EUvsDisinfo: Freedom from liberties (original title: Freedom from liberties)
The Kremlin is creating a reality in which Russian society is granted a special form of freedom: freedom from… liberties. A kind of liberation from the “burden“ of protesting, from the “complexity“ to make political choices, from the responsibility to demand accountability from the authorities. Even in extreme cases – liberation from life itself.
Amid the systematic destruction of the pillars of a free society inside Russia, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine is feigning a sudden and passionate concern for the rule of law in Ukraine through a coordinated campaign aimed at global audiences in English, German, French and Arabic.
This ostentatious reaction to the new legislation on Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies, proposed by Zelensky and sparking protests in Ukraine and among its international partners, illustrates the typical - and more than typical - hypocrisy of the Kremlin.
The Kremlin uses this hypocrisy as an important tool to justify the apathy it instills among the Russian population and the neo-Stalinist control it imposes on them. When you want to “sell“ to public opinion a lawless system, you must constantly present the alternative as chaotic, corrupt and controlled from the outside.
Attribution and denial
Kremlin propaganda spreads in different languages its leading narrative that Ukraine is not a sovereign state, but simply a theater in which world powers pull the strings of the puppets.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) do not present themselves as authentic institutions that arose from the internal needs of Ukraine, but as “instruments of Washington to control Ukraine“. This narrative is also repeated on the German-language channel RT, which calls them a tool for “Western external control“.
The application of these labels has a dual purpose. It denies the Ukrainian people the ability to build their own country and at the same time attributes to others the Kremlin's own obsession with control and a top-down system of governance. In a system where all power emanates from one place, the very idea of independent institutions is alien and must be recast as a form of foreign domination.
The Ghost of Civil Society
First, Ukrainian citizens organized and protested a controversial law limiting the powers of anti-corruption agencies. The incident provoked such a strong public and international backlash that the authorities were forced to withdraw the law. The Kremlin propaganda media gave a simple and cynical explanation: the protests were fake.
Kremlin channels such as the English-language Sputnik suggested that the protests were "staged" with staged reports on "pre-printed posters, some of them even in English". The narrative on Arabic-language platforms is that “there is nothing spontaneous here... Americans are behind the protests“.
In Russia, where protests by ordinary people are systematically crushed in the streets – as in the first days of a full-scale invasion – an intolerable contradiction arises in this country when a real, functioning civil society exists in a neighboring country. Accordingly, it must be denied and presented as an act of hostile foreign forces. The Kremlin is thus telling its own people that the lack of protests is not repression, but a form of stability.
The last few days are also reminiscent of how Moscow reacted to the Maidan protests in 2013, when the Ukrainian people rose up against the Yanukovych regime. The Kremlin is simply rejecting the possibility of ordinary people expressing their political views and their desire to control their destinies without the need for a “strong leader“.
The smokescreen of corruption
To complete the picture, Kremlin disinformation campaigners have flooded the media, especially in the Middle East, with stories of personal corruption. They have portrayed the legislative crisis as a desperate attempt by President Zelensky to save himself and have suggested that he acted only because he learned that NABU had “prepared evidence and criminal proceedings against him and his closest associates.”
In addition to undermining international support for Ukraine and undermining Zelensky’s leadership, these narratives are also aimed at audiences inside Russia. The goal is to reinforce the cynical perception that power is inherently corrupt and democratic accountability is a facade. This message helps to reassure a disenfranchised population – If democracy, with all its civil liberties, is so rotten, why should we even fight for democracy?
A political cage is being built
The Kremlin’s messages to the anti-corruption protests in Ukraine represent a well-calculated strategy of psychological manipulation. Its distorted mirror makes Ukraine appear chaotic, controlled from the outside, and completely corrupt. The implication is that this is the inevitable result when a country embraces the freedoms – which the Kremlin is already trampling on in Russia.
Disinformation campaigns of this kind provide a justification for the construction of a kind of political cage in Russia. With these messages, the regime seeks to present its aggressive war not as an imperial conquest, but as a preemptive strike against the “chaos” of democracy. They also provide comfort to the population, which sacrifices its rights in the name of a dreamed-of stability.
The Kremlin's ultimate goal is to make the cell look like a fortress, and the silence of the subjects – as the quiet confidence of people protected by the dangerous illusion of freedom.
Let us not be deceived.
Other topics in this week's EuvsDisinfo roundup:
- State-run Rossiya 1, which has been under the EU's restrictive measures since February 2022, has been poisoning the Union's relations with China through historical analogies. The channel suggests that the recent EU-China meeting is a "new opium war" aimed at subduing China economically. This conspiracy theory grossly distorts the Opium Wars of the 19th century and portrays the EU as an exploitative colonial power that wants China to "stop production" and Europe to supply harmful substitutes. This narrative exploits China's historical traumas and casts Russia as its "reliable and loyal ally" against Western economic imperialism. In fact, last week's EU-China summit addressed real concerns about China's possible material support for the Russian military industry and called on Beijing to use its influence in the UN Security Council to support a just peace in Ukraine. This manipulation reveals a classic Kremlin tactic - using historical grievances to divide international partners and portray Russia as a defender against Western "colonialism" - even though Moscow itself is waging an imperial conflict against Ukraine.
- In an effort to keep up with the rest of the Kremlin's network of propagandists, the publication “Rossiyskaya Gazeta“ – which also falls under EU sanctions – invented the absurd story of an “open church of Satan“ with which to smear Ukrainian forces. The publication wrote that Russian soldiers had found an underground “church of Satan“ in the occupied village of Ulakly. The find explained the so-called “cruelty“ of the Ukrainians. The apparently fabricated evidence includes a piece of cloth with grammatically incorrect Ukrainian text that appears to have been automatically translated from Russian, placed next to a gong and black candles in a basement. It is important to note that Russia captured Ulaanbaatar on February 23, 2025, but this "revelation" was not announced until July 23 — the same day that the Supreme Court of Russia declared the "International Satanic Movement" non-existent. for an extremist organization. The five-month gap between the takeover and the “investigation“ indicates internal coordination with legal circles. This is another classic Kremlin tactic — dehumanization, in which enemies are portrayed as the literal embodiment of evil in order to justify atrocities.
- Pro-Kremlin disinformation sources continue to repeat familiar victim narratives. They baselessly claim that Western countries are preparing an attack on Russia by 2030, allegedly citing statements from NATO. This disinformation uses the classic tactic of projection — if NATO is discussing how to defend itself from possible Russian aggression, then the West is planning offensive actions. However, the theory ignores the fact that NATO's 2030 initiative focuses on adapting to security challenges, not planning attacks. At the same time, Russia launched an unjustified full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. NATO's Strategic Concept of the same year identifies Russia as the "most significant threat" to the alliance. for European security, but explicitly states that NATO “does not pose a threat to the Russian Federation“. The described case illustrates that the Kremlin suffers from the eternal victim complex – the Russian imperial war is presented as defensive, and the legitimate collective defense – as evidence of Western aggression.
EUvsDisinfo/ translation: Representation of the European Commission in Bulgaria