Wednesday

29th Mar 2023

Letter

Russian embassy's right of reply to EUobserver

  • Russia's EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov (Photo: consilium.europa.eu)
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A European medium without any semitone calls Russian diplomats guilty of fratricide and cannibalism, referring to statements that Russia had no plans to attack Ukraine.

But absence of plan and desire does not mean absence of necessity to act so accusations of a U-turn are groundless. As are such dubious rhetorical techniques in principle.

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Here comes a question concerning professionalism of a journalist who, in order to have the right to be called a journalist and not a propagandist, must remain an objective observer and analyst even in the midst of human emotion.

One cannot claim that all this is new and surprising. Forgetting values of humanism is very dangerous — the tragic experience of Europe in the mid-20th century has already shown this. "Humans, be vigilant!".

The Russian embassy's complaint arose in relation to the article: The Ukraine war: What will survive of us? A version of the article which appeared on EUobserver contained the phrase: "This is pure fratricide and cannibalism". This phrase was subsequently removed from the article because, upon reflection, the original wording was better.

Author bio

Sergey Kovalevskiy is press attache of the Russian Mission to the EU.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author's, not those of EUobserver.

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