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dangermousie · 2 years

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https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/moscow-israeli-mercenaries-fighting-shoulder-to-shoulder-with-ukraines-far-right-azov-unit/

Per Times of Israel, Russia is rapidly accelerating its slide into “Jews are the REAL Nazis” insanity. The latest:

A spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry claims Israeli mercenaries are fighting alongside the far-right Azov Regiment in Ukraine, further fueling tensions with Israel after Russia suggested Adolf Hitler had “Jewish blood.”

“Israeli mercenaries are practically shoulder to shoulder with Azov militants in Ukraine,” Maria Zakharova tells pro-Kremlin Sputnik radio in an interview.

I am literally laughing because I think to Russia this is “See, Gotcha! Proof that Jews are Nazis!!!” while to the rest of the world this is “if this is true that means Azov are not Nazis!!!” moment and it’s pretty perfect.

Also, if you can read Russian, these are two amazing articles. One describes the utter dysfunction of Russian military during the war:

https://zona.media/article/2022/05/03/bibilov

The other dysfunction on all levels of the government: https://dpiy1t0nlwafj.cloudfront.net/narrative/kak-planirovali-voinu/

Whatever you think it is, it’s worse. It’s war and government out of the most kafkaesque nightmare imaginable.

In case you do want to read it but don’t read Russian, I used deepl (sorry too lazy to clean up further) and put it behind read-more.

THE ZONA ARTICLE

"They laughed at us: did they say you were suicide bombers? Conversation between military servicemen from South Ossetia and the republic's leader Anatoly Bibilov Agata Shcheglova May 3, 2022, 16:53 Texts This publication exists on donations from readers - only thanks to you we can continue our work. Because of the invasion of Ukraine and (or) sanctions there are much less of them, so we write in capslock: if you can, support "MEDIAZONA". No to War. Make a regular donation to MEDIAZONE! Support

Illustration: Anya Leonova / Mediazone 5 0 6

At the end of March, many contract servicemen from South Ossetia refused to fight in Ukraine. After that, according to Mediazona's source in the republic, all the refuseniks were dismissed from service. About a hundred people have already returned to the troops - some of them will be sent back to the war zone. Two dozen more soldiers appealed against their dismissal in court. After their return to the republic, the soldiers met with Anatoly Bibilov, head of South Ossetia. They spoke about unbearable service conditions, broken equipment and absence of command on the front line. "Mediazona" publishes excerpts from their stories and answers of the head of the republic.

- I ask one person to stand up and tell everything that has happened," Bibilov addresses the audience.

- During those 11 days, what was going on there - I wouldn't wish it on the enemy", one of the servicemen began. - All the equipment that was there was useless, I can tell you frankly. When we got there, we were all lined up - literally two kilometers from the combat zone. The support platoon and the medroop should stand in the rear, not two kilometers from the combat zone. The command staff was not there. And that night the mortars started shooting.

According to him, the person who sent them there "didn't know what he was doing.

- I didn't go there for the money they pay us. Each of us went there not to defend our homeland, our homeland is here. Why were we taken and sent there, so many people from the second battalion? Why did they send us? It seems wrong to us. What if something had happened here? Confrontation [with Georgia]? Did they want more people not to come back from there? What was all this for? - he was indignant.

Another soldier supports his colleague:

- There's no one there who didn't perform well. When we were sent from here, they said that first the artillery would work, then the equipment would come. But it turned out vice versa: artillery was firing and the misses were two kilometers long.

According to him, when the soldiers complained about the wrong coordinates, the commander waved them off: "I have my own coordinates.

- There are bunkers there, they say, that they don't want to destroy [with a shell]. But no one told us anything," the military officer continued. - There were no commanders there. And if the officers didn't know what to do, what would a sergeant do there? I have a manual launch on my BMP; if you launch it manually the grenade launchers will pick you up. In the second battalion 99% of the equipment does not work, we told them [senior officers] here. We warned: our vehicles don't work, don't send us there. The guys from another company were saying that their guns weren't firing. They were told, 'Go like this.

At the end of March, about 300 servicemen from self-proclaimed South Ossetia refused to participate in the war on Ukrainian territory and returned to Tskhinvali. A source in the republic explained to "Mediazone" at the time that the servicemen were sent back "absolutely without anything, empty" and residents of the republic used their own money to buy them body armor and uniforms. All servicemen were dismissed from their unit after their return.

