Russians are being shown some of the same distressing imagery from the war as the rest of the world, but with a big twist.
State television programs in Russia have not shied away from showing images of death and destruction in Ukraine. Viewers have seen corpses in the streets of Bucha, blasted-out cars at a train station in Kramatorsk and the remains of a hospital complex attacked in Mariupol. But the images are accompanied by rhetoric that blames Ukraine or the West for the attacks, or accuses the Ukrainian government of falsification. The word “fake” is thrown around constantly — in some cases printed in bright red letters across gruesome videos and photos. When the first photos and videos of the slaughter in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb, began emerging on April 3, Russian propagandists quickly responded by saying that the bodies in the streets were those of actors. “They call this evidence,” said a news host on Channel One. “This is yet another fake. The footage is staged.” On Telegram, an app with broadcasting capabilities, channels devoted to supposed “fakes” pump out the same message, falsely claiming, for example, that a closer look at a video of bodies strewn across Yablonska Street in Bucha shows one of the corpses raising an arm and another one standing up.
