On 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin turns to history as the beginning of a “special military operation” against Ukraine. Do not be afraid, I have used the same euphemism as the Russian autocratic at the moment because it is a very representative example of the communicative war being waged on either side of the new steel fabric.
I will not be the one to study the implications of this new war in the geopolitical and economic key, to this end there are genuine experts and a body of opinion that with the downturn of the pandemic was running out. What I find most significant is the battle being waged by the story and control of public opinion.

The European Union (EU) announced a package of measures and sanctions against Russia, including the ban on media broadcasts Russia Today and Sputnik in Europe, as well as blocking the main accounts of its social networks and media platforms. It is an unprecedented decision at Community level that directly addresses the right to information and freedom of expression, opening the door to media censorship.

Days later, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, announced from Brussels that he was working within a framework to punish the actors involved in misinformation campaigns. “Democracy is a system that considers information as fuel,” he said. And that's what I ask. Who decides what is true and what lies?

The news coming from Moscow does not encourage optimism either. Journalists from major media around the world have left the country after Putin signed a new law, which imposes prison sentences of up to 15 years for spreading “fake news”. Independent media have also been blocked and social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

In addition to this bleak picture is the murder of journalists working on the ground, such as the American Brent Renaud, who has expanded the tragic list of at least ten journalists killed in 2014 since the outbreak of the Donbass war. No, I do the words of reporter Hibai Arbide: “The deaths of journalists are no more important than those of others, but without a chamber the wars are worse for everyone.”

This presumption makes the silence of much of the profession unbearable after the arrest of Pablo González in Poland. Gonzalez is a journalist, accused of “espionage” without providing any evidence, but incommunicado about the inaction of the Spanish Government not to say “collaboration”.

In the meantime, the media presents dozens of freelance journalists as “correspondents” or “special representatives”, but they must face coverage costs themselves, risking their lives in exchange for four small dogs. Honest professionals, without any responsibility, who travel to a conflict zone without the necessary knowledge and without the possibility of providing anything new, while spending the scarce resources of the affected population in exchange for a handful of lichens on social networks.

All this corruption reaffirms the famous phrase of the English politician Arthur Ponsonby: “When war is declared, the first victim is true.” And there are some of us, criticizing censorship, reading all the sources and arguing that we want to decide on our own who to give credibility.