Information Border

Although some people in the West also doubt the effectiveness of NATO actions, there are no doubts at all there about the motivation of them. Video footage of refugees telling about ethnic cleansing in Kosovo appeared on Western silver screens well before the NATO strikes. Russian television only began to cover this cleansing when it was impossible to hide it, when the victims were counted not in tens but in the hundreds of thousands. It still remains unclear for the Russian viewer why NATO began to act: he thinks the ethnic cleansing results from the bombings, that it is Slobodan Milosevic's reaction and not his real aim. Ukrainian commentators often resemble either the Russian or the Western ones, but it is hard to see a wish to analyze the situation from all sides, to explain what is going on, let alone take a stand.

The world, which seemed united in terms of information - and civilization! - has again broken into half-worlds with half-truths. The main achievement of Gorbachev's perestroika, freedom of expression, has suddenly turned into the freedom to hide information. And this depends not so much on government instructions as on the sentiments of society; the latter seems to want to hear what it wishes, while the media only mirror these wishes, the wishes of the elite which become the needs of the masses.