MOSCOW, May 27. /TASS/. Western countries and Ukraine have been thoroughly preparing for their media war against Russia, but are losing it currently because Russian society turned out to be immune to the stream of lies that has been unleashed, according to experts’ opinion.
The Russian Institute of Social Studies (RISS) and the "Independent Public Monitoring" (IPM) association jointly organized the All-Russia Expert Forum in Moscow on Friday.
"I have numerous video clips of how the media war was being prepared, how it was all being arranged in Ukraine as well as in Western countries, because this work was done in a very detailed way," Maxim Grigoryev, a member of the Russian Public Chamber and the director of the Democracy Research Foundation, said speaking at the forum.
"We have numerous materials. I have materials that we took from the Ukrainian Security Service in Mariupol," he continued. "We can all plainly see the thorough preparations for all of this, and, of course, how all of this was embedded into the Ukrainian conscience."
Political scientist Alexander Asafov agreed with the previously announced claim that the media war against Russia had been thoroughly put together over the course of many years and "involved an enormous amount of resources and specialists."
"For many years, training camps and courses were organized, including on the territory of Ukraine," Asafov noted. "All of them were trained using us [Russia] by making bogus telephone calls on bomb threats at shopping malls, schools, etc. It was all obviously planned in advance."
However, the expert stated that the media and cyber wars against Russia did not yield the results expected by those, who started it.
"I believe that they lost it due to the lack of efficiency and also because our society has a distinct - I would say a distinct national cultural code - to resist this entire flow of lies. All in all, this media war is starting to falter," Asafov added.
Russia’s military operation in Donbass
The situation at the line of engagement in Donbass escalated on February 17. Back then, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) reported the most massive bombardment by the Ukrainian military in months, which damaged civilian infrastructure and inflicted casualties upon the population.
On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced recognizing the sovereignty of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Moscow recognized the Donbass republics in accordance with the DPR and LPR constitutions stipulating the boundaries of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions as of the beginning of 2014.
Russian President 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 Ukraine. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, noting that the operation was aimed at the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine.