Media Manipulation in the Ukraine War
Glenn Diesen at the UN Security Council, February 22, 2026
1:26
Lippman recognized that liberal democracies tended to present conflicts
as a struggle between good and evil to mobilize public support for war.
The great risk according to Lippman was that once the public believed
that the adversary was pure evil, the public and the politicians
would reject any workable peace because in a struggle between good and evil,
compromise is appeasement and peace demands that war is fought,
as good must defeat evil.
1:58
This is deeply problematic because the point of departure
in international security is the recognition of the security competition
as efforts by one country to enhance its security
can diminish the security of others.
2:56
It's very evident that the media does not always report on objective reality.
3:12
Recognizing the losses of the Ukrainian armed forces
threatens to reduce public support for the war.
Recognizing that sanctions do not work threatens to reduce public support for sanctions.
3:53
We're told that Russia is unsuccessful in Ukraine,
yet it can also conquer Europe if we don't stop it.
4:16
The foundational narrative in the media during this conflict
has been the so-called unprovoked invasion by Russia.
6:07
George Kennan stated in an interview back in 1998
that NATO expansionism would start a new cold war.
6:49
Angela Merkel once recognized that offering Ukraine a membership action plan
for NATO would be interpreted by Moscow as a declaration of war.
7:36
In February of 2014, NATO countries nonetheless backed a coup
to pull Ukraine into the NATO orbit.
8:00
For a brief moment in 2014, the western media reported
that the new authorities in Kiev were attacking Donbas,
killing civilians who rejected the legitimacy of the coup,
and CNN even questioned if the people of Donbas would ever again
allow Kiev to rule over them.
8:17
Yet soon thereafter, full media conformity was implemented
and the resistance in Donbas was portrayed as a mere Russian operation
aiming to oppose Ukraine's democraticization.
8:31
We have now learned that on the first day after the coup,
American and British intelligence agencies set up a partnership
with the new intelligence chief in Kiev to rebuild Ukrainian intelligence services
from scratch as a proxy against Russia.
8:50
We learned that members of parliament were arrested.
Some were stripped of their citizenship.
The media was purged. The Russian language was purged.
The Orthodox church was purged.
And civilians in Donbas were killed for year after year.
9:05
Nationalists and Western financed NGO's undermined the Minsk 2 peace agreement
and set clear redlines for Zelenskyy not to implement
the peace mandate which he had won in 2019.
9:20
A top adviser to the former president of France argued that
the signing of the US Ukraine Charter on strategic partnership in November 2021
quote convinced Russia that it must attack or be attacked.
I think it's safe to say that had Russia or China done any of these things,
say to Mexico, we would have surely have defined it as provocative.
9:41
So to sell the story of a Russian war of conquest,
the media from day one promoted the notion of a fullscale invasion,
suggesting that Russia uses full military might to conquer Ukraine
as opposed to forcing UK Ukraine to restore its neutrality.
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