“Identity is a mental shield against manipulation”: Museum of Civilian Voices founded by Rinat Akhmetov Foundation hosts filming of an open interview with Rena Marutian

On February 26, as part of the documentary project “Diaries of the Civilians: Voices of those who survived and those who did not” by the Museum of Civilian Voices founded by Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, an open filming of the Sukhanov Speaks project took place. The event took place at the Kyiv History Museum.

The topic of the conversation was “War without Interpretation and Manipulation: How to Preserve the Historical Truth?”. The host Oleksii Sukhanov and his guest Rena Marutian, Doctor of Political Science, Professor of the Department of Global and National Security at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv,   spoke about the distortion of facts in the past and present and the methods of distortion of reality used by russia.

For some time, Ukraine’s history was shaped by the empires it was part of. That is why information was presented in a distorted way or was suppressed altogether. For example, the soviet empire did not need the memory of the Holodomor, because it had organised it. Now russia has one goal: the destruction of Ukrainian identity.

“It is a mistake to think that russia was rational in its approach to the war because it needs our resources. It does not need Ukraine at all. Neither soviet nor russian. Lenin once annexed Ukraine, Stalin annexed the west of Ukraine. But 70 years later, Ukraine said: “We want independence”. They realised that the project was not working. And an empire exists only when it expands its territory”, explains Rena Rubenivna.

“This war will never be forgotten because it is an existential war. And there are already Ukrainian documentaries that help the world to know our narrative about this war. However, it is not called an information war for nothing.

“The phrase “He who owns the information, owns the world” is outdated. It was in the twentieth century that one had to search for information, and the modern world is oversaturated with it. Nowadays, the one who owns the world is the one who owns your emotions and attention. This is a field for manipulation, and russia is taking advantage of it”, says Rena.

The expert cites many examples of manipulations in the past and present and gives advice on how to strengthen information resilience. “Identity is a mental shield”, she emphasises.

Watch all the most interesting stories in the Sukhanov Speaks project in March.

The Museum of Civilian Voices founded by Rinat Akhmetov Foundation already contains more than 130,000 stories about the war. It is the world’s largest collection of stories of civilians affected by russia’s war against Ukraine.

The public interviews are part of the Museum of Civilian Voices series of cultural events aimed at preserving the memory of the war. Follow the announcements of the events on the social media of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation and on the Museum’s website https://civilvoicesmuseum.org/.