According to Vladimir Putin's understanding of power, Ukraine belongs to Russia, to his empire.

By February 24, not everyone understood that.

With the attack Putin has ordered and the war he's waging across the country, everyone knows it.

The victims that his striving for power costs, the lives that he destroys in Ukraine and in Russia, play no role for the ruler in the Kremlin.

He declared war on Ukraine and on the entire free world.

Michael Hanfeld

responsible editor for feuilleton online and "media".

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The extent of this claim to power can be seen not only in the battlefield that the Russian army is turning Ukraine into, but also in the propaganda war that Putin is waging and that the European Union has embraced by sanctioning Russian state media.

Putin had previously imposed sanctions on foreign media, and he has shut down the last remaining domestic, independent media.

ARD and ZDF are also temporarily suspending reporting from Moscow.

With the new media law, any statement about the army that counteracts his statements about the war in Ukraine is classified as “fake news” and punished with up to fifteen years in prison.

But even that is not enough for him.

With the attack on Ukraine, he expands the combat zone - to us.

This can be seen, for example, in the fact that the Russian media authority Roskomnadzor sends threatening letters to German Internet companies in which it asks them not to distribute content from Ukrainian media customers.

Because of "violation of the order for the dissemination of information", web hosts, i.e. companies that transport customer content onto the Internet, are obliged to report "illegal" content to the producers within one day and ensure that it is deleted.

The relevant information is banned on the “territory of the Russian Federation”.

This means that Ukraine, which was attacked by Putin's troops, already belongs to Russia, according to his media regulator.

The fact that the letter was sent with reference to an order from the Russian Attorney General dated February 24 shows that Putin expected Ukraine to be quickly subdued.

twisted facts

The fact that this is not the case does not pose any fundamental problems for his propaganda.

It changes the vocabulary, but not the thrust.

RT DE, which can still be accessed on the Internet, continues to talk about the "denazification" of Ukraine, but no longer about a "special operation" but about war.

Of course, the “Nazis” in Kyiv are to blame for this.

The reversal of truth is declined in each individual point.

At RT DE, for example, the Russian army is not responsible for the fire at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.

It is said that the Ukrainian army caused this with a "monstrous provocation".

From the Ukrainian side it is said that the Russians started the fire at the nuclear power plant by shelling.

At RT, only the word of the Russian Ministry of Defense Igor Konashenkov applies.