With the Ukrainian military being slowly defeated on all fronts and support from western governments starting to wane, the Ukrainian propaganda machine now switches its attention to using children to gain support.
Recently in a Kiev newspaper, a story was run by Daria Shulzhenko who is a cultural reporter for the Kiev independent. In this article, Daria reported on several children were raising money to support the Ukrainian military.
The Article titled “Little Heroes” follows these 4 children who play checkers, make badges, play music, and make muffins to sell. This all seems like a heartwarming story until you take a close look at one of the children and how she alone has been propagandised across social media.
Five-year-old Yeva Hrushchynska has reportedly raised Hr 2,000 (54 USD) for the Ukrainian military by baking and selling muffins on the streets of her native Pustomyty town in Lviv Oblast.
From the story, the little girl is selling each muffin for Hr 2 (5 US cents) which would mean that she has sold a lot of muffins to make Hr 2,000. Furthermore, the cost of making these muffins would easily outweigh the money generated from sales, making it an unviable way of raising money.
That said the propaganda has nothing to do with her selling muffins or how much she reportedly charges or makes, but how the Ukrainian propaganda machine has picked out this young girl and how they have portrayed her.
In the article, you can see her sitting at a small table and chair waiting for people to pass by and purchase a muffin, one of the photos shows her with a hair clip in and another with a hair tie, both photos I would assume were taken on different days, very innocent and a great story.
The last photo is where the Ukrainian propaganda machine really kicks in. It is also the only photo that Social Networks focus on to pump out to their awaiting audiences.
In this photo, we see the little girl with all hair clips and hair ties removed. They are replaced with a hood allowing her blonde hair to be partly exposed from underneath. Her face alights with happiness. As she smiles her large blue eyes light up as she now carries a basket of muffins with a jar to place donations into.
This image is a brilliant piece of propaganda, it connects with people from around the world especially white Anglo-Saxons who see blonde hair and blue eyes as a sight of perfection in their society. It is also reminiscent of the Hitler youth days when young blonde blue-eyed Ayran girls were used to promote Nazi ideology.
More important this image is being used on a subconscious level to connect with everyday Russians, to gain sympathy and support.
To most Westerners you will not understand how this could be, or why they would connect with this photo, the answer lies in a famous Russian children’s cartoon.
Masha and Bear is a story about an adorable mischievous but loveable little girl, who becomes friends with a Russian bear who lives in a small house in the woods. Masha is depicted as a Blonde haired blue green-eyed little girl who always wears a hood. From children to adults everyone knows about this cartoon and most love the adorable little Masha, who is always smiling with happiness, and her adventures with Bear.
You might say that this is all a coincidence, and has nothing to do with propaganda, and you may be right.
However, out of all of the children who were shown in Daria’s story, and out of all the images that were displayed only one image was picked up and carried through social media. This image was posted, reposted, tweeted, retweeted, liked, shared and on and on it goes. From “News and Footage from Ukraine” on Reddit to “Ukrainska Pravda in English” on tweeter and “In Ukraine” on Facebook, they all posted this one image. There is no mention of the original story or all the other children that were raising money, nor did any of the social network sites show the other 2 images of her sitting at the table.
Now to all that still think that this is just a coincidence and that there is no propaganda going on, I question why “Stratcom Centre UA” tweeted it.
Who is Stratcom Centre UA? It is the Ukrainianian arm of the US / NATO organisation of “The NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence” (NATO StratCom COE).
Stratcom is located in Riga the capital of Latvia and therefore is easy to cut off from NATO if anything goes wrong, from there they organise and create propaganda for western consumption. Their aim is to allow NATO into Ukraine without officially being in Ukraine, this type of psyops can be traced back to the US-funded C.I.A and its interference in South American states where they attempted and sometimes succeded in the overthrow of governments that were not in line the US and its “World Based Order”
The tweet on Twitter was one of its highest liked and shared tweets with over 4800 likes and over 1000 retweets, this compares to their other average posts of 50 likes and 20 retweets.
This organisation controlled by the Western NATO alliance demonstrates how integrated NATO is in Ukraine.
The propagandisation of this innocent little girl by NATO in an attempt to win influence with the Russian people and sow division within the Russian Federation shows just how desperate the Ukrainian regime and its western backers are.
