’s gains, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the head of NATO warned Friday the war would likely drag on for months. Blinken said the conflict was entering a critical period and urged the West to keep supporting Ukraine through what could be a difficult winter.

The U.S. and its NATO allies have been working to make sure that Ukrainian forces have “the things that they most need right on the moment,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“And we are seeing the Ukrainians with a tremendous patriotic resolve — but also after eight years of joint training with the U.S. military, going back to 2014 with the Crimea invasion — we’re seeing the combined effect of collaborative training and resources that are right on time right at the moment, showing that Vladimir Putin’s grandiose dissolutions about what he might do in Ukraine are hollow and they’re failing,” he told CNN.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Propaganda

HOW MUCH DAMAGE CAN THEY DO?

WHAT DOES RUSSIA ALLEGE?

WHAT IS THE RESPONSE OF UKRAINE AND THE WEST?

Spoofing Chinese propaganda:

The ‘Correctors’

The Days Ahead

The State of the War