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Russian state television guests dared to criticize President Vladimir Putin’s war on Thursday, eschewing propaganda for the truth, calling the invasion “even worse than Afghanistan” despite claims that it is a “special operation” meant to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine.
During Russia’s number-one-rated prime-time talk show, “An Evening with Vladimir Soloviev,” the Kremlin’s catastrophic invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was invoked. That war ended badly for the Russians ten years later. Thousands of Red Army troops were killed in the conflict and millions of Russians were disillusioned leading to the collapse of the “Evil Empire” in 1991.
One of the dissenters was an academic named Semyon Bagdasarov who directly challenged Putin’s “propagandist in chief” Vladimir Soloviev. He openly posited that the Ukrainian conflict could turn into something even worse than Afghanistan, according to the Daily Mail. Needless to say, voicing such things in public is a good way to “disappear” permanently.
“There are more people and they’re more advanced in their weapon handling,” Bagdasarov asserted. “We don’t need that. Enough already.”
Soloviev was recently sanctioned as an accomplice of Putin by the European Union, according to the Daily Beast.
(Video Credit: MSNBC)
Another guest, filmmaker and state pundit Karen Shakhnazarov, pushed back against Putin’s claim that the invasion is a “special operation” in the Donbas region. He spoke out against the assault on Kyiv which is hundreds of miles away.
“The war in Ukraine paints a frightening picture, it has a very oppressive influence on our society. Ukraine, whichever way you see it, is something with which Russia has thousands of human links. The suffering of one group of innocents does not compensate for the suffering of other innocent people… I don’t see the probability of denazification of such an enormous country,” Shakhnazarov stated.
“We would need to bring in 1.5 million soldiers to control all of it. At the same time, I don’t see any political power that would consolidate the Ukrainian society in a pro-Russian direction… Those who talked of their mass attraction to Russia obviously didn’t see things the way they are. The most important thing in this scenario is to stop our military action. Others will say that sanctions will remain. Yes, they will remain, but in my opinion, discontinuing the active phase of a military operation is very important,” he said.
“This threatens the change of public opinion in Russia, the destabilization of our power structures… with the possibility of a full destabilization of the country and a civil war. This apocalyptic scenario is based on the script written by the Americans. They benefit through us dragging out the military operation. We need to end it somehow. If we achieved the demilitarization and freed the Donbas, that is sufficient… I have a hard time imagining taking cities such as Kyiv. I can’t imagine how that would look,” he noted hitting out at the United States while defying Putin at the same time.
“If this picture starts to transform into an absolute humanitarian disaster, even our close allies like China and India will be forced to distance themselves from us. This public opinion, with which they’re saturating the entire world, can play out badly for us… Ending this operation will stabilize things within the country.” Shakhnazarov remarked.
“Ending this operation will stabilize things within the country.”
fascinating report on some voices on Russia state tv trying to argue for ending the war for Russia’s own interests, by @JuliaDavisNews— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) March 10, 2022
Andrey Sidorov, who is the deputy dean of world politics at Moscow State University, warned, “For our country, this period won’t be easy. It will be very difficult. It might be even more difficult than it was for the Soviet Union from 1945 until the 1960s… We’re more integrated into the global economy than the Soviet Union, we’re more dependent on imports—and the main part is that the Cold War is the war of the minds, first and foremost. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union had a consolidating idea on which its system was built. Unlike the Soviet Union, Russia has nothing like that to offer.”
Soloviev concluded the segment by blaming the United States for everything, “This is a frightening war that is being waged against us by America.”
Putin has shut down independent media organizations in Russia to control his narrative and make sure propaganda is what the citizens there see. Individuals who speak out against the invasion are typically arrested and just vanish. Facebook and Twitter have been blocked and the Russian dictator has now criminalized the intentional spreading of subjective “fake news,” forcing out foreign journalists who are threatened with fifteen years in prison for it.
Very sorry to hear that one of the last independent Russian news outlets, the television station TV Rain (Dozhd) has stopped broadcasting. It was accused by the Russian govt of ‘inciting extremism’ & ‘abusing Russian citizens’ — i.e. telling the truth about Ukraine.
— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) March 4, 2022
On Thursday, Russia bombed a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol and conflicting statements were issued by the Kremlin wavering between aggressive denial and vague contentious so-called fact spewing.
Pictures of the maternity hospital in #Mariupol from Russias brutal attack.
Show the world what Putin is doing, blowing up hospitals and killing mothers about to have babies means nothing to him. He’s evil and will not stop unless he’s stopped.#StandWithUkraine #PutinWarCrimes pic.twitter.com/Cpc5J9MF6p
— Skyleigh Uhrich (@Sky_Lee_1) March 9, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that three people including a child were killed in the attack on Wednesday. Russia claimed that no patients were in the hospital at the time of the bombing.
“Like always, they lie confidently,” remarked Zelenskyy.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters on Wednesday, “Russian forces do not fire on civilian targets.” Then on Thursday, he conflictingly stated that the Kremlin would look into the incident.
Other Russian officials labeled the accusations as fake news. “This is information terrorism,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova proclaimed.
Still later, the Defence Ministry outright denied bombing the hospital at all and then accused Ukraine of staging the atrocity. Instead, they insisted that troops were respecting the cease-fire agreement allowing Ukrainians to evacuate.
https://twitter.com/NguyenK68421403/status/1502172307074461696
“Russian aviation carried out absolutely no strikes on ground targets in the area,” spokesman Igor Konashenkov declared. “The alleged airstrike was completely a staged provocation… that can deceive the Western public but not an expert.”
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov went so far as to denounce what he called “pathetic shouting about so-called atrocities by the Russian armed forces.”
Spinning propaganda for all he was worth for both the Russian public and people around the world, Lavrov told reporters that the hospital was under the control of ultra-radical Ukrainian forces for days and that they had removed doctors and patients before it was hit.
Meanwhile, Russian state television for the most part is putting out more propaganda than ever, painting Putin as a hero and flipping the narrative to show Ukraine as the evil aggressor.
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