‘Orwellian inside-out reality’: West’s ‘fake news’ motives must be exposed, Russian senator says

In an article published in the popular daily Izvestia on Tuesday, Senator Konstantin Kosachev wrote that the Western mass media distorted information about Russia’s intentions as the main weapon in their information war.

The main objective behind this is the creation of a myth that portrays Russia as an aggressor nation, the senator added.

“Thanks to all these Orwellian statements we are now living in some sort of an inside-out reality. In which unanimous informational baiting is called an anti-propaganda campaign, sanctions are called a reaction and boosting the military might of the world’s strongest bloc is called a reply to aggression,” the Russian senator wrote.

The policy of Western sanctions and White House claims of chemical weapons stored in Damascus also add to this twisted reality in which Russia is portrayed as a threat to democracy, he added.

Kosachev said that the spreading of propaganda myths had already helped Baltic nations to join the European Union and NATO before many of the Balkan states, and became a state-building principle for modern Ukraine. 

“The only way to fight this is to reply to all speculation about ‘Russia’s intentions’ by explanations of the real motives and objectives of [Western] foreign policy,” Kosachev wrote.

“The demagogy about attacks on values and freedoms should be countered with the truth about the geopolitical motives of Western nations’ actions. This is not a simple task, but it is manageable.” 

It is not the first time Kosachev has attacked the Western mass media for deliberately creating tensions with Russia. Last year, the senator wrote that ordinary Western citizens were often unaware of the real situation in foreign politics because they think only of media stereotypes.

“They almost believe that Russia is encircling the West – because its aircraft are registered in different places on the planet,” Kosachev joked.

Before that, the senator accused Western nations and their mass media of influencing Ukrainian society and leading it into the major political crisis of 2014 as well as internal military conflict.