There are events to which the first reaction can only be black or white, for it clearly divides people into two camps – without halftones. There may be halftones later, but now it is very simple: we and they. What became this kind of a watershed event in the Russian public space is the release of Nadia Savchenko and those exchanged for her. Incidentally, every Russian who is at least a little interested in politics knows who Savchenko is, whereas very few Russians will answer without a prompt if asked who Aleksandrov and Yerofeyev are.
If you compare the reaction of sparse independent Russian media and the part of the Runet to which I have access, on the one hand, and that of the Russian official organs, on the other, you can gain an impression that it is about different events. One part of the media space is in triumph, while the other is full of malice and a wish to sling mud at Nadia and auger her all kinds of woes ranging from a speedy oblivion to promises that she is bound to be killed.
Political scientist Sergey Markov said in the 25th Hour TV channel’s night program that Savchenko is “socially and mentally underdeveloped.” The presence of Markov, commonly dubbed as Sharikov, in public life is as shameful for Russia as the presence of Zhirinovsky in politics. He is kept exclusively for knowing how to lick the bosses’ asses and then use the same tongue to befoul the brightest and purest things. In one of his latest dirty passages on Moscow Echo radio, he claimed that Boris Nemtsov was killed by Ukrainian special services.
Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist Aleksandr Gribov, a person less known than Markov, is bitterly resentful of Savchenko being awarded the star of Hero of Ukraine. He headlined his column as follows: “The Title of Hero for ‘Hunger-Striking’ under the Mattress.” This fellow, Gribov, is eager to persuade the readership that Savchenko’s hunger strikes were bogus. This newspaper’s audience should consist of Gribovs and Markovs alone if it cannot understand that, owing to surveillance cameras at almost every corner, any secret meal during Savchenko’s hunger strikes would have been immediately shown on all the federal TV channels in order to discredit her.
We have just scurried over the very bottom of the Russian ocean of lies, where unicellular organisms dwell. Rising a little higher, we can come across larger predators. These find it insufficient to hurl mud at the Hero of Ukraine. They are thirsty of her blood. They forebode and hope. Rostislav Ishchenko prophesizes in Izvestia: “As for Savchenko herself, her prospects are not rosy. If she remained in the Russia prison, she would be just forgotten [in the two years, she was not only remembered, but also saw her population rise with every passing day. – Author]. But now that she is free, she is most likely to be killed.”
Savchenko may not have read Izvestia. Unlike me, she does not need to take all kinds of filth into her hands, but in her brilliant Boryspil speech she seemed to respond to the wave of savage malice that is rolling onto her from the east. Her words “It’s very comfortable when heroes are dead” clearly reflect the sentiments and interests of those who see Savchenko as a danger, no matter whether she is in jail or free.
Like Pushkin’s “wizard, beloved of the gods,” who described in detail the circumstances of Prince Oleg’s death, the soothsayer Ishchenko knows exactly at whose hands Savchenko will meet her death. “Ukrainian politicians are used to dealing shortly with people – in the past couple of years they have killed dozens of thousands of people, so will they hesitate about Savchenko?” the wizard Ishchenko informs us. Oddly enough, it’s about dozens of thousands. He should have said “dozens of millions,” and the Izvestia readership would have believed it straight away. “They will quickly come into a situation when Savchenko will be simply hindering them. If they bump her off, all the mass media of Ukraine will say the next day that it was Putin who sent the killer,” he says.
It is useless to explain to the likes of Ishchenko that it is absolutely indecent to publicly foretell somebody an early violent death. But now that this forecast is in the air, we must respond to it. Ishchenko’s last quoted phrase is nothing but preparation of an alibi. The emergence of such a charismatic and strongly anti-Putin person as Savchenko in Ukrainian politics is an extremely unpleasant thing for Putin. His inner circle clearly has a surplus of people who are ready to kill anybody on their fuehrer’s orders or even without any orders in an attempt to anticipate his unexpressed wish. I hope Ukrainian special services know this as much as I do and will guard Savchenko more closely than President Poroshenko and all the MPs combined.
