Shame on Stuff New Zealand for Disrespecting the 298 Civilian Victims on Flight MH17 Shot Down on 17 July 2014 by a Russian Missile over Eastern Ukraine.
By Valentina Fellarina НАФО 🌻 | | 12 min read
Instead, Stuff Chose to Promulgate More Russian Lies.
In a complaint to Stuff New Zealand NAFO Asia Pacific’s volunteer set out our expectations that it’s reporters and editors should know that Russia’s official ‘de-Nazification of Ukraine’ policy is a serious threat to peace, democracy, human rights as well as to Ukraine’s survival.
The ‘de-Nazification of Ukraine’ trope is a core pillar of Russian official disinformation against Ukraine and particularly against western support for Ukraine. It is used because Vladimir Putin knows that Western countries fought against Nazi fascism in WWII, therefore Russian propaganda seeks to gaslight Ukrainians by painting them as a neo-Nazi threat to the West.
But Ukraine is not characterized by far right or neo-Nazi political groups or political party leadership. A great many neo-Nazi violent groups exist in Russia itself, including those directly funded and supported by President Putin to attack Ukrainians.
The concerns that have been set out in the formal complaint to Stuff New Zealand are as follows:
- Unbalanced and inaccurate reporting
- Misrepresenting out-of-date Russian disinformation as current by omitting details that would identify the information such as the date and source, that could enable readers to confirm its credibility.
- Publishing material that repeats pro-Russian state propaganda narratives deliberately misrepresenting Ukrainian people to attempt to justify Russia’s brutal, large scale, invasion, regular repeated terror attacks on civilians and first responders, and probably genocide campaign in Ukraine.
- The contribution of these unacceptable editorial practices to the fostering and dissemination of pro-Russian narratives that seek to justify Russia’s war crimes and illegal invasion of Ukraine, and seek to diminish vital Western support for Ukraine, at a critical time in Ukraine’s defense due to the up-coming US elections.
How did Stuff manage to get this so wrong?
Firstly, that this story was published on July 17 2024 – the ten year anniversary of the tragic and deliberate shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over Eastern Ukraine.
On 17 July 2024, the world commemorated the 10th anniversary of the death of 298 civilians from Flight MH17 over Eastern Ukraine, a region that was at the time being taken over by the Russian Federation. The Kremlin funded Russian mercenaries and their supporters, while at that time Ukrainian volunteer battalions were being supported and provisioned by Ukrainian civilians, as Ukraine did not have a well-prepared army at that time. National Guard units and the Ukrainian air force had attacked the separatist militias occupying the Donetsk airport, and shortly after that the Azov volunteer battalion joined in, resulting in the successful retaking of the city of Mariupol.
At this time of turmoil, Russian Federation cranked up its support for the separatists in Eastern Ukraine, and July 2014 saw the first use of Russian multiple rocket launchers on Ukrainian positions, followed by surface-to-air missile shooting down of a Ukrainian plane, just a few days before flight MH17 was shot down en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur at a altitude of 10,000 metres. MH17 was downed by a Russian self-propelled surface-to-air missile launcher, and the crash killed all 298 people on board including 38 Australians and two New Zealanders.
Below: The type of anti-aircraft missile system used to shoot down Flight MH17.
A joint investigation team with investigators from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Ukraine and Malaysia concluded in 2023 that MH17 had been intentionally targeted, the attack premeditated, the missiles approved by Vladimir Putin, and three of those involved were convicted in absentia (Russia always denied involvement).
One of those convicted was Igor Girkin, who at the time of the shooting down was self-proclaimed “Minister of Defense” in the separatist-held self-proclaimed ‘republics’ in Eastern Ukraine. Girkin was removed from this post as was the self-proclaimed ‘Prime Minister” Aleksandr Borodai, but shortly afterwards Putin sent Russian military units into the region, attempting to save them from being retaken by Ukrainians.
By August 26 2014, Ukrainians had proof that regular Russian forces were being deployed in the offensive, with ten Russian paratroopers captured. Advancing Russian troops surrounded Ukrainian units near a key railway hub of Ilovaisk (the subsequent massacre of Ukrainian troops is the subject of a haunting film ‘War of Chimeras’ made by Ukrainian filmmakers, Mariia and Anastasiia Starozhytska, which was released in New Zealand in 2023.)