Former South Ossetian president Eduard Kokoity promised to "fight for each" soldier and called on relatives of the soldiers to "refrain from protest actions" for the time being.

In February Kokoity announced that he intended to run for president again, and at a meeting with his supporters he criticized the incumbent head of South Ossetia, Anatoly Bibilov, including in the context of the situation with the dismissed servicemen.

The central elections committee of the republic did not allow Kokoity to participate in the elections, but on April 7th, after a meeting with Bibilov he was appointed "special representative of South Ossetia for the entire period of the special operation. The head of the republic said that despite political differences with Kokoity they "will serve one purpose - development and strengthening of South Ossetia".

The Russian military had no escape route and no alternate solutions, he continued.

- There was some general who gave a secret map. God bless him, a real officer. On the first day we were set up in a wooded area on the border. A general came to us and said there would be shelling at night. And the base commander said: "It's going to be fine." At exactly 3:14 a.m. the shelling started, three guys got wounded. I had never seen such a defense: to put BMPs and hide in basements. We had to dig in.

Illustration: Anya Leonova / Mediazon

The soldier complains that there were often contradictory orders from the command:

- The radio said that the sixth company had been defeated. We got in our cars and went to them, but they wouldn't let us in. And then we met the sixth company in the city - they said no, there was no attack on them. We were told to walk one kilometer, but it turned out that [we had to walk] ten. There were no directions. There were snipers shooting (unintelligible). From the first day we were deceived. There was one destination in the documents, but we came to a completely different place. The place we were supposed to go to was 800 kilometers away from where we were brought. They are not cannon fodder, there are not many of us. Some servicemen from South Ossetia refused to participate in the war with Ukraine and returned home.

According to the military, out of ten tanks three did not fire.

- The base commander was also there. But when the shooting started he disappeared in 15 minutes. He was afraid of his own guys. A few men made a guard for himself. The base commander refused to talk to his guys and said he was going to be beaten up.

The soldier added that later the "guys from Special Forces" actually smashed the commander's "face all in blood.

- They lied to us at every step. The mortar men's mortars were no good, their legs were all crooked. From the other brigade they laughed at us: they said, "Are you the suicide bombers? Someone said: is it a trophy equipment? All equipment was only started by a push, we were taking it to Vladikavkaz in a tug, and then people here started saying that we were afraid of something. No one here was frightened, we were simply deceived at every step.

The rest of the servicemen start shouting at each other. One of them asks Bibilov to help those who are still in hospital:

- A friend of ours is in hospital in Donetsk, we contacted him by phone. He says he was bandaged on the first day, but he still has shrapnel inside him. He says his arm is very swollen and no one is doing anything. He's been there for five days now, and the doctors are just asking him for money. Another man's eye was injured by a shrapnel. And for two days nobody told him to go to the hospital. And the doctor says to him: "Where were you two days ago, you lost your eye.

On April 19, journalist Arzu Mamedova reported in her Telegram channel that some of the returned refuseniks were able to be reinstated to the service.

"More than a hundred of those who recently returned from Ukraine will be reinstated. Some of the servicemen have expressed a desire to return and continue the military special operation to protect Donbass," she wrote.

According to Mediazona's source in the republic, Eduard Kokoity helped the dismissed refuseniks.

Another 25 people appealed their dismissal in court, the source adds. "Mediazone" managed to find the lawsuit filed with the Vladikavkaz garrison military court where 25 people are contesting the "decision on dismissal from military service," but the defendants in it are the military unit #3724 located in North Ossetia and subordinated to the Russian National Guard, and the commander of the North Caucasus District of the National Guard troops of Russia, whose name is not mentioned.

Bibilov is trying to calm down the military:

- You know better than I do, war is not always won by equipment. There are people here who fought in 2008 and they did not have any equipment. If they had grenade launchers, they had two or three. Let's say I didn't like your performance," he turns to the refusenik who says they weren't sent to fight for their homeland. - If something happened here, in our Ossetia, and if you were there, I'll tell you: you're not a strategist, you're not a tactician and there's no one to think about Ossetia. This question shouldn't arise in your head at all."

