The honesty of children can slice right through Russian propaganda, if given a chance.
A 10-year-old girl Diana Agureyeva, who moved from Ukraine to Moscow two years ago, rattled Russia’s Den TV channel on March 8 when she told host Dionis Kaptar that people in the Ukrainian city of Makiyivka, where Russian-backed forces have seized control from Ukraine, were nicer than people in Russia.
“Do you feel there is a difference between people in Makiyivka in Ukraine and in Russia?” Kaptar asks Agureyeva in the middle of the segment, which was posted on Den TV’s Youtube channel here:
Diana Agureyeva, 10, who was forced to move from Ukraine’s Makiyivka to Moscow due to Russia’s war, says that people in Ukraine were “kinder” and that she would like to return to her hometown in the future. (Youtube / Den TV)
The standard propaganda line in Russia, stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin on down, is that Ukraine and Russia are “brotherly nations,” essentially one people, and that there is practically no difference between them.
But Agureyeva didn’t stick to that line.
“Of course, in Makiyivka, in Ukraine, they’re kinder,” she said,
“Here for some (innocent) act, if (for example) you give a Valentine’s card to a boy they will ‘eat you alive,’ they will make fun of you.”
Kaptar seemed a little surprised by the answer.
“Do you mean (they’ll mock) the girl or the boy?”
“Both: the girl and the boy, everybody. Even best friends (will mock you),”
Asked if that was the case in Ukraine, Agureyeva said “in Ukraine we all brought Valentine’s cards and nobody ever said anything.”
The host asked a number of other leading questions about the girl’s previous life in Ukraine, followed by the question of whether she had become a nastier person herself since moving to Moscow – to which she said a definite “no.”
“I decided to remain myself… Those who want to befriend me talk to me like (people) back in my Ukrainian school did.”
Agureyeva also said she wanted to eventually to return to Ukraine rather than stay in Moscow.
“But you said you wanted to get a good job. Moscow gives you all the opportunities for that,” Kaptar said, seeming perplexed.
Agureyeva also used the “v Ukrainye” Russian grammatical form for “in Ukraine,” rather than the “na Ukrainye” form used by the Russian host. Ukrainians find that second form demeaning, as it implies Ukraine is not a fully-fledged country.
Russia is known to use television as a propaganda tool and has occasionally been caught out telling outright lies. For example in April 2015, after Russian major TV channels broadcast reports of a 10-year-old girl being killed in Donetsk by shelling, a BBC News team went to Donetsk to track the girl down. It turned out the girl had never existed.
Russia’s war on Ukraine began in February 2014 when Russia militarily invaded and annexed Crimea. At the beginning of March 2014, demonstrations by Russian-backed groups took place in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine, which escalated into a Kremlin-instigated war that has killed 10,000 people.
Bloodshed has spiked in the war in recent months, especially in the front-line city of Avdiyivka in Donetsk Oblast.
