Disinfolklore (13)
Russia's Fake Demonstrators - Disinfolklore is a new analytical method to parse disinformation.
As a diplomat establishing the facts in relation to Russian Disinfolklore, the first Ukrainian word I learned was “Titushka.” Nowadays, a Titushka is any astroturf protester who, like the current pro-Russia demonstrators in Moldova, or Ireland, or the U.S. Senate is paid to foment anti-democratic revolution and violently suppress organic expressions of support for democracy.
The first Titushka was Vadim Titushka. Titushka had violently attacked two Ukrainian journalists at a demonstration in late 2013 in Kyiv. The protests had been sparked by the then Ukrainian president. That president had refused to sign the treaty with the European Uniono which he had been elected to ratify. These Euro-Maidan protests (as they were then known) morphed into the Revolution of Dignity in February 2014.
Titushka (and his violent allies) were being paid by Russia via the four Russian oligarchs who bankrolled the then pro-Russia ruling party in Ukraine - the Party of the Regions. Yanukovich, the pro-Russia Party of the Region’s then president of Ukraine, was impeached by the Ukrainian Parliament in February 2014. This is the event Russian Disinfolklorists (and their Useful Idiots) characterise as a “coup.”
Note the mirroring involved in characterising a democratic event (a sovereign Parliament voting democratically to impeach a president, in accordance with Ukraine’s constitution) as a “coup.” In previous episodes of Disinfolklore we have encountered: Events are characterised as their polar opposite. Russia carries out an attack which it calls a “provocation” which it blames on Ukraine. Russia then uses an attack Russia carried out as an excuse to execute a further attack. Accusation in a Mirror is common to almost all examples of genocide:
This mirroring is also, umm, mirrored by Russia’s countering of genuine protests by fake protests. We have already seen in Disinfolklore (1) how the use of a colour in the folklore-inspired description Russia used for its occupying forces in Crimea in 2014 subverted the genuine Colour Revolutions in Ukraine and elsewhere after 2006.
So this “mirroring” technique as a Disinfolklore creation and forging methodology that Russia uses is very widespread. We shall refer again and again to it in Disinfolklore. Mirror, mirror on the wall, and all that!
By January 2014 due to a process known to linguists as Semantic Spread (literally: The spread of meaning) - Titushka was being commonly used to signify any paid protestor who violently attacked genuine demonstrators or who simply acted to provide a cassus belli to police seeking to suppress violently the freedom of assembly and freedom of expression guaranteed by law.
Let’s simplify this routine:
1. The Russian State, through the pro-Russia political party it funds in Ukraine, pays some corrupt Ukrainian police and Ukrainian Titushka (since 2014 the Ukrainian police has undergone a number of highly successful structural reforms which I shall deal with in later episodes of Disinfolklore).
2. The Russia-funded Titushka violently attack Ukrainian protesters who are demonstrating against Russia’s subversion of democracy in Ukraine.
3. The wholly Russia fomented violence is used as an excuse by the the Russia-corrupted Ukrainian police to violently suppress legitimate demonstrations. Russian Disinfolklore then promotes troll that Ukraine is in anarchy and that Russia is required to intervene to free its “little brother” from the cycle of violence.
This is the routine and pattern that characterises the daily ebb and flow of tension and violence that was wholly provoked by Russia during the November 2013 - February 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv (and across Ukraine).
Russia funded the Anti-Maidan protests in cities across Ukraine which in only parts of Ukraine - Luhansk city, Donetsk city and Crimea - “succeeded” in provoking Russia’s armed occupation of parts of Ukraine which lasts until today. Russia fomented this chaos in Odesa, Zaporizhzia, Kropyvnytskyi (formerly Kirivohrad), Kharkiv, Dnipro, and in many other cities including President Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih.
As part of my job as a diplomat in Ukraine 2015 - 2022 I spoke, on many occasions, to elected officials, activists and senior police officers who supported Ukraine’s independence from Russia’s violence against Ukrainian democracy. Memorably, one elected official in Kryvyi Rih told me that there were days during February 2014 when many residents felt that Kryvyi Rih would fall to Russian occupiers, as Luhansk and Donetsk cities fell to the Russian occupiers between April 2014 and September 2014. According to eyewitnesses like this elected official it was only due to the huge numbers of Ukrainians who resisted the Russia-fomented violence by going out in their millions, that Ukraine secured victory against Russia at that time.
An English MP together with a Ukrainian journalist reported their analysis of the hacked contents of email account of the former Russian deputy prime minister Vladislav Surkov who had been in charge of organising these fake “protests.”
We will return again and again in Disinfolklore to what I call Russia’s Closed Loop Self-Provocation Cycle. Russia provokes the violent events it then uses to justify Russia’s further violence in Ukraine, and now in Moldova and Georgia.
One of the most perfect examples of this self-provocation as strategy is in Enerhodar which has been occupied since 6th March 2022. There are only a few days since occupying Enerhodar when Russia has not attacked its own forces in Enerhodar and blamed Ukraine. Enerhodar is the site of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant - I have catalogued a large number of these events as part of my Counter Disinfolklore work @DecodingTrolls on Twitter. I was the OSCE’s environmental security adviser for Zaporizhzhia region 2018 - 2022 so I take a particular interest in Russia’s use of its occupation of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as part of its tactic of scaring Europeans into appeasing Russia and not supporting Ukraine’s resistance to genocide.
In Enerhodar (and even within the perimeter of the nuclear power station it is itself occupying), Russia stages battles between its own forces. These are information warfare content-creating events whose purpose is to neutralise support for Ukraine in the international community. In doing this, among other results, Russia expects to troll bystanders (NATO states) into thinking that Ukraine is somehow to blame for attacking its own nuclear power plant.
Here is testimony from a native Russian-language speaking resident from occupied Enerhodar, the town where Europe’s largest nuclear power station is located, expresses more perfectly here than I ever could the special horror of the Closed Loop Self-Provocation Cycle:
We will return again and again to different examples in Russian Disinfolklore of how Russia uses protests it organises to provoke its own genocide against Ukrainians. The simplest way to conceptualise this aspect of Russian Disinfolklore is thus:
