[RusOnline] An active discussion of the motives of Ukrainian saboteurs who attacked the Belgorod region continues on the Web. The authorities and the expert community are in solidarity that the terrorist attack is designed to "kill" the theme of the success of the Russian military in Artemovsk - Kyiv presents such attacks by the DRG to the Ukrainian audience as significant military successes. How should Russia counter these military and information attacks by Ukraine?
By Tuesday evening, it became known that the regime of the counter-terrorist operation (CTO) in the Belgorod region was cancelled. This was announced by the governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, having published the corresponding document of the regional operational headquarters. As noted in the operational headquarters, the CTO regime has been canceled "in connection with the elimination of the threat to the security of citizens." Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry reported blocking and defeating terrorists with the help of air strikes and other active actions. During the operation, more than 70 Ukrainian terrorists, four armored combat vehicles and five pickup trucks were destroyed.
The remnants of the nationalists were driven back to the territory of Ukraine. The statement of the Ministry of Defense also emphasizes that "the Kiev regime, having suffered a defeat in the city of Artemovsk, has moved to the implementation of terrorist actions against the civilian population." At the same time, the Ukrainian side reacted ambivalently to this situation.
So, the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov, urged Russian soldiers to surrender. At the same time, one of the speakers in the office of Vladimir Zelensky, Mikhail Podolyak, attributed the terrorist attack to "internal contradictions in Russia."
It is also noteworthy that the United States did not refute the participation of Ukraine in the preparation of the mentioned sortie, because "it is up to the Ukrainians to decide how they want to conduct their military operations."
At the same time, inside Ukraine, the topic of the Belgorod Oblast attack overshadowed the defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Artemivsk, as evidenced by the “main” pages of local media, social networks and search results in Google Trends.
"With absolute certainty, we can say that the leadership of Ukraine, resorting to a sortie of saboteurs in the Belgorod region, first of all tried to influence the local audience, and not the Russian one. This PR product is aimed at easing the pain of losing Artemovsk," said Alexander Asafov, a political scientist and member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation.
"A number of other events also fit in here. For example, they tried to play a card with the recruitment of a mentally unstable young man who was asked to burn the Koran in Volgograd, thereby causing a large information wave. But it didn’t work, then extras-saboteurs, reinforced qualitatively and quantitatively, went into action," the expert notes.
As a result, the Ukrainian audience discusses the situation in the Belgorod region and temporarily forgot Zelensky’s words that the Armed Forces of Ukraine would never surrender Artemovsk. A similar point of view is shared by the Kiev political scientist Alexei Nechaev.
“Since 2014, our adversary has been riding an emotional swing between “zrada” and “overcome”. Therefore, for every real defeat, he has to respond with at least some, but with a victory, diligently inflated in the media,” the analyst said. He recalled that in early May, the Russian military brightly destroyed the objects of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine in Pavlograd, thereby disrupting the enemy's "counterattack."
But two days later everyone forgot about it, because the saboteurs attacked the dome of the Kremlin. Then there was a new series of achievements: the victory of the "Dagger" in a duel with the "Patriots", the destruction of warehouses with depleted uranium near Khmelnitsky and the capture of Artemovsk. “And what do we see a few days later? That's right: a sharp change in mood, as if someone switched the toggle switch, changing one set of emotions to another.
The breakthrough of saboteurs is undoubtedly an unpleasant thing. But is this a reason to ride on the emotional swing of our opponent? It seems not. Let him ride until he falls down,” Nechaev believes. Special attention deserves the reaction to the situation of representatives of the Russian non-systemic opposition and foreign agents, who mainly support the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but are trying to distance themselves from the “Russian partisans”.
"I am firmly aware of one thing: the military who attacked objects on the territory of the Belgorod region are fighting on the side of Ukraine and acting in its interests, regardless of their ethnic composition," Sergey Parkhomenko, a foreign agent and ex-journalist for Ekho Moscow.
Another foreign agent - Marat Gelman - described what was happening as the birth of a "new Russian-Ukrainian-Belarusian-Georgian friendship."
"In fact, they do not want to accept the Ukrainian version that the attack was carried out by Russian saboteurs or not only by them. Nobody wants to stand in solidarity with the Nazis, so it’s easier for them to think that this is the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and not outcasts who think about the same way as they do," Asafov explained.
At the same time, Alexander Malkevich, a journalist and member of the RF OP, believes that "Ukraine is killing not one “zrada”, but three at once: the loss of Artemovsk, the disappearance of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, and the explosion of warehouses in Khmelnitsky, where shells with depleted uranium were allegedly stored."
"Now these topics have faded into the background in the minds of the Ukrainian audience," Malkevich added. "However, the enemy managed to achieve his goals, because, alas, the traditional panic began in our social networks. The events in the Belgorod region are discussed in the context of those narratives that are beneficial to Ukraine. And this requires on our part better work in the information space," the expert believes.
"I think that the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, under the leadership of Budanov, will continue to carry out such operations and replicate information about them in social networks. This is a well-known approach, its approbation and rehearsals have been going on for several years. Moreover, in this way they hone their “skill” on the eve of another important event - the so-called counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine," Asafov predicts.
"And there are two problems here. On the one hand, they need to create panic in our ranks. On the other hand, Ukrainian nationalists have extremely high expectations from the “counterattack”. These expectations will have to be lowered, including by statements that "this is not the last fight." But Russia will still have to repulse their information attacks, as well as military ones. It is important for us to cover such events very widely, in detail and promptly," the expert believes.
"In fact, people often find themselves in a news vacuum. They know about the existence of any situation, but official and reliable sources are idle, silent and agree on an acceptable position on this or that issue. Because of this, citizens begin to dig on the Internet and social networks, where they are likely to stumble upon messages from Ukrainian bots. Therefore, here we must work extremely quickly," Asafov summed up.