Since then, the Minsk Agreements (since failed and found to be unworkable) were signed, Russia annexed Crimea, and commenced its full scale military invasion, unrelenting terror attacks across Ukraine and deportations, in an effort to liquidate Ukraine as a state.
Summary of how Russia lied about Flight MH17 for 8 years, appears here: https://x.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1680858867138265090
Sources: Serhii Plokhy, 2023, The Russo-Ukrainian War – The Return of History
Sergey Sumlenny, LL.M Eastern European Expert on X @Sumlenny
https://www.facebook.com/thewarofchimeras
Stuff NZ chose not to cover the commemoration of the shooting down of MH17.
The anniversary was covered by TV 1, Radio NZ and was acknowledged by Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters. Stuff instead chose to publish an unrelated, unattributed, old, factually incorrect and misleading video and in doing so helped spread Russian lies. The video is a classic example of Russian official state media gaslighting narratives against Ukrainians that have been used to try to ‘justify’ Russia’s brutal, illegal, and horrific invasion, terror attacks, deportations and alleged thousands of war crimes in Ukraine.
We are so puzzled by this clumsy attempt to ‘shush’ Russian war crimes that we want you to read the original Stuff story and embedded video published on 17 July 2024.
Stuff’s story includes a report of a recent US FBI prosecution of Michail Chkhikvishvili for soliciting hate crimes and acts of violence in New York, and his leadership of a neo-Nazi international extremist group that promotes violence against racial minorities, the Jewish community and others.
Towards the bottom of the report on Michail Chkhikvishvili’s alleged crimes is an embedded video that is undated, has no named reporter (although accompanied by voice commentary), has no referenced source or origin. The video is subtitled “The Azov Battalion: Ukrainian Patriots or Neo-Nazis?”
Stuff’s report on Chkhikvishvili (a Georgian Republic national running a neo-Nazi group with strong Russian ties and activities) is linked by this video to Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine, without even mentioning Russia’s involvement.
Stuff’s report states that Chkhikvishvili is ‘a 21-year-old man from the Republic of Georgia’, and allegedly leads a group called “Maniac Murder Cult”, but omits other relevant information about his origin, his place of residence and the origins of the extremist group he leads, and which was instrumental in his criminal activities. The man’s indictment on criminal charges and information about the “Maniac Murder cult” has been widely reported, for example see:
New York Post story https://nypost.com/2024/07/16/us-news/neo-nazi-maniac-murder-cult-leader-plotted-nyc-hate-attack-with-poison-candy-toting-santa/
The US Justice Department report is here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/georgian-national-charged-soliciting-hate-crimes-and-mass-casualty-attack-new-york-city Detailed prosecution complaint is here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/media/1360516/dl
Regarding the origins of the man and the extremist group, according to the Daily Mail story, the group was founded in 2018 by an unstable, violent former football hooligan, Yegor Krasnov, described as a Ukrainian living in a part of Eastern Ukraine which was illegally annexed and occupied by Russian Federation at that time. Krasnov was arrested by Russian police, spent time in a psychiatric ward, and while in prison was able to coordinate cells of the group across the world but particularly in Russia. The prosecution affidavit describes the group as “Russian-and Ukrainian-based racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist group with members in the US and around the world”.
Nowhere in the Stuff report about Michail Chkhikvishvili is the word “Russia” used. The story omits the connection of “Maniac Murder Cult” to Russia, or to Russian-occupied Eastern Ukraine at the time it was formed by the violent football hooligan Krasnov, or that the group is particularly active in Russia.
The Stuff report of Chkhikvishvili’s criminal charges misrepresents the location of activities of the Maniacal Murder Cult by only reporting it as an ‘international extremist group’ but omitting to provide relevant information that the group is particularly active in Russia and Ukraine, where it has been investigated by Russia’s FSB.
The Stuff report contains an embedded unrelated video, accompanied by no caption, no source or name of a reporter, and no date. The video (based on the accompanying commentary) appears to be an early to mid-2022 example of Russian State media propaganda used to ‘justify’ its February 2022 full scale military invasion of Ukraine, and subsequent siege of Mariupol and the Azovstal steel works, as a response to ‘neo-Nazi’ threat from the Azov Battalion in Eastern Ukraine.
