Media coverage of Ukraine and the Russian invasion, according to Russia's allies such as China, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and Myanmar.
A man reads the Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper with coverage of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on a street in Beijing on February 24, 2022. Photo: Jade Gao / AFP
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What the Ukraine Invasion Looks Like, According to Russia’s Allies

An alternate reality exists in Kremlin-friendly media, one where Ukraine uses foreigners as human shields and birds carry U.S.-funded bioweapons.

In a news segment that aired on the Chinese state-backed broadcaster Phoenix Television last week, a newscaster decked out in protective gear explained the disturbing situation on the ground in Ukraine. 

Standing in front of a military vehicle marked with the letter “Z”—a symbol of the Russian forces—the pro-Beijing network’s Moscow correspondent Lu Yuguang explained why attempts to create humanitarian corridors have been unsuccessful.

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“The reason is because Ukrainian extremists are using hostages as human shields,” Lu reported from the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol. “There are more than 1,634 of these hostages.”

Lu, a naval officer-turned-journalist, has been covering the crisis non-stop from the front lines since Russian soldiers entered the country on Feb. 24. He has been embedded with Russian troops, secured exclusive interviews with soldiers, and even interviewed Denis Pushilin, head of the Russian-backed breakaway state of the Donetsk People’s Republic. 

But Lu’s segments, not least his one from Mariupol, depict a situation few inside Ukraine would recognise. According to Ukrainian leaders, it’s actually relentless shelling from Russian forces that is preventing people from leaving besieged cities via humanitarian corridors.

When footage of Lu’s news segments began to circulate on Twitter last week, exposing this alternate reality to people beyond China for the first time, this flipped narrative represented a jarring, if not predictable, departure from the reporting of Western media outlets. But Lu’s reports aren’t isolated in their framing, and in fact represent the dominant account of the conflict for more than a billion people around the world living in tightly controlled media environments.

In the media rooms of Kremlin-friendly authoritarian regimes worldwide, the righteousness of Russia’s actions are affirmed and the culpability for the conflict sits squarely on Western leaders. 

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“The root cause of the Ukraine crisis totally lies in the hegemonic policy of the U.S. and the West,” a North Korean foreign affairs spokesperson was quoted as saying on the English site of the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Feb. 28—one of the first times the invasion was publicly addressed by the country’s media. “The U.S. and the West, in defiance of Russia’s reasonable and just demand to provide it with legal guarantee for security, have systematically undermined the security environment of Europe.”

This stance is in line with Moscow’s official justification for the invasion—that NATO’s growing relationship with Ukraine posed a threat to Russia’s national security. Mirroring Russian official narratives, even the most basic of facts in the conflict are up for debate.

“It’s taboo in China and North Korea to use the word ‘invasion’ for this conflict,” Alexander L. Vuving, a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii, told VICE World News. 

“The media overwhelmingly uses Russia’s official label to call the event a ‘special military operation.’” 

But while the state media outlets of Russia’s allies diligently steer their coverage along a pro-Kremlin slant, things become more complicated when factoring in national narratives and domestic politics. 

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North Korea has found itself in an awkward position, having to balance its support of Russia—one of the hermit kingdom’s only allies—against its defining principle of national sovereignty. Notably, news of the invasion has stayed out of local, Korean-language press

The crisis has only seemed to further entrench the idea among senior officials that nuclear weapons remain central to the regime’s survival, with an anonymous high-ranking source quoted in South Korea-based outlet NK Daily as saying that the war would never have happened if Ukraine hadn’t given up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons.

“North Korea’s staunch defense of Russia is unsurprising given that the regime will use any opportunity to pinpoint global problems to U.S. imperialism,” said Andrew Yeo, a ​​senior fellow at Brookings Institution’s Center for East Asia Policy Studies. “[But] ironically, North Korea, which often justifies its nuclear weapons program as a matter of security and sovereignty, has dismissed Russia’s clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty.”

China also has a delicate position in the crisis. While it’s a natural ally of Russia, united in their opposition to Western hegemony, Beijing has also long fostered an image of itself as a peace-loving nation. 