The audience began to shout. Someone reminded Bibilov about the death of Inal Dzhabiev, a resident of South Ossetia - in August 2020 he died on the way to the hospital from the temporary detention center. Dzhabiev's relatives are sure that he died because of torture during interrogation.

- When the Dzabiyevs were sitting in the square, why didn't you come out to them? Where were you then? - A question was heard from the audience.

- And did you do a lot for Dzabiev? - Bibilov shouts in response and slams his hand on the table. - Do you know what happened to him? Shut your mouth a little bit! Why did he jump up? Did you know him at all? Did you know him?

Then the head of the republic reminds us that for the sake of South Ossetia "many people - Russians and other different nationalities - died": "And now you tell me that if something happened here, in Ossetia, we would have been left alone? If these fascists, Nazis show up in Ukraine, don't you think they would be here in Ossetia on the second day?"

Bibilov notes that Ossetia would be the first to "come to an end" if "Russia falters": "Know this - we are fighting there, but we are defending our homeland.

- We should have stayed there," he chews at the soldiers. - Agree or disagree, we had to do everything to stay there. Understand correctly, whatever reasons we find, in war and concepts are different. You think I don't know that there is no equipment there, that the weaponry is bad? Everyone understands this, everyone will understand it. To say I blame you - no, but we had to stay there.

According to Bibilov he was planning to go to the front himself and servicemen should have waited for him.

Someone in the hall notes that no one informed them about Bibilov's arrival. "I called Radik, he probably couldn't tell everyone separately," the head of the republic says to this.

Another man asks to be allowed to speak out:

- I've been in the troops since 2003, I've seen a lot. There is a defensive war, there is an offensive war. In war, the main thing is communication and supplies, and the connection must be with the commanders. When the infantry comes in, the squad leader and the platoon commander must have communication. And this communication was not there, and without it we can't work. They think we were scared, but without communication we could not do anything. For 25 minutes we were firing non-stop, if there are [experienced] servicemen - they will understand that it is very difficult.

Illustration: Anya Leonova / Mediazone

He says that the soldiers did not know the situation when they arrived in the war zone.

- We knew that the enemies were in the front, but it turned out that they were also on the sides. They started shooting at us from the other sides, but we didn't know it.

According to him, the soldiers left Ukraine because they did not want to be "cannon fodder" and "go up against a tank with slingshots.

- You should have waited for me, - Bibilov says again.

- There wasn't a word that you had to come," the serviceman said. - If we had known you were coming, I would not have let my guys go either.

Bibilov says he would have come anyway.

One of the servicemen in the hall complained to the President that there were rumors in the republic that they had "dishonored Ossetia" by their return. "There's a volunteer recruitment drive going on right now too - let the guys who smear our name go," one of them suggested.

- You probably don't know it, but I already have many guys who are asking to go there, and they're not talking about money or saying, "Give us weapons." Two battalions of volunteers have already been sent there," Bibilov says.

- But we were sent there as volunteers too - a voice is heard from the audience.

- That's not the point - the point is that they were not afraid to go there, - says the head of the republic.

Then he asks the audience if they think Russia will lose the war. A voice is heard in the hall: "Yes, we think they will. The audience begins to talk and make noise.

- Napoleon came to Moscow, and to keep Moscow from falling, the Russians burned down their own city. Don't ever think that the Russians will lose, - assured the audience Bibilov. - The fact that someone is spreading panic does not mean anything.

The military is again trying to get back to the discussion of the lack of weapons. Someone says that the only thing the South Ossetian servicemen had plenty of is magazines for submachine guns: "When we came here, everybody laughed at us - this is not that kind of war, they said where you can shoot with submachine guns. What will the infantry do if the equipment doesn't work?".

Bibilov asks how old he was in 2008, he answers that he was just a child. "That's why it's easy for you to reason," says the head of the republic.

- We have to understand that this is a war, where either I or the one next to me will be dead. In fact, it's about the fact that we're not going to die. We have to win. I say from the bottom of my heart, I am very offended, - says the politician. - We could give a thousand reasons, but the bottom line is one - we are not on the battlefield. Everything else, I am telling you as a military man... time will pass and no one will discuss the fact that there were no weapons, equipment, communication. There will be a victory and the parade in Kiev will be one hundred percent!