In this way, in Stuff’s report Chikhikvishvili (a Georgian Republic national running a neo-Nazi group with strong Russian ties and activities) is linked to Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine, with no mention of Russian involvement, on the 10th anniversary of a Russian-backed criminal downing of a civilian airline in Eastern Ukraine.
It requires no further imagination to interpret this as a deliberate distraction from commemoration of a Russian-backed terror attack on innocent civilians by focusing on a common and repetitive Russian disinformation narrative to refocus attention away from its own crimes to the projected ‘bogeyman’ of Ukrainian neo-Nazis.
Here are some corrections to the video commentary:
- Azov Battalion no longer exists. It’s members of the former volunteer fighting unit were captured by Russian forces in May 2022 after defending Mariupol from Russia’s siege and bombardment. Some of the defenders have been released back to Ukraine and have been reformed into other, regular Ukrainian military formations such as the 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine, which is an elite fighting unit. Some of the defenders are likely still POWs in Russia, and some were killed at Olenivka Detention Centre which was blown up by Russian operatives, killing over 50 POWs.
- Multiple expert assessments made in 2022 concluded the modern Azov Regiment was a fairly typical fighting unit with little, if any, political bent. It has been repeatedly reconstituted, and more recently it’s pseudo pagan regimentla emblem has been abandoned. It’s recruits join not because of ideology but because it has the reputation of a particularly tough fighting unit.
The video references “peace talks on Tuesday” and “Putin is having to waiver from his invasion plan” both of which are ridiculously out of date statements to the extent that they are farcical given the extent of Russia’s ongoing large-scale invasion and terrorism across all of Ukraine.
The video appears to use material sourced from Al Jazeera published in March 2022 at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a time during which Russian state media made endless reference to Azov: an analysis of more than 8 million Russian media pieces shows how the bogeyman of Naziism in Ukraine saturated their media post-invasion with the supposed threat from Azov neo-Nazis weaponised to justify Russia’s brutal destruction of Mariupol.
Discussion on the Damaging Russian Trope “Azov Neo-Nazis in Ukraine”
We suggested that Stuff NZ reporters may be interested in finding out more up to date information, and facts with which to counter Russian disinformation here:
Countering “Azov” myths: https://www.azovcontrafake.com/
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-there-any-truth-to-russias-ukrainian-nazis-propaganda/a-63970461
The trope of “neo-Nazis in Ukraine” (often abbreviated “UkroNazis” by abusive commentators on social media) is particularly damaging because it seeks to distract the western world from the reality of Russia’s hybrid war on Ukraine.
This reality includes the widespread existence of multiple neo-Nazi groups in Russia and the uses to which Russian President Vladimir Putin has put these groups, including funding them to stir up unrest in Eastern Ukraine since 2014, to attack Ukrainians in Eastern Ukraine since 2014, incorporating their members in Wagner Private Mercenary Company to carry out atrocities on civilians and Ukrainian fighters since February 2022.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-neo-nazis-fighting-ukraine/31871760.html
As your political reporters should be well aware, no country has a monopoly on criminal activity or the existence of far-right and white-supremacist activists, groups, or violent behaviour. White supremacist and/or neo-Nazi violence is the extreme edge of a resurgence in far-right activities across most of Europe, Russia and the Western world. Groups are often internationally connected.
Your political reporters should also I hope be aware that there are no justifications for unprovoked military invasions across sovereign state territorial borders; nor for acts of state-perpetrated terrorism, nor for illegal deportations of children, nor for genocidal campaigns that seek to annihilate a national group (all of which have been conducted by Russian Federation in Ukraine since February 2022).
It is now widely known amongst those working in the field of disinformation that the Russian state is, and has been, actively involved in promulgating and amplifying disinformation in Western countries, which contains messaging in support of Russian government objectives, including in the context of its invasion of Ukraine. See https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-leads-efforts-among-federal-international-and-private-sector-partners
https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-influence-hackers-social-media-facebok-operation-thriving/
What is also widely known, and has been analysed extensively, is the ‘genocide handbook’ written by Timofey Sergeytsev published in April 2022 in (RIA Novostiwhich) set out Russia’s justification for genocide of Ukrainians, by identifying Ukrainian citizens who refused to reject Ukrainian citizenship in preference for Russian citizenship as ‘Nazis’ and targets for extermination. Link to that publication here: https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html
