Austrians began to get to know Ukraine only after Feb 24, 2022 - Ambassador

That’s according to Ukraine’s Ambassador to Austria Vasyl Khymynets, who spoke at a panel discussion, organized by NEOS party, on disinformation’s influence.

"Unfortunately, Austria has begun to perceive and learn about Ukraine properly only since February 24. Not since 2014, which is the beginning of the war, but since February 24, 2022, when tens of thousands - now we talk about hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians - came to seek protection here, in Austria. These people, fleeing from the war, came to Austria, and along with their arrival, the process of getting to know Ukraine, gaining knowledge about Ukraine, studying Ukraine, started moving forward," he said.

According to the ambassador, average Austrians used to know very little about our Ukraine before they learned that this is a country with quite similar traditions and culture.

A few months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the dominant perception of the country in Austria was that through the prism of Russian propaganda, the diplomat recalled. These narratives were aimed at justifying the invasion and backing Vladimir Putin’s policy.

Khymynets also stressed that one of the leading misinformation lines pursued by the Kremlin was an appeal to the fact that Russia was "forced" to invade Ukraine because of NATO’s eastward expansion. "For Putin NATO is just an excuse to have influence on Ukraine. He’s been saying this to everyone openly since 2008, since the NATO summit in Bucharest, that he wants Ukraine as his tool and toy. And, unfortunately , it works. It works because in Austria, people have never seen Ukraine," he said.

The head of the Ukrainian diplomatic mission expressed the opinion that an important step that would contribute to a better understanding of Ukraine in Austria would be to include the topic of Ukraine in the school curriculum.

He also pointed to the importance of every parliamentary faction having in its ranks some people who are well aware of Ukraine, and this knowledge has to be based on reality, “not on what the Russians have told.”

According to Ukrinform, Austrian misinformation expert Dietmar Pichler says his country’s neutrality sometimes goes as far as putting an equation sign between aggressors and defenders.

Photo: Kurier/Juerg Christandl