MOSCOW, March 4. /TASS/. Western nations have unleashed an unprecedented aggressive information war against Russia, speaker of Russia’s Federation Council, or upper parliament house, Valentina Matviyenko, said on Friday.
"We see that the West today has unleashed a real information war against our country, which is unprecedented in terms of scale, aggressiveness and hatred. Each attack in this war was hatched, orchestrated and engineered beforehand," she said.
"What is being said by the Washington-controlled social networks - Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube - cannot be called anything but information carpet bombing of our society. Floods of monstrous lies are being poured on our country, its citizens, on Russian soldiers. As a matter of fact, this is a war of mental, moral and cultural extermination of our homeland," she noted, adding that some people in Russia "can consciously or unconsciously take part in such warfare."
"Obviously, the West counted on the support of such people inside Russian society. But they failed to divide out society, tilt it and saw panic," Matviyenko stressed.
According to the upper house speaker, "huge propaganda and technical forces" have been mobilized against Russia. "That is why we need laws. These laws are tough but we must pass them in such a time as now. At stake are the country’s security, the lives of our citizens, the citizens of the brotherly nations," she said at a Federation Council meeting, which discussed the law on liability for fake information about the Russian army’s operations and its discrediting, which carries a punishment of up to 15 years in prison.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories.
When clarifying the unfolding developments, the Russian Defense Ministry reassured that Russian troops are not targeting Ukrainian cities, but are limited to surgically striking and incapacitating Ukrainian military infrastructure. There are no threats whatsoever to the civilian population.