It has also long championed principles of non-interference when it comes to international criticism over issues like human right abuses in the Chinese regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as its relations with Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy that Beijing claims as its territory. Russia’s backing of separatist movements in Ukraine therefore stands in opposition to Beijing’s own aversion to foreign interference.

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For China, its national coverage of the conflict has proved a difficult balancing act, something Vuving describes as China “walking two tightropes at the same time.” 

“It needs an alliance with Russia in its fight against the West. But it also needs to keep its anti-separatist narrative consistent,” he said. 

But support for Russian narratives extends beyond the borders of just China and North Korea. Myanmar’s military junta, heavily reliant on Russian weaponry in its fight to subdue a nationwide pro-democracy movement, has been one of only a few states to publicly back Moscow. 

In a commentary published in the Burmese-language military mouthpiece Myanma Alin on Feb. 27, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was labeled a puppet leader of the West, and Ukrainians themselves were blamed for the violence that has befallen the country. 

“It is not wrong to say that Ukrainian people are also responsible for what is happening now because they themselves chose the wrong leader,” said the piece, written with a pseudonym. 

“Today, Ukraine has been slaughtered by the dangerous interventionist strategies of the United States and NATO. A fact that not only the President of Ukraine, but also other Western officials will not have the power to deny or distort.”

Further west in Iran, despite being a firm Russian ally, the Islamic government’s media organs have stopped short of supporting the invasion, with an article published in the Islamic Republic News Agency affirming that “military conflict cannot resolve any crisis.” 

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But blame for the crisis has been firmly leveled at the U.S., with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attributing the Ukrainian crisis to the “mafia regime” in Washington. An op-ed in pro-Khamenei newspaper Resalat reaffirmed the narrative of Zelenskyy as a Western proxy and called U.S. President Joe Biden “the main culprit in the Ukraine crisis.” 

“Today, Ukraine has been slaughtered by the dangerous interventionist strategies of the United States and NATO. A fact that not only the President of Ukraine, but also other Western officials will not have the power to deny or distort,” wrote Hanif Ghaffari, head of the paper’s international desk. 

Iranian coverage has also incorporated the country’s long-standing animosity towards Israel, with one piece saying the West’s condemnation of Russia’s invasion, but not of Israeli actions towards Palestine, highlighted the “double-faced nature of the Zionists and their allied western countries.”  

Iranian media has also emphasized racist remarks made by Western journalists and experts—something that has also drawn ire among commentators in the West. 

“The racist minds of some journalists and politicians were exposed to the people of the world,” said another op-ed, in Resalat. “Their stupid and short-sighted thoughts showed that none of their expert opinions or analyses could be counted on.”

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While there may be truth to that last critique, other pro-Russian coverage has veered into the realm of conspiracy theory.

Repeated over the past week by the state-run newsrooms of the Kremlin’s allies is a claim that has been peddled fiercely by the Russian government and raised at the UN—that Russian forces have discovered some 30 labs in Ukraine funded by the U.S. to illegally manufacture bioweapons. 

While Ukrainian labs hold pathogens for disease prevention purposes, Russia’s bioweapons claim is widely viewed as disinformation and has been dismissed by the U.S. as “laughable.” But this hasn’t stopped the conspiracy theory from making headlines in countries aligned with Russia, like Venezuela, the Kremlin’s South American ally. 

Útimas Noticias, a major Venezuelan newspaper known for its pro-establishment stance, quoted the Russian ambassador to Venezuela as saying that some wild birds captured in Russia were wearing “rings” from Ukrainian labs, and were set to spread deadly viruses. In another article, it uncritically echoed Russian claims that the labs are an attempt to facilitate the “covert spread of the deadliest pathogens.”

“The US side planned to organize work on pathogens of birds, bats and reptiles in Ukraine in 2022. And further study the possibility that these transmit African swine fever and anthrax,” it read. 

But while news segments and articles presenting outright misinformation are of little journalistic value, these conflicting narratives in media coverage do shed light on something deeper.  

They offer a real-time reflection of the shifting global security landscape around the war in Ukraine, Vuving said, with the conflict serving to deepen strategic competition between Russia, the U.S., and their respective allies.

“All this is transforming the global security landscape to a new Cold War,” he said. “The struggle over international order will be a critical dimension.”

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Follow Alastair McCready on Twitter.