One of the most globally viral stories to emerge from Russia’s special operation in Ukraine is that 13 border guards on Snake Island allegedly cursed at a Russian warship that requested their surrender and were then immediately blown to bits as “martyrs”. Their putative “sacrifice” was presented as the literal embodiment of the proud “resistance” to what’s being misportrayed by the US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) as the so-called “Russian invasion of Ukraine”. On the domestic front, these “heroes” are supposed to “inspire” their fellow Ukrainians to follow their lead in literally fighting to the death against the Russian Armed Forces (RAF). It’s a very emotionally moving story but the problem is that it isn’t true.

This conclusion isn’t just so-called “Russian propaganda” like critics of that country’s special operation might immediately suspect but was even confirmed by Ukraine’s Border Guard Service itself on Facebook shortly after Russian media shared footage of the 82 Ukrainian servicemen who ultimately surrendered Snake Island without a shot and were then transferred to Sevastopol instead of putting up the “glorious heroic last stand” that was initially claimed. No one should expect those MSM outlets that falsely reported on their “martyrdom” to update their stories or issue retractions, let alone in a high-profile way that sincerely seeks to correct their audience’s false perceptions about this story.

This discredited psychological operation (psy-op) exposes Ukraine’s “hero” propaganda that’s gone into overdrive since the onset of Russia’s special operation in that country. Among the most prominent weaponized information warfare narratives to be propagated over the past few days is that Ukraine has put up “surprisingly fierce resistance” to the RAF, which in turn is spun to suggest that President Putin “grossly miscalculated” in commencing his campaign. The perception that the targeted audience is manipulated to believe is that Russia might even “lose the war”. All of this information warfare is also designed to “inspire” even “fiercer resistance” among average Ukrainians.

Some urgent clarifications are in order since those perceptions don’t reflect the objectively existing reality. For starters, many of those who hold such views – even among those who sincerely believe that they’re their own views and not influenced in any way by the MSM – were actually already preconditioned into expecting a so-called “Russian blitzkrieg”, one that would succeed as swiftly as Hitler’s invasion of Poland and perhaps be just as deadly and destructive as it too. This, however, was a false expectation from the get-go and importantly neglects everything that President Putin and other Russian representatives said about doing their utmost to limit civilian casualties and collateral damage.

It’s an exercise in doublethink that the same folks who were convinced that he’s a “genocidal dictator who doesn’t care about human rights” aren’t asking themselves why he hasn’t already flattened Kiev and every other city that hasn’t yet been liberated from the US-backed fascist puppet regime if he’s truly who they thought he was. After all, there have been plenty of false claims about the RAF blatantly violating human rights throughout the course of its ongoing anti-terrorist campaign in Syria, not to mention the regrettable experience during the two federal interventions in Chechnya from the 1990s-2000s. It doesn’t make sense from that perspective why the RAF isn’t wantonly slaughtering thousands.

The very fact that these false expectations haven’t transpired speaks to the inaccurate frame of reference from which those people are assessing Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, one that was perniciously imposed upon them over the past few months as the MSM preconditioned their audience to prepare themselves for an “unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine”. In their minds, President Putin isn’t just equivalent to Hitler, but is already supposedly much worse than him even though no war crimes, genocides, or anything else of the sort have been committed by the RAF. Without asking why the RAF hasn’t flattened Kiev, they attribute its continued stand to the “heroic Ukrainian resistance”.

That’s because so many of them were powerfully influenced by the Snake Island psy-op that successfully convinced its targeted global audience that all Ukrainians are willing to “martyr” themselves in defense of their homeland. That single discredited propaganda story conformed to people’s artificially manufactured false expectations about the conflict and shaped how they view everything else that followed. They’re now largely impervious to the truth that Russia is doing its utmost to limit civilian casualties and collateral damage by eschewing most engagements with the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF), especially against its fascist battalions who’ve deployed weapons of war in residential areas.

Those who’ve been indoctrinated into considering President Putin to be the “new Hitler” likely won’t ever believe any of the facts that were just shared above, but that’ll only exacerbate their cognitive dissonance as they wait for evidence of expected war crimes by the RAF that’ll never end up happening (unless such supposed “proof” is fabricated). It’s not that all Ukrainians are “bravely resisting” the RAF following the example of those 13 who so many across the world were ridiculously duped into thinking “heroically sacrificed themselves for their country” but simply that the RAF are truly proceeding with the greatest of caution in order to limit adverse consequences for the fraternal Ukrainian people.

No one should have any doubt that the RAF does indeed have the capabilities to flatten whatever target they want at any time of their choosing but aren’t going to do so since they don’t have any intention of committing war crimes. Those who don’t acknowledge Russia’s world-class military capabilities are either lying to themselves or to those who they share such false claims with for whatever their self-interested reason may be to mislead their targeted audience. No so-called “setbacks” have occurred thus far during Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, let alone due to “brave Ukrainian resistance” allegedly inspired by the Snake Island border guards’ “heroic martyrdom” that literally didn’t happen.

The campaign is proceeding at its intended pace, which is predicated on reducing civilian casualties and collateral damage. Those who expected a Hitler-like “blitzkrieg” were misled by the MSM precisely for the purpose of subsequently misportraying the RAF’s steady progress as supposedly being “behind schedule” and thus allegedly representing a “setback” caused by the above reason connected to the Snake Island psy-op. Ukraine’s “hero” propaganda is therefore premised on a lie that even its own Border Guard Service was sheepishly forced to officially acknowledge after Russia proved that all 82 of its servicemen there actually surrendered the island instead of “fighting to the death” like was claimed.

Those who sincerely aspire to obtain the most objective understanding of this conflict should therefore keep in mind the narrative mechanisms through which the Western-backed Ukrainian side is seeking to manipulate the global audience. Its discredited “hero” propaganda is meant to frame the conflict in David vs. Goliath terms and thus inspire average Ukrainians to follow the fake example of Snake Island by needlessly putting their lives in danger for supposedly “patriotic” reasons. Those who pick up arms against the RAF might be treated as hostile targets in self-defense, but that’s precisely how the US-led West wants the RAF to react in order to obtain footage that can subsequently be spun as “war crimes’.

If the UAF was really “winning” like the MSM has begun to imply by falsely framing the fact that Kiev and many other major Ukrainian cities haven’t yet been liberated from the US-backed fascist puppet regime as some kind of “setback” for the RAF, then that country wouldn’t be calling up reservists aged 18-60, banning all men of that age from leaving the country, handing out weapons to civilians, and even teaching them how to make petrol bombs. Those are the signs of an increasingly desperate regime on the brink of collapse, not a self-confident one that truly believes in its “inevitable” victory. Ukraine’s discredited “hero” propaganda is meant to obfuscate these facts and rack up casualties before its inevitable loss.