Alexei Navalny calls on West to launch large-scale social media campaign against “putin's mad regime”
“Truth and information strike the putin regime in the same way as the “Javelin” missiles,” he emphasized
russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has published a series of tweets calling for a new front of “truth and free information” against russian president putin, whom he calls a “kremlin war criminal”.
Navalny, who is serving a 9-year sentence in a russian penal colony after being convicted of fraud last month, wrote in his tweets that “Truth and information strike the putin regime in the same way as the “Javelin” missiles.” “Javelin” missiles are the US anti-tank weapons that are successfully used by Ukrainian troops against russian armored vehicles.
Navalny said the kremlin lied by affirming there was widespread public support for the war in russia: “What kind of sociology is there even to talk about when both the question “Do you support the war in Ukraine?” and the answer “no” could result in 15 years of imprisonment for the sociologist and the respondent respectively?”
He pointed to criminal cases against russians, having declared that one person had been arrested in moscow just for standing on the street with the book “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy.
Navalny wrote that “russia shut down and blocked ALL independent media, just in a month and a half, including the rather cautious ones. Was it necessary if the war with Ukraine really had such support?”
But he acknowledged that this shutdown was “slowly [doing] its job”. Most russians now “have a completely distorted view of what is happening in Ukraine.”
Navalny called for a new campaign to demonstrate the facts to the russian citizens, having said that “more than 85% of russian adults are still using YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google and Facebook (Meta) every day.”
“We need ads. Lots of ads. A huge national anti-war campaign will start with an advertising campaign,” he said.
Navalny called on Western leaders and institutions, including US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the European Union, to “urgently find a solution to crush Putin's propaganda using the advertising power of social media.”
“Even if such advertising is bought for the full commercial price, its cost will be laughable compared to the price of this war,” Navalny said, having added: “One shot from Javelin costs $230,000. For the same money we would get 200 million ad views in different formats and provide at least 300,000 link clicks or at least 8 million views on a video with the truth about what is happening in Ukraine.”
He ended his address with the words, “It should be an unprecedented huge national advertising campaign. Just like in a real election. Our candidate Peace versus putin's candidate War. And Peace must win. We can't allow any other outcome.”
It should be recalled that the day before the New York Times reported on how Ukrainian and Western activists are breaking through the wall of russian propaganda.
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