Russian tabloid distorts Washington Post report on Ukraine to fit Kremlin propaganda narratives

The Moscow government-owned popular weekly Argumenty i Fakty (AiF) published a Russian language summary of a Washington Post report about hardships Ukrainian civilians could face this coming winter due to Russia’s systematic targeting of Ukraine’s power grid.

With more than 1.3 million subscribers to its print copy and about 30 million daily page views, AiF is one of Russia’s most popular Soviet-era media outlets.

The Post’s piece, headlined “Ukraine’s winter energy woes expected to weigh heavily on a tired people,” examined the devastating effect of Russia’s daily strikes civilian targets. The piece included interviews with three Ukrainians — an anonymous official, a researcher, and an activist.

Ukraine’s power sector and people suffer ahead of winter - The Washington Post

The Post article quoted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who told the United Nations General Assembly, “This is how Putin is preparing for winter: hoping to torment millions of Ukrainians, ordinary families, women, children, ordinary towns, ordinary villages. Putin wants to leave them in the dark and cold this winter, forcing Ukraine to suffer and surrender.”

In summarizing that piece, AiF cherry-picked pieces from The Post and used them out of context, including that the Ukrainians’ support for their armed forces is declining. It also invented a quote stating that “Ukrainian officials fear mass [anti-government] protests” this winter due to power outages.

“The Washington Post writes, citing an anonymous Ukrainian official, that the number of [Ukrainians] ready to make territorial concessions to resolve the conflict is growing. The number of people dissatisfied with the actions of Western allies is also growing,” AiF wrote.

The AiF summary of the Post report is misleading.

AiF distorted the original article, omitting key parts, misattributed quotes and changing the wording. The resulting piece aligned the Washington Post reporting with the Kremlin’s anti-Kyiv, anti-West propaganda narratives. Namely, that Ukrainians are ready to give up defending their country, stop supporting their armed forces and leave the occupied territories to Russia.

First, the Washington Post described Russian aggression in Ukraine as warfare — AiF translated that as “conflict.” The Kremlin in 2022 invented a law criminalizing usage of the word “war” to describe its invasion, approving only terms such as “special military operation” and “conflict.”

The AiF translation also omitted parts of The Post report that talk about Russia’s hostile actions at the core of Ukrainians’ suffering.

Second, AiF’s claim that a senior Ukrainian official complained to The Post about declining popular support for its armed forces is false and taken out of context.

There is no attribution to any Ukrainians in The Post story for that passage, which explains that diminished resources among some Ukrainian civilians may leave them less able to provide support for battlefield units. The passage states: “[M]any fighting units are heavily supported by civilian donations to purchase needed equipment — backing that is likely to fall off as people run out of resources.”

Third, AiF’s claim that The Post reported that more Ukrainians are ready to buy peace with Russia, even if it implies territorial concessions, is also misattributed and taken out of context.

No “senior Ukrainian official” but Anton Grushetsky, executive director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, told The Post that recent surveys showed an increase of Ukrainians’ “readiness for territorial concessions” to 32% compared to the last year’s 10%.

But AiF omitted the rest of Grushetsky’s quote, in which he said: “[T]he population is overwhelmingly against a peace with Russia ‘at any cost’ — and most likely will remain so.”

Fourth, AiF’s claim that The Post article reported a growing number of Ukrainians dissatisfied with the West is distorted. The Post actually quoted Victoria Voytsitska, a civil society leader and former parliamentary deputy, who explained to the newspaper under what circumstances such a change could happen.

“Dissatisfaction with Ukraine’s Western partners could grow ... if they do not provide the country with extra air defenses and continue to deny Kyiv forces permission to carry out deep strikes on Russian territory.”

Translating reports by foreign mainstream outlets to push the distorted summaries onto the domestic audiences is a key part of Russia’s disinformation strategy aimed to create the illusion that Kremlin propaganda narratives are gaining traction with independent Western media.