Someone in the hall says: "There will be, but with a lot of casualties. We would have been left lying there if we hadn't come back here."

- It makes no difference. This is war," Bibilov answers.

THE PROEKT ARTICLE

Part One. How Russia Wasn't Ready for the War It Was Preparing for

Mikhail Rubin, Katya Arenina, Roman Badanin and other contributors to the Project

May 4, 2022 The invasion of Ukraine, in addition to the Kremlin's treachery, confirmed another Russian rule: there is a mess everywhere. The military, political, and propaganda planning for the war was totally ill-conceived, contradictory, and at times simply stupid.

- I am sure that the soldiers and officers of the Armed Forces devoted to their country will fulfill their duty professionally and courageously. I have no doubt that all levels of government, specialists in charge of the stability of our economy, financial system, and social sphere, as well as the heads of our companies and all Russian business will act cohesively and effectively. [...] This means that the decisions we have made will be implemented, the goals we have set will be achieved, and the security of our homeland will be reliably guaranteed,

- with these words Vladimir Putin ended his speech about the start of the war against Ukraine. The recording of the speech was shown early in the morning of February 24. The president was filmed by his longtime personal cameraman Ilya Filatov.

Immediately after this filming and the outbreak of war, the cameraman quit his job. "I had reached my professional ceiling," Filatov told the Project. - Plus I was tired of being quarantined for many months. His acquaintances confirm that working with the president requires constant isolation, which causes many to start abusing alcohol. However, according to Filatov's colleague, the dismissal coincided so strangely with the start of the war that there were whispers in the Kremlin about the cameraman's allegedly careless remarks about the events in Ukraine.

At the time, many officials were so shocked by the attack on the neighboring country that they attributed any resignations to dissatisfaction with Russian aggression.

Was there a plan?

The coherence that Putin spoke of in his pre-war address was not immediately forthcoming. Most of the government and Kremlin officials knew nothing about the president's plans to launch full-fledged military action, and even the high-ranking officials did not have time to draw up a plan of action - for example, in the economy or propaganda. Apart from this, many were struck by the very idea of war with a neighboring state. It was then that one of the Project's high-ranking interlocutors in the Cabinet, when asked what he thought about war, could only utter the words "f**ked up.

Particularly stupid were those Duma members who, at the beginning of the year, had signed an appeal to Putin to recognize the independence of the LPR and DPR, without realizing that this would be a precursor to the war. An acquaintance of one of the parliamentarians recalled that on February 24, he had been on the phone, almost in tears: he was very upset that his signature on the appeal had been used to start a war.

The disgruntled, of course, were worked through. A few days later, the Project's interlocutor decided to check on the deputy's well-being and found him in a completely different state - the latter, in the spirit of the Kremlin's methodology, spoke of the need to unite in the face of Western sanctions. A couple of weeks later, roughly the same thing happened to the high-ranking official, who had only recently described what was going on with a brief, profane word. Now he called everything happening a "window of opportunity" for Russia.

Even the deputies, who first dared to speak out publicly against the war, remained silent. In the first days of the hostilities, five parliamentarians condemned the Russian aggression. But in April, when a Project correspondent called all the "dissenting" lawmakers, they refused to discuss their anti-war statements. When a federal official asked "Proekt" why the "dissenting" deputies had become silent, he said ironically: "There aren't any who are against it. It's just that someone made an inaccurate statement. But otherwise, everyone has always been supportive. A source close to United Russia's leadership specifies: some preventive conversations were held with the dissenters.

However, these conversations didn't help in any other way. Over the course of the hostilities, Proekt talked to a dozen interlocutors - Kremlin officials and contractors - and they all repeated that they don't understand what goals Russia is pursuing in Ukraine. And they admitted - there is chaos and confusion in everything from propaganda to sending troops to Ukraine.

Two weeks after the attack on Ukraine, the president and defense minister made a surprising discovery. They were told information that journalists and human rights activists had been aware of since the first hours of the war - that conscript soldiers were involved in the fighting. And this is in spite of the Russian leadership's long-standing decision to send only contract servicemen to "hot spots".

