Information war to... the last child

“The Russians never betray their own people,” “It is our people in Donetsk and Luhansk, and we are not indifferent about what is happening to them” – Russia has been occupying a part of the Ukrainian territory and waging an aggressive war against Ukraine for almost four years under these screams from Putin’s television.

Something unclear is going on in the “LNR” for the third consecutive day. “Interior Minister” Igor Kornet says that a large grouping of Ukrainian saboteurs was exposed and some people in the “LNR” leader Igor Plotnitsky’s inner circle were arrested for wrongdoings. Plotnitsky himself claims that Kornet is no longer a minister but an impostor who is trying to stage a military coup. Luhansk is occupied by Kornet’s militants supported by their counterparts from the neighboring “DNR.” They stormed the “LNR’s prosecution office” and arrested its top executives. The Kremlin has been silent for three days, except for Peskov’s mumblings that what is going on is an internal affair of the “LNR” and the Kremlin is closely watching the situation.

The Russian media seemed to be watching the Zimbabwe coup under a microscope. The Russians divided into three groups. Some supported Mugabe, others liked his wife Grace, still others looked forward to Mnangagwa, who has such a nice “stage name” as Crocodile, coming to power. Now all the Russian media are full of news from Syria, celebrating the triumph of Russian weapons for more than one day. This is what they call genocide against the Syrian people – in a country absolutely alien to Russia.

There is not a word, not a line in the Russian media about what is going on in the “LNR.” The words “LNR” and Luhansk were missing from website of the main state-run news agency RIA Novosti on November 23, 2017. They report very much and joyfully on Syria, sadly on the US and Europe (the article is titled “Apocalypse Today”), indignantly on Ukraine, indifferently on Puigdemont, but say not a word about the “LNR,” so dear and beloved only yesterday.

I waited impatiently for Solovyov’s TV program “Evening” on November 22, in a hope that he will tell us everything and explain which of the two – Plotnitsky or Kornet – is the Ukrainian saboteur over there in Luhansk and what attitude we should take to the interference of Zakharchenko’s militants into the absolutely internal affairs of an absolutely sovereign and independent “LNR” – moreover, by all accounts, in no way on the side of the “legitimately elected” Plotnitsky.

Not a single word about Luhansk in the three-hour-long program… To avoid this subject, Solovyov even denied himself the pleasure – for the first time in the last while – of slinging mud at Ukraine. Only Syria and the information war with America.

The information war somewhat went awry last week. The Czech President Milos Zeman, Putin’s main lobbyist in Europe, came under the friendly fire of Putin’s media. Specially on the occasion of his visit to Russia, the Zvezda (“Star”) TV channel posted on its website a column by Leonid Maslovsky who says the Czechs should be grateful to the USSR for moving in troops in 1968 because, as Maslovsky knows only too well, “the deployment of troops prevented the West from staging a coup d’etat in Czechoslovakia.” According to this author, the crisis in Czechoslovakia was caused by the coming of Nikita Khrushchev to power, and his report on the cult of personality at the 20th Congress of the CPSU was “a grandiose victory of Western special services and their fifth column inside the USSR.” Moreover, Maslovsky knows that the Czechs and the related Slovaks are old enemies of the Russians. He writes with hatred in his article about how much Russian blood was spilled during the war through the fault of Czechoslovakia…

Unlike the Russians, the Czechs have not yet got used to this manic delusion. Therefore, Czech citizens began to demand that Zeman cut short his visit to the country, where state-run media meet him with this kind of publications. Zeman chose not to bother Putin with such a trifle and vented his anger on Medvedev. The latter immediately dissociated himself from this, saying that “we have nothing to do with the article’s author.” “Nothing to do” indeed – Zvezda is a state-run TV channel; moreover, it is run by the state in which Medvedev is the head of government.

It is Vladimir Pozner who suddenly rose to defend the information troops. The veteran crawled out of his deep foxhole and threw fearlessly a grenade in the US direction. On November 20 he published an article, “They Are Just Afraid of the Information the RT Channel Reports,” on Moscow Echo’s website. Pozner revealed many interesting things in this small text. Firstly, he equated the decision of the US Congress to consider RT a foreign agent with the Soviet practice to jam Western radio stations. As it is impossible to believe that Pozner can see no difference between the Soviet jam station and the status of a foreign agent, we can only conclude that the “guru” is banally lying. Besides, Pozner claims that “RT is propagandistic in content, but no more than were the ‘voices’ jammed in the Soviet Union.” Maybe, this text is intended for those who were born very recently and do not know what the “enemy voices” meant for Soviet people in the ocean of propaganda lies. Pozner is perhaps convinced that, among those who will read his text, there will be very few people who can compare the media spaces of the USSR and the US as well as the content of RT and that of the BBC, DW, or Radio Liberty. Or, maybe, Pozner finds it hard to accept that it is very difficult to lie and, at the same time, keep one’s reputation intact in today’s Russia. In any case, he has been doing this thoroughly bad lately.

By contrast with Pozner, Solovyov has never had a reputation, so he bathes in the waves of lies and hatred for hours on end with sheer delight, making an endless show out of these two components. “Evening” was rolling down a well-trodden path on November 22. At first, Zhirinovsky announced that the meeting of Putin, Erdogan, and Rouhani in Sochi was Yalta 2 and explained that Putin is the Stalin of today, Erdogan is standing in for Roosevelt, and the Iranian leader Rouhani is none other than Sir Winston Churchill in this troika. Solovyov and his “experts” liked the analogy, and everybody began to exalt Mr. Zh. for having written so well about everything in his book The Last Dash to the South. Mr. Zh. listened favorably to congratulations and announced the establishment of a union of five states: Russia, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Then he advised all the Turks, Kurds, Persians, and Arabs to learn the Russian language.

Orientalist Satanovsky decided to jump on Mr. Zh.’s bandwagon and suggested that he write the book The Last Dash to the West, expressing confidence that, while Russia finally, albeit not immediately, dashed to the south, it will surely dash to the West if Mr. Zh. writes this book. Mr. Zh. accepted the suggestion with a reservation. The chief Liberal Democrat said the new book would be titled The Last Spit on the West. Then Mr. Zh. demanded that the medal “For Victory in Syria” be instituted and awarded to him.

Then, at the end, they all berated the Western media for the dominance of propaganda and praised the State Duma for giving them no quarter. Everything would have been excellent but for Gozman. Solovyov had not been inviting this Gozman for a long time, and rightly so. But this time he invited him and clearly wished he had not done so because this Gozman, who had been invited after a long pause to a prestigious patriotic society, suddenly congratulated the mother and teachers of an Urengoy schoolboy. Everybody immediately understood which one. We in Russia have an Urengoy schoolboy who, speaking at the Bundestag, pitied a German soldier who died in Soviet captivity more than 70 years ago, instead of cursing him. The entire patriotic Russia is now baiting this boy, and prosecutors are going to inspect his school and his likely connections with Ukraine. There are even proposals to change government in the region where this weed grows. And now this Gozman is siding with him and saying some codswallop about the humanist traditions of Russian culture in a state-run channel’s program! Naturally, Solovyov lost his temper and began to shout that it is necessary to inspect the school of this degenerate and hang them all out to dry.

As is known, there are no rules in information wars. No one is taken prisoner here, and the war is waged to the last living boy.