Agitated agitators

Information war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine is gathering pace. Its active phase, which started simultaneously with the rise of Maidan in November last year, still continues. Russian journalists skillfully manipulate the facts, make up their own names to label the ongoing events, and present distorted information about Ukraine for their own benefit. The Day asked independent Russian journalist Pavel KAZARIN how propaganda in Russian media is changing and what journalists feel like in the conditions of total deception.

“Russian media depend on what the government needs at a given moment,” Kazarin says. “It should be understood that all media in Russia are related to the state. Even those we call oppositional are owned by the government through intermediaries. The platform of opposition mass media is almost fully controlled. Because of this, the majority of media in Russia work according to frameworks and instructions sent directly from the presidential administration. The same administration makes up names for events in Ukraine. We are talking about such terms as ‘junta,’ ‘dictatorship,’ ‘abnormal,’ ‘military coup,’ etc. From the moment Maidan in Ukraine started and until now, I see a distinct change of terms used by the Russian media according to the needs of the presidential administration of the Russian Federation. For example, if in November of 2013 Maidan participants were accused of receiving money from the West or being a project of Western intelligence services, in January Russian media started saying there were ordinary people among protesters, who came out to change something in their country or were dissatisfied with their government’s actions. But usually it was added that the radicals, who had seized power in Kyiv, took advantage of these people.

“The next reformatting of Russian media’s views began in February, when Yanukovych fled. During this period, words ‘junta’ and ‘dictatorship’ appeared in vocabularies of Russian journalists. It is curious that the term ‘junta’ did not fit the description of events in Ukraine, since junta describes a phenomenon of a military group seizing power. If the former minister of internal affairs Zakharchenko had seized power, this definition would be justified. But instead they just used the word that is easy to remember and has a negative connotation.

“Also, the story of implementation of term ‘polite men’ in Russian media is quite interesting too. It was used to mark Russian troops in Crimea, whom Ukrainian journalists christened ‘green men.’ President Vladimir Putin’s administration officials thought that in this way they could create an image of kind, smiling servicemen who literally occupied Crimea, an image which will be easily perceived by people without any other implications.”

Why is constant rotation of these terms happening?

“For example, the term ‘junta’ could not be used anymore because of a simple thing: it is impossible to negotiate with a junta. But Russia has diplomatic relations with Ukraine, recognizes Poroshenko as a president, does not withdraw its ambassador from Ukraine. If they had not removed this term, they would have contradicted themselves. And instead, they left some space for maneuvering, so the population does not ask unnecessary questions.”

Do Russian journalists realize they bear partial responsibility for the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine because of their distorted presentation of information?

“The majority of them do not. It is a rather peculiar precedent of how journalists become apologists of the government. How does the government buy journalists? Many are content with a bag of money. But there are others, for whom money is not enough. They want to believe they carry out a mission of some sort. In this case, the recruitment process looks the following way: an obscure FSB officer contacts you and says that if not for us, vicious Mujahideen will come and slaughter everyone. At this point the journalist is offered to become a kind of Atlas who will support the state with their shoulders. Yes, such journalists understand they tell lies, but they justify themselves by believing they do it for a noble purpose, for the safety of the state. A term was even coined for such people: agitated agitators. That is, people who do not want to fall asleep only after taking sleeping pills and still with an unpleasant feeling inside, need to believe in what they are doing. So, Russian journalists lie because they believe they can save the country, the people, themselves, their families in such a way. Manipulators got trapped within their own manipulation. This is the phenomenon of agitated agitators, which started with the crackdown on mass media. It is extremely hard to change such people’s minds, because they will say it is you who became a victim of propaganda, not them.”