Are you wondering how the Ukraine crisis is playing out in Russian media? LA Times staff writer Nabih Bulos reports from Kyiv:
To hear Russian media tell it, the government of Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis waging a genocidal campaign against ethnic Russians in the country’s east, where Moscow-backed authorities regularly uncover mass graves full of the corpses of women and children with bound hands and bludgeoned heads even as they face the hell of constant shelling.
Such false images and narratives have become a daily staple in Russia....The Russian media have gone into overdrive with stories depicting a government in Kyiv so cruel that Moscow has no choice but to swoop in and protect the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
“It’s a war between the Ukrainian government and its own people.... People are dying there every day. Thousands of civilians died there. Thousands of children lost their limbs there, buried in little coffins,” Margarita Simonyan, head of the state-funded broadcaster RT, said on a talk show on the Russia-1 channel.
I think living in Russia is what it would be like in the US if every channel were Fox News and every newspaper were the New York Post.
Yikes. That's the type of thing that could lead to real atrocities if they do end up invading in Ukraine.
One important difference being, Russians are FAR more cynical and jaded about their (official) media than we are.
The ancient Russian joke goes like this:
In Pravda (Truth) there is no news (Izvestya)
In Izvestya (News) there is no truth (Pravda)
Putin cannot abide an independent Ukraine simply because if the west ever really focused on it it could turn into a European South Korea, successful, happy, living with the rule of law and freedom, and making Russia look like crap by comparison.
I don't know why he is concerned because it's clear the west can't.
The West has barely done anything in Ukraine because they didn't want to get involved in some situation that might lead to exactly this, and now here it is.
No, Putin cannot abide an independent Ukraine because Ukraine was historically a part of Russia and he wants it back.
Yes, but what if he didn't get it back, what does his idea of the worst case scenario look like?
If Putin was that concerned about historical connections, he’d have given the Kaliningrad Oblast back to Poland and Lithuania (Germany won’t contest).
On an unrelated note, Fox News viewers don't appear to have gotten one report on the news of Mazars noisily firing Trump, his response or the 500k+ pages Mazars has no turned over.
Bret Baier reported on it for about 23 seconds ... ending with, "We'll follow that story."
Totes "Fair and Balanced" that. I'd imagine one could hold their breath longer than the coverage between this and the family being forced to testify.
The prelude to his invasion. The west ought to do more of this callout of Russian state media's involvement in the disinfo campaign. Blinken should have used comparisons of satellite photos of Russian troop/equipment at the UN Security Council meeting. There's still time for Biden to go to the airways and beat Putin to the punch.
Seems like from a mass psychology perspective you box yourself in when you put out that kind of stuff; how can you pull your troops back once you've announced the land is full of massacres?
Or, is it a common occurrence in Russian media that one day the Ukrainians are eating Russian babies, and the next day they are making tacos for hungry Russian soldiers far from home?
Reminds me a bit of the famous Hollywood movie "Mission to Moscow" made when the Soviets were our pals in WW2. Later, things changed of course...
So, Russians and Ukrainians are one people, in Putin's view, except that the Ukrainians beat and dismember helpless civilians ...
By the way, here is a photo of the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu standing next to (and looking up to) noted pipsqueak Vladimir Putin. If these guys had just had a good shrink, and dealt with their stature issues, would things be different? (Disclaimer: I'm 170 cm/5'7", and not threatening to invade anyone)
oops, link
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Sergey_Shoigu%2C_Vladimir_Putin%2C_Dmitry_Medvedev%2C_May_9%2C_2014.jpg
". . . when the Soviets were our pals in WW2."
"No nation has friends only interests."
~ Charles de Gaulle
Spoken by a major league asshole who had no friends
Serial monogamy as diplomacy.
"I think living in Russia is what it would be like in the US if every channel were Fox News and every newspaper were the New York Post."
