Director General of UNIAN: February 24 events not surprise for Ukraine

The events of February 24 came as no surprise for Ukraine since Russia starts all its wars with mass information campaigns, General Director of UNIAN agency Mikhail Ganetsky said in an interview to Report.

"You can better see from the outside who is on top in the information war between Russia and Ukraine. The fight against disinformation has become one of the most important tasks of the Ukrainian press and public sector since 2014. The events of February 24 came as no surprise for Ukraine because Russia starts all its wars with mass information campaigns," he noted.

According to the UNIAN chief, Azerbaijan faced the same situation during the 1988 Karabakh events in the Soviet era. Later, the Russian propaganda machine started to make up fake stories about Moldovan Nazis killing the Russian-speaking population in the Transnistria region:

"We witnessed this in Georgia in 2008. At that time, almost the whole world thought that Georgia was really attacking its citizens living in Ossetia. They did the same in 2014 - by conducting mass information campaigns among the Crimean audience, they stimulated the Russian-speaking population of the peninsula to take certain steps."

The director of UNIAN noted that Russia tried to convince the whole world that there was no other way out and that it was forced to take aggressive steps to defend itself:

"Since then, several organizations like Stop fake have been established in Ukraine. This organization is engaged in refuting the falsehoods spread by Russian propaganda. After 2014, one thing became clear: the Russians cannot be trusted, regardless of what their official bodies or media say. Even if they write the truth, it happens by accident."