The ICCRA supported the statement regarding the tribunal over propagandists of the RF

The International Center for Countering Russian Aggression supported the statement of public organizations to the UN regarding the punishment of Russian propagandists within the framework of the International Tribunal against the President of Russia Vladimir Putin and officials of the Russian Federation who are responsible for the resolution of the war of aggression against Ukraine.

The statement indicated that the information resources of the Russian Federation and Belarus engaged in war propaganda, incitement to enmity and violence, used genocidal rhetoric, and called for the destruction of the Ukrainian people.

“Since 2014, Russian propaganda has not disdain anything to justify its aggression, creating videos about boys allegedly crucified by Ukrainian soldiers, prisoners burned alive and other crimes that have never been proven, and some have even been refuted. The more brutal and cynical the fictional story was, which became the “new norm” for Russian propaganda, the more it charged the population of the Russian Federation, which continues to support the so-called “special military operation.”

During the large-scale aggression, Russian propaganda calls the terrible crimes in Buch-Irpen-Borodyanka as fakes, and transfers the burial in the liberated Izyum to the Ukrainian army. Similarly, it is already a “tradition” to announce one’s own crimes, attributing them to the Ukrainian army, such as the shelling of the ZNPP, the mining of the Kakhovska HPP dam. The top of the rhetoric of Russian propagandists is their calls for resettlement, retraining of an entire nation, or murder, and in the case of propagandist Krasovsky, the level of hate became the calls to exterminate children who talk about the crimes of the Russian army,” the statement says.

The special tribunal should conduct a thorough investigation and bring to justice those who deliberately contributed to the escalation and justification of aggression against Ukraine, spread disinformation, calls for violent war, hate speech, coordinated information campaigns aimed at calling the population to violate human rights, aggression, war crimes .

Among them, first of all, but not exclusively, the following persons:

1. Dmitriy Kiselyov, Deputy General Director of VGTRK
2. Vladimir Solovyov, presenter
3. Olga Skabeeva, propagandist and presenter of the talk show “60 Minutes”
4. Yekaterina Andreyeva, presenter, ORT
5. Yevhen Popov, propagandist and host of the talk show “60 Minutes”
6. Roman Babayan, propagandist
7. Zakhar Prilepin, propagandist
8. Anton Krasovsky, propagandist
9. Arkady Mamontov, propagandist
10. Graham Phillips, propagandist

ALSO TO THE LIST OF INFORMATION SUBJECTS:

1. Russia 24
2. The first channel
3. Russia Today
4. LifeNews
5. Russian Ministry of Defense TV channel ZVezda
6. NTV
7. STS
8. TNT
9. Channel 5, St. Petersburg
10. TV channel Tsargrad
11. Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper and radio

“When it comes to the responsibility of Kremlin propagandists, it is not a desire to punish just for words,” commented the director of the International Center for Countering Russian Aggression, an officer of the 95th separate air assault brigade Yuriy Kochevenko. – As some say, “You cannot punish simply for words, because there is freedom of speech in the modern world . And we should not turn into racists who persecute for this.” But the fact is that it is not just about words. If they were one of the voices announcing some point of view we do not agree with, e.g. about “Russian peace” etc., we could have a discussion on this topic.

But they don’t just directly call to kill Ukrainians, destroy the civilian population, they don’t just deny the right itself  of the existence of our nation, they don’t just deny basic human principles and values, such as freedom of religion, freedom of speech, free choice of sexual orientation, they created a system, in which isolated a whole group of people, instilling them with this hatred and directing them to commit these crimes.

I personally realised this very well, talking with Russian prisoners of war, who told me in all seriousness and sincerity that they believed that the Ukrainian military were Nazis who mock and kill the civilian population, who want to destroy Russia and the Russian people, who shoot for the Russian language, – noted the director of the IC PRA. – They carried a grenade with them to detonate and not surrender, because they believed that we were mocking the prisoners of war, that we were maiming them. And all this was the result of the propaganda machine, which was created in Russia, and which is an integral part of the Russian killing machine.

Therefore, the responsibility of Russian propagandists, in my opinion, is absolutely equal to the responsibility of those who give criminal orders and those who carry them out, destroying Ukrainians and carrying out aggression both against our country and against the entire free world,” Yuriy Kochevenko emphasized.

Valentyna Bykova