DONETSK, September 15. /TASS/. Latin Americans are joining the ranks of the Ukrainian army as mercenaries due to false information spread by media and YouTube about the conflict and the real situation on the frontlines, Brazilian journalist and publicist Raphael Machado told TASS during his visit to the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).
"The first thing to understand is that the mass media in Latin America is mostly controlled by the West, even in countries like Brazil, which is friendly to Russia because of BRICS," Machado said. "The worst of it is the fact that mass media, and also some YouTube channels which receive a lot of money from the Ukrainian embassy, create a narrative that the Russians are losing the conflict. They claim, for example, that each Ukrainian soldier kills 20 or 30 Russian soldiers. So, these guys, often young, poor guys from Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, etc. believe that it’s going to be easy, like going on a safari or something."
He added that due to distorted information about the conflict, many Latin Americans don’t know its true causes, believing that "Putin is trying to take over the world, that the Soviet Union is returning, and that communism is going to attack everyone. So, people get scared. They are lying about what is happening there."
Machado was in the DPR alongside journalists and activists from seven other countries, visiting the Alley of Angels and the Alley of Heroes in Donetsk, as well as the Great Patriotic War Museum and sites shelled by Ukraine's armed forces. He also spoke at a meeting with students and faculty of Donetsk State University.