UCC condemns Globe and Mail for amplifying pro-Russian propaganda in photo essay

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) has sharply criticized the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper for publishing what it describes as a pro-Russian, propaganda-driven photo essay “Putin’s War,” by Serbian photographer Goran Tomasovic.

Tomasevic was granted access to fighters from Russia’s occupying “Akhmat” unit, a Kadyrov-affiliated formation that is notorious for brutality, and produced a series of images that portray the daily life of Russian invaders on Ukrainian soil. The newspaper appended an Editor’s Note that attempted to defend the essay as objective journalism, a justification that the UCC rejected. 

“That you would pen an Editor’s Note to accompany this essay, and try to justify it as objective journalism, suggests that, at a minimum, you may have had an inkling that what you are publishing was not, in fact, objective journalism,” the UCC said.

The organization criticized the publication for failing to provide proper context. Members of the Russian “Akhmat” unit are “well-known sadists with a long, sordid and well-documented record of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other outrages.”

“To call them a “special forces” unit is akin to calling the mafia a “business association,” the UCC said.

The attempt to depict a Russian “field hospital” is seen as an effort to elicit sympathy for the Russian army. The UCC emphasized that Russian soldiers in Ukraine are highly paid war criminals who came voluntarily to kill, maim, rape, steal, and commit massacres.

The UCC also suggested that Tomasovic may have been on sovereign Ukrainian territory illegally and “abetting the violation of Ukrainian law is not a proud moment for Canadian journalism.”

The organization added that in a totalitarian state like Russia, people such as Tomasovic are only shown what the government allows. Access to the army was only possible because the Russian government was confident the photographer would portray the subjects “in a manner consistent with Russian propaganda.”

This is not the first time The Globe and Mail has drawn criticism from the Ukrainian community. The UCC recalled the 2008 publication of Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “disgraceful denial of the Holodomor as a Genocide,” as well as the newspaper’s coverage of the Russian propaganda film Russians at War, which they described as naive and uncritical.