Neither Putin nor Shoigu expected such a development, and the distraught Defense Minister gave the generals a stern scolding, but as the following story will show, this did not improve the situation.

Many soldiers had been brought to the border with Ukraine as early as the beginning of February. The share of conscripts among them was large - all the more surprising that the leadership of the country did not know about them. For example, in one battery of the 252nd motorized rifle regiment of 40 men there were 26 conscripts.

- They started to teach how to fight, but they could only sweep and dig. In three days they taught my son how to fill up his guts. And they said that now he is a sanitary instructor, - says the mother of one of them.

In Kantemirovskaya and Tamanskaya divisions, which were waiting for an offensive near Belgorod, there were also conscripts. And the command did not think not only about the fact that they should not be in hot spots, but also about their everyday life. They were sent to sleep at the railway station of Dolbino without any food, so the soldiers did not even get dry rations for five days preceding the military actions.

On February 24 the soldiers were thrown into combat and by that time the problems with food were widespread.

- They had been at the exercises since February 13, and by the beginning of the war food had run out. They went around asking Ukrainians for even a piece of bread. They were told: 'Go to hell, Russian beasts,'" recounts Gulnara Valiyeva, the mother of a deceased Russian guard.

- Is the food ok? - asks a man's voice in a recording of allegedly intercepted telephone conversations between Russian soldiers and their relatives, published by Ukrainian media. - The dog was slaughtered and eaten. Normal. - You said they [ate] nutria. - [Nutria] ran out.

In the already mentioned 252nd Motorized Rifle Regiment, the field kitchen was bombed in the first days . "We survived like bum dogs," says the mother of a soldier of that unit. - At first there weren't even dry rations. Everybody got frostbite.

The conscripts spent many days in these conditions - it took the Russian leadership too long to realize their mistakes and even longer to correct them. As early as the 10th day of the war, during a very strange meeting with female air staff, Putin firmly stated: only officers and contract servicemen take part in the operation. "There are no conscripts," he stressed. Four days later, the Commander-in-Chief suddenly learned that there were conscripts and demanded that the culprits be found. The Defense Ministry immediately announced that they had allegedly discovered only a few such cases and that practically all conscripts had already been evacuated.

This is not true. The 252nd regiment at that time continued to take part in combat operations and, for example, on March 21, it attacked Kharkov. Two conscripts from this unit could be evacuated only on March 29, and, according to their relatives, they were not the last conscripts evacuated even from this battery. According to their relatives, they were not the last conscripts even from this battery. Young men were evacuated slowly - together with the wounded and the dead, and centralized evacuation was out of the question.

The conscripts stayed even longer in the Navy. More than half of the crew of the cruiser "Moscow", which perished on the night of April 14, could have been conscripts.

However, conscripts were not the only problem. The Russian leadership, counting on a quick victory, was anxious in advance to have someone to control the new possessions. This is how Rosgvardiya fighters, trained to keep order in the already seized territories, but not to fight, ended up in Ukraine.

The Rosgvardeys attacked in unarmed trucks, carrying helmets and truncheons that were clearly inadequate to fight the Ukrainian troops. Sad accounts quickly began to emerge - Mediazone journalists found reports of the deaths of at least 78 Rosgvardeys.

How the Rosgvardia attacked

- Early in the morning [on February 24] a huge column [of the Rosgvardia unit] of SOBR special forces moved in the direction of Kiev - described the start of the war by special forces from Khakassia. - The column moved without air cover, without heavy equipment and as if on parade, stretching out for many kilometers. <...> As they were driving, their equipment broke down and they had to stop every now and then. As a result, the convoy was shot at like a shooting gallery just five hours after crossing the border.

Yevgeny Dudin, a Rosgvardia dog handler, was sent to fight with his dog Nancy. His mother, Gulnara Valiyeva, recalls that her son reassured her: "He was supposed to go later, when there was a clean-up, not into combat. His dog is trained for explosives." But on the fourth day of the war, Evgeny found himself near Gostomel, where heavy fighting for Antonov airport was going on at the time. He and his dog were killed by a single shrapnel. It was then that many other Rosgvardeys realized - they did not want to go any further.