Moreover, the hullabaloo about the upcoming murder of Savchenko began to spread like an epidemic in the Russian media in the very first hours after her release. For example, Maria Melnik writes in RIA Novosti’s column “Victory or Betrayal”: “A dame off the cart makes it easier for the mare.” It is, of course, vulgar to call Savchenko a “dame,” but it is easy to understand in the context of a negative attitude. But to call the president of Russia a “mare” on the website of the country’s main news agency is really too much! But Melnik goes on musing: “What is Ukraine going to do now with Nadia Savchenko who must be a handless suitcase for everybody? Savchenko has become a hero, a symbol of struggle against Russia, the object of a crazy cult. And, as the experience of the Heavenly Hundred shows, heroes must die. Therefore, she might perhaps be safer in the Russian jail.” Sergey Magnitsky could have told Melnik a lot about safety in Russian jails… if he could say anything at all.
It is wonderful news that Savchenko is free and at home. But it is in the nature of the Russian authorities to stain anything they touch. Suppose you also participated, albeit by force, in a good event, but why should you look like idiots and scum even in this situation? Judge by yourselves about who is who. In the morning of May 25 all the independent and even some dependent Russian media reported that Savchenko was already in Rostov-on-Don and Poroshenko’s plane was flying to pick her up, while Aleksandrov and Yerofeyev had already been pardoned and were heading for Russia. As it became known later, Putin had already signed the pardon of Savchenko in the morning. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at 11:25 that he knew nothing about this. It was one and a half hours after the first announcement of the exchange. Was he asleep? Lost his cell phone? Forgot to top up the balance?
Then there were explanations, one sillier than another in their mendacity. A few Russian media, such as, for example, Kommersant, which sometimes try to keep their reputation clean, told their readers quite an obvious truth. Putin freed Savchenko under the pressure of Angela Merkel during the Normandy Four’s nighttime talks. A few hours after these talks, the decision to free Savchenko was finalized legally and organizationally.
But you can’t possibly tell the Russians that Frau Merkel pinched some of Putin’s parts so painfully on the phone that he, still screaming, did in a few hours what the entire world had been urging him to do for two years. As everything was done in a feverish haste, there was no time to coordinate things and tell people what they were supposed to say. Peskov was the first to get into a mess. Then the Council of the Federation Speaker Matvienko explained that what had happened was not an exchange but a decision “on the basis of the European Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons.”
Only then was the official – and still more shameful – version made public. It turned out that as long ago as on March 22 and 23 (!) the sister of journalist Marian Voloshyn, who was allegedly killed through the fault of Savchenko, and Yekaterina Korneliuk, the widow of the other dead person, had consulted with the Ukrainian politician Medvedchuk, to whose children Putin is concurrently a godfather, and written a plea to pardon Savchenko. So, after thinking it over for two months, Putin decided to grant a pardon in a fit of humanism.
It is difficult to say what is more disgusting in this buffoonery. The women who had lost their relatives were at first dragged to all kinds of TV shows in order to fuel hatred towards Savchenko and told that Savchenko was to take a severe punishment, were then forced, like wordless dolls, to sign a plea to pardon the one who had allegedly killed their kith and kin. But the one who put on the biggest fool’s cap with little bells was the “jurist” Putin who had been recently telling those who urged him to pardon the political prisoners that a pardon was only possible after the convict had pleaded guilty, repented, and submitted a personal plea. But it turned out that it was possible to do so even without a plea or the commission’s verdict.
In Boryspil, all of Ukraine was meeting Savchenko, whereas in Vnukovo there was nobody but the wives of Aleksandov and Yerofeyev. The President of Ukraine handed Savchenko the Star of Hero, and the European Parliament is looking forward to seeing her. Meanwhile, Peskov said that Putin’s schedule had no slot for receiving Aleksandrov and Yerofeyev. It is perhaps all that is necessary to know about Ukraine and Russia today.