Also, if every TV channel and every newspaper, along with every other industry, were owned by a small collection of very rich men who were all good buddies/alive at the mercy of an even richer man who was president-for-life of a one-party state.
We're not there yet, but Trump & Co. have helped and are helping to close the gap.
Which could happen only if the country were under the control of someone like Putin. Both malevolent and competent.
Evidence of his competence is lacking.
It's the facade of authoritarians. They project competence but they and the societies they rule are corrupt and incompetent to the core.
This. Think of what an ideal structure would be to ensure that somebody running a vast organization has access to the information, perspectives, projections, modeling, and feedback to make proper decisions. It would need independent consultants, institutional structures to quality check information, relevant metrics, public feedback, ways to identify and elevate new ideas, trustworthy and longitudinal data collection systems, and accountability for mistakes. Does that look anything like Russia?
Putin suffers from all the problems of an out-of-touch CEO--he's surrounded by cronies whose advancement is tethered to how much they praise their leader--without any of the institutional safeguards. He has no board of directors, no stock price to let him know how his company is doing, no accountants or external benchmarks. Worse, he has to deal with the fact that he can't actually rely on or fully trust his adjutants and oligarchs, because he knows that some or all of them are just a cup of polonium tea away from replacing him.
And that's on top of the fact that his whole gangster-state system absolutely depends flooding a vast media system with noise, bullshit, and propaganda to which of course _Putin is not immune_.
Under such a situation, how could Putin do otherwise than to make terrible decisions? Even if he wanted to be a benevolent ruler of Russia (and by all accounts, he doesn't), there's no reason that he could.
We all wonder what genius game Putin is playing, when in reality, this is exactly what autocrats do: make stupid destructive moves that the rest of us are either harmed with or have to clean up.
Very true. Putin, like others before him, can inflict widespread damage if he chooses. But an invasion of Ukraine isn't a stroke of a master strategy. It's an unforced error. The whole idea wreaks of desperation, and more likely will quicken his own downfall.
Well stated!
His military is competent. And Hitler's military was competent.
He's about to conquer Ukraine. He has destroyed the US on the cheap. I think that's pretty competent.
William Rehnquist did that all on his own while Vlad was just getting his feet wet as Yeltsin's successor.
It remains to be seen how the situation will play out in Ukraine. Meanwhile, he has driven Sweden and Finland into closer coöperation with NATO, and discussing full membership. Poland and other bordering countries are asking for, and getting, more arms and troops from NATO. The ‘near abroad’ is hardening against Russia, not softening.
That's post hoc thinking. That's like saying somebody who smashes a window at a convenient store is really competent because nobody else managed to do it and just look at how effective they were at window smashing. The point is that most normal people DON'T want to break things for no good reason, and if we judge abnormal people by whether they did whatever loopy thing they did, of course they seem competent. The question isn't "Did Putin do a thing that we, after the fact, presume he wanted/planned to do?" but rather something more along the line of "Is Putin doing a good job of making Russia a good place to live?" Putin wants you to focus on the first question, because the answer to the second is absolutely not.
Put another way: even the most useless person can still break things. Putin is that person.
I think living in Russia is what it would be like in the US if every channel were Fox News and every newspaper were the New York Post.
Why do you think Tucker Carlson and other conservative pundits love Russia so much?
Didn't Putin and Murdoch share the affections of Wendy Deng? That's another similarity for a country that shares the propaganda model of Faux News and the NYPost.
& Ms. Wendi is almost certainly Chinese or North Korean intelligence.
Once again, white men getting played by their fetishization of Asian women.
So...will ex US generals be back on RT giving commentary???
Thanks to Faux news, we are so close to being there.
"I think living in Russia is what it would be like in the US if every channel were Fox News and every newspaper were the New York Post."
That is what living in the US is for, what?, 30% of the population.
The question is: how much of this stuff is believed, by what segments of the population?
It may well be easier to create an incoherent narrative (ie destabilize other countries by having their media foster a welter of incompatible claims resulting in tribalism) than to get everyone to believe a single narrative.