The 49th operational brigade of the Rosgvardia was brought to Ukraine from Vladikavkaz. "We were told that we had to go to free people, that they were waiting for us there," says one of the brigade's servicemen . - We went in there and were faced with the fact that no one was waiting for us." The brigade stood near Kharkiv for about five days, after which about 200 people wrote reports asking to be sent back to Russia.

- I think they refused to go when they saw that they would be taken in Kamaz trucks with canvas boards," says Mikhail Benyash, a lawyer who defends the refuseniks.

The Rosgvardeys were returned to Vladikavkaz, threatened with court martial and dismissal for non-compliance with the terms of their contract. But the problems did not scare others - at the end of March the Agora human rights group had information about more than a thousand servicemen and members of the Russian Guard who refused to go to war.

Not surprisingly, the Russian army's offensive proved unsuccessful, and against this backdrop, internal conflicts within the Russian elite intensified. "It's like in the movie '17 Moments of Spring' - Berlin is bombed, and they fight. It's the same here," says an ironic interlocutor in the leadership of a government agency. This "bickering" was especially strong during the negotiations.

Non-negotiations

The dialogue with Ukraine began only a few days after the war began . Putin spoke with his emissaries beforehand, and immediately struck one of them with his poor knowledge of reality. The president mentioned the Azov battalion as a nationalist formation with no connection to the state, the Project's interlocutor recalls with surprise.

This is a mistake: the battalion was originally formed from volunteers, but now one of the regiments of the Ukrainian National Guard bears this name. One of the interlocutors told this to the President, who did not believe him and asked for confirmation, and when he received it, he was surprised.

But the main thing is that the negotiations showed that Putin is not really interested in them. As Project reported earlier, businessman Roman Abramovich offered his services in organizing dialogue with Ukraine. The president agreed and sent him to Dmitry Kozak, deputy head of his administration in charge of Ukraine, to discuss the details. But then difficulties followed - negotiations were either cancelled or delayed.

When the dialogue began, the President refused permanent contact with the head of the Russian delegation and his advisor Vladimir Medinsky, who essentially reported to Kozak and the head of the presidential administration Anton Vaino. On one occasion, due to this distance from his boss, Medinsky had to get quite nervous.

At the end of March, he was instructed to make an important statement - that Russia had allegedly seen the Ukrainian side's desire for compromise and was making reciprocal concessions, one of which was the withdrawal of troops from Kiev. In fact, the Russian army's poorly planned offensive in all directions had by this point been stalled, and the troops decided to concentrate in the eastern theater of combat operations. The statement that Medinsky eventually made was supposed to justify this retreat.

True, not everyone liked Medinsky's conciliatory statement. The hawks of Russian aggression immediately decided to show themselves. Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Chechnya, recorded a video appeal in which he said that "Mr. Medinsky made a mistake. And TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov and his guests spent a lot of time criticizing the presidential aide:

Medinsky was so offended by this criticism that he tried to get a phone conversation with the president to clarify whether he had said everything correctly. But Putin was in no hurry to get in touch with his aide, seeing no need to devote time to his chief negotiator. Medinsky was so nervous while waiting for an answer that like a real bureaucrat he decided to play it safe and made a new statement, which, just in case, harshly criticized Ukraine.

Only a day later, Putin responded to Medinsky's call and confirmed that he was right, and only then did the official calm down.

However, the conflicts related to the negotiations did not end there. One of the most awkward moments happened when the Ukrainian negotiators asked their Russian counterparts what "denazification" of Ukraine meant. They were unable to formulate an answer. All Russian propaganda in those days felt just as foolish because of this phrase.

Catch-22

"We will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine," Putin defined the vocabulary of the TV crews with this complicated phrase on the day the hostilities began.

TV host Dmitry Kiselyov explained the meaning of "denazification" for at least seven minutes in his Vesti Nedeli. "Denazification can only be coercive," he repeated on the newscasts of February 27 and March 6. But then something went wrong - in the April issues he either did not use the term at all, or did it once for the entire issue.

The thing is that by then the Kremlin had ordered telephone polls to sociologists, including surveys of Russians' attitudes toward the main theses of propaganda. It turned out that people don't understand what "denazification" means - not many people were able to decipher the term clearly, four interlocutors - a high-ranking media manager and a sociologist close to the Kremlin and an expert who receives Kremlin "darkies" - told Proekt.

