Alexei Navalny has called for an “information front” against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as the imprisoned opposition leader claims polls showing that 75% of Russians support the conflict are a “Kremlin lie”.
In a series of tweets, Navalny called on Western leaders to support a large-scale social media advertising campaign to break the Kremlin’s propaganda about the invasion.
“We need advertising. Lots of ads, “Navalny wrote. “A huge national anti-war campaign will begin with an advertising campaign. Two hundred million impressions a day to reach every Russian Internet user twice. Stories, publications and retellings. All over Russia, in cities and villages. On every tablet and every phone. ”
He called on Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Ursula von der Leyen, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, head of the owner of Google Alphabet, “to urgently find a solution to the crushing [Vladimir] Putin’s propaganda using the advertising power of social media.
The advertising campaign will be a way to circumvent the Kremlin’s efforts to shut down Russia’s independent media. Along with most independent websites and newspapers, the Russian censor is blocking access to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
It also marks the opposition leader’s biggest raid to date on the complex issue of how widely the Russian public supports the war in Ukraine. The results of opinion polls, including by the independent Levada Center, show the support of the majority of Russians for the war.
But critics cite poor voting techniques, low turnout and other mitigating factors to argue that many Russians are simply afraid to express their opposition to the war.
Then there are the efforts of pro-Kremlin programs, which have dominated television programs in recent months, as entertainment programs have been pushed out of all major government channels.
“The fact is that most Russian citizens have a completely distorted view of what is happening in Ukraine,” Navalny wrote in a statement to his supporters. “For them, Putin is waging a small, very successful war with very little bloodshed. Our soldiers are heroes and there are almost no casualties. “
For the same price as the Javelin anti-tank missile, he said, Western leaders could attract 200 million views of commercials or “at least 8 million views of a video with the truth about what is happening in Ukraine.”
Russia has withdrawn its troops from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, but is preparing for a new offensive in eastern Ukraine. Putin said the Russian war would continue “until it is fully completed and the goals set.”
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