Certainly the story we are always told *after* some regime collapses is that few actually bought into the stories (even if they supported the regime) because the stories were so obviously over the top and one-sided.
This is going to be fun watching hateful people kill each other. There are no innocent people left in the world. Not even me!
Meanwhile, our young friends in New York City are having a cocktail with dolls.
Lord, have mercy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/style/american-girl-cafe-harry-hill-serena-kerrigan.html
On a Monday morning in February, Harry Hill, 27, showed up at the American Girl Cafe wearing a vintage Christian Dior sweater and carrying a Coach tote that held two of his beloved dolls. He was joined by Serena Kerrigan, 27, who brought her dolls in a pink mesh Victoria’s Secret bag.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vVsBbsAQTs
Russia will own Kiev again soon.
Would Putin have done this four years ago except that by chance Trump ended up in office and he felt he could not do it lest he lose such an entertaining asset?
Is there any doubt? He had this all plotted to offend President Hillary.
We’ll never know for sure but I think this is the next logical step after trump. And the Chinese are taking advantage to Covid to strangle the rest of the world too. That’s a grand conspiracy theory for you! War, inflation, stock market crashes, energy shortages… brought to you by your Chinese and Russian friends and their buddies on Wall Street who enabled them! 😂
That about covers it.
As flowers follow the sun you don't need conspiracy to explain Wall Street, or Putin and Xi's self-interest.
Conspiracy works at a lower, more parochial level, the enabler level.
I am surprised that you don't think there was a secret deal sealed at their last meeting by Putin and Xi for their respective takeover of Ukrain and Taiwan with impunity.
& the mask falls off, Justin revealing his crazed Jonstewartian amateurism, in praise of the intentional bioweaponized Wuhan lableak theory.
For a paperclip animal all jokes all the time, you seem unable to tell the difference.
There are no conspiracies except the one which binds all stupidity to endless suffering and conflict.
It's a sad thing that Putin is hellbent on killing a bunch of Ukrainians. Why is he going to do it? Like a czar, I suppose he believes he is on an important mission. In reality, he simply wants to create a bigger buffer zone between Putin's brand of authoritarian government and the democratic countries who oppose it.
Why? He's a Christian religious fanatic.
https://www.ft.com/content/a41ed014-c38b-11e9-a8e9-296ca66511c9
Under President Putin, Kremlin mandarins, security service officials and oligarchs alike turned to priests for spiritual advice. The church courted them by soliciting donations and even adjusting church doctrine, particularly after Kirill became patriarch in 2009. The state’s military ambitions took on sacred overtones.
That's all you need to know. When the gods are on your side... everything is permitted.
This is old news. There is no fight coming. Pay attention to actual Russian forces.
"I think living in Russia is what it would be like in the US if every channel were Fox News and every newspaper were the New York Post."
Or like America, pre Gulf War I, when every news station carried reports that Iraqi soldiers were pulling Kuwaiti babies out of incubators.
Not exactly on point, but Kevin's last sentence requires me to make a shameful admission: I read the New York Post sports section, primarily for New York Giants news. (I've been a dedicated Giants fan for half a century, though in recent years it's a lot like being a self flagellating monk wearing a hair shirt.) Unfortunately, it's getting harder to find such coverage since the New York Daily News (not that much better these days, I know) is mostly behind a pay wall and the NYT provides almost none (judging by its lack of coverage of even Giants games in recent years, it no longer even has a Giants beat writer).
The Telecom Act of 1996 did make every US channel like Fox News and every US newspaper like the New York Post. The Telecom Act of 1996 is why Americans have been convinced Russia is going to invade Ukraine and why massacres of Russian Ukrainians by fascist Ukrainians are false flag actions.
"Hey Vlad, don't destroy Kyiv until you find Hunter Biden's laptop"
DJT/s
Putin has to strike now before all the intel provided by his American asset is outdated.