- After that, we got into a mess - every week we were looking for new words, but we couldn't come up with anything good," complains the source close to the Kremlin.

According to him, the polls showed that the people want only one thing - the announcement of victory. They failed to achieve it, so they had to come up with new explanations on a regular basis, which inevitably led to confusion.

How Television Increased the Amount of Propaganda

Traditionally, they tried to solve the problem of the quality of propaganda with money and quantity. They even increased the bonuses for state employees and forced them to work harder.

Starting February 24, an unprecedented amount of selective propaganda was dumped on Russian television viewers.

According to Project's calculations, the amount of information and propaganda programs on Channel One rose from 28 to 90 hours a week, compared with the week before the war. Popular shows such as Vecherniy Urgant, Fashionable Verdict, and Pozner went under the knife. Russia 1 formally acted more moderately. The amount of propaganda rose from 52.5 hours to 67.5 hours a week. But it dramatically increased the amount of programming by one of its key propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov.

Even the most venerable propagandists were confused. The first news reports on the February 24 battles on Channel One, Russia One, and NTV said that "Russian troops are advancing rapidly," "Ukrainian servicemen are retreating en masse," and "the National Guard" are shooting at them, which is the main focus of resistance in Ukraine. "Amid the successes of the Russian army, the AFU will soon be fragmented and blockaded," the correspondent reported in Kiselev's Feb. 27 program.

The confidence with which propaganda told of the Russian army's successes led to the fact that on March 6 in the program "Vesti Nedeli," the author of one of the stories dropped the phrase: "Now that our cruisers and landing ships are anchored in the Soviet hero city of Odessa..." - which in reality never happened.

The unexpected announcement by the Russian Ministry of Defense of a retreat from Kiev came as an even bigger surprise to propaganda than the slow offensive of the first weeks of the war. Just two days earlier, Vesti's correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny had reported from Gostomel that "Russian paratroopers are advancing" and "are already on the closest approaches" to the Ukrainian capital and "now the main task is to dismantle the fortifications near Kiev. On March 28, one day before the official retreat, Channel One aired a story about a mobile military hospital deployed at the front line near Kyiv. As a result, when the retreat became a reality, the state channels decided to do away with less than a minute's worth of news.

Another problem for the media, accustomed to acting at the behest of the Kremlin, was the continuing contradictions in the words of officials. While Dmitry Peskov in several interviews acknowledged Russia's "significant" losses in the war and refused to brand celebrities who left the country, he was criticized by Kadyrov, pro-Kremlin media manager Aram Gabrelianov, and even by the Secretary of the United Russia General Council, Andrei Turchak.

As a result, the government media bosses had to solve the problem: they began publishing the politicians' statements with a long delay, and only with the permission of their superiors.

- After another showdown, we were instructed to quote Kadyrov only after his bosses' approval," says a TASS journalist who spoke on condition of anonymity. And he gives us an example - the agency did not broadcast Kadyrov's report about 260 surrendered Ukrainian Marines.

Lately, the bosses have started to think long and hard about economic news as well. If there is even a hint in a text that Russia is having a hard time with the war and sanctions, it may take two hours to agree or not be released at all. For example, the bosses forbade one correspondent to publish the news with a "smoothed" quote from an expert that the effect of the idea of accepting payment for gas in rubles would be "neutral. Instead, another comment was published - that this move would "hit the dollar system as such.

* * *

Russia's top leadership has found its own way to deal with failures on the front lines and confusion in their heads. Putin and Shoigu, Russia's top military leaders, decided to simply shut up. The defense minister, well known for his love of self-promotion, disappeared shortly after the start of the special operation. Only once, on March 11, he went to a military hospital and never visited the front line or military units. After his appearance in the hospital, Shoigu disappeared from view twice more - from March 11 to 24 and from April 8 to 19.

There is an even more interesting thing going on with Putin. Since February 24, the Russian president has made only 18 public appearances to assess the campaign, while his counterpart Vladimir Zelensky records addresses every day. While in the early days Putin gave assessments of military actions almost every day, later the pauses between statements began to reach two weeks.

The Russian leadership often simply has nothing to say, concludes an acquaintance of the defense minister.

#real life #long but WORTH IT

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