It is very easy to get lost in the massive flows of disinformation, manipulation of facts and fake news when it comes to the Ukrainian crises.

”Putin, the only Russian beaten by a Ukrainian is Povetkin”, reads the text on a protester’s poster in Zaporiggya, a mostly Russian-speaking city in the central east of Ukraine. This is a reference to a famous boxing match last October between Ukrainian boxer Klitschko and Russian boxer Povetkin, which Klitschko won.

What those people in Zaporiggya are trying to say is that there were no grounds for a military aggression on Ukraine’s territory. Initially, the Russian decision to allow Putin to use military force in Crimea was based on false information about deaths of Russian citizens there. Not only Ukrainian officials, but also the Consul General of Russia in Crimea and many others have denied that Russians face any threats in the half island in the south of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian television reported violent clashes taking place in the major Crimean city of Simferopol by showing videos captured during the recent confrontations in Kiev.

Unfortunately, that newsbreak is only a small piece of the informational war, which Ukraine has to resist now. A mighty and powerful propaganda machine tries to justify Russian invasion of its sovereign and independent neighbor.

This propaganda follows Goebbel’s example, Russian journalist Eugeny Kiselev publicly admits. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”.

And it works. Even here in Sweden I often have to explain that being an active Ukrainian does not automatically make me a nationalist. Isn’t it ridiculous? Fascism and extremism are no more than horrible labels put on my nation, no more than just a myth, based on the generalization and exaggeration of the role of small groups. Here is just one example: “Extreme nationalists” from the western part of Ukraine organized a massive action promoting the integrity of the Ukrainian territory, several days before the Russian decision to protect Russian speakers. These activists spoke only Russian.

Moreover, the “language” problem does not exist in the daily life of Ukrainian citizen. It is usually used as a PR tool during election campaigns. Ukraine is a multi-language country that is sometimes conditionally divided in a Ukrainian speaking west and Russian speaking east and south, including Crimea. However, to speak Russian does not mean to identify yourself with Russia as a nation and a state. In addition, among many other minorities there are a lot of Tatar people living in Crimea. They survived a forcible mass deportation during Soviet times and returned to their homeland after Ukraine got its independence. The executive body of Crimean Tatars has announced recently that they support the integrity of Ukraine.

At the same time, media outside of Ukraine cultivate people’s pseudo-confrontation on the language and ethnical ground. Russian TV reports thousands of “normal” people escaping from “extremist” Ukraine to Russia, showing pictures and videos from the Ukrainian – Polish crossing check point Shegyni-Medyka. It reports women begging Putin to protect their children from nationalists, showing a group of actresses travelling from one part of Ukraine to another. Such obvious and outrageous lies influence public opinion a lot, including the opinions of Ukrainians living in Crimea and in the Eastern part of Ukraine. The presence of mainstream Russian media is strong there, which means that anti-Ukrainian and anti-European propaganda do its job. Some people are really scared of their aggressive fellow citizens from the western regions, but the only source of that fear is a TV screen.

Do those people need “protection” from some imaginary enemy? A protection of the minorities is an inner task of a state. How many Russians live in Sweden? Is it even possible to assume that Putin will send tanks here to protect their rights?

There are too many parallels with European history. Hitler started his aggression with the excuse to protect people speaking Deutsch outside Germany. Milosevic had an idea of protection of ethnic Serbs. Now Putin wants to protect Russian speakers, when nobody is in danger. My mom is a Russian speaking Ukrainian living in Kyiv. Mr. Putin, she says Hi and asks to tell you that she doesn’t need your protection – her rights are not wounded in any way. Moreover, she is more concerned that you hide our ex-president wanted for mass murder and give Russian passports to our special forces hit men who were killing people on the streets of my hometown.