“It is not the final truth” was the leitmotif of the rather incoherent answers of Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov to Stephen Sackur in the BBC’s HARDtalk program.
On September 28, 2016, the international Joint Investigation Team (JIT) submitted a second report on what caused the MH17 Boeing crash in the Donbas on July 17, 2014. The main conclusion of the investigation is that the Buk missile system that shot down the aircraft was transported from Russia into Ukraine and then back into Russia after the crash. The missile was launched near the village of Pervomaiske in the area controlled by DNR militants.
The reaction of the Kremlin in the person of Peskov was sadly predictable. “We saw no evidence,” “it is a tentative conclusion,” “it is not the final truth,” “there were no Russian military there and we brought no Buks to the territory of Ukraine.” This resembles, to my disgust, the reaction to the WADA report. Peskov might as well be replaced with a doll that will utter three phases when touched on the belly: “It’s not we!” “You’re all lying!” and “Show your evidence!” The subject of a conversation – be it Syria, sport, or Ukraine – as well as the content of the questions do not matter because the answers will always boil down to the three abovementioned phrases.
We could also reduce the reaction of the entire Russian media space to the report on the Malaysian Boeing tragedy to the same three phrases because the overall vector has been exactly this. But this overall vector should not hide the changes that have occurred in the Russian media after the landslide victory of United Russia in the Duma elections on September 18, 2016, and the final formation of a one-party system in that country.
There are at least three changes. Firstly, the attack on Russian brains became cruder, I would say more frenzied, after September 18. Secondly, most of the media persons subjected themselves, before our very eyes, to self-degradation. Besides, they are doing this quite voluntarily, with a certain spiritual upsurge and inspiration. For example, Andrei Norkin (old people remember him as a journalist at the pre-Putin-era NTV channel) chucked a Ukrainian journalist out the TV studio during a live program, grabbing him by the hand and calling him a “mule.” Vladimir Solovyov (it is a simpler case, for there had never been a trace of a journalist in him) has just stopped inviting to major debates the people whose viewpoint differs at least by a micron from the official one.
And, thirdly, it is the scale of the media assault. Political talk shows are on daily now. Solovyov brainwashes viewers on the main state-run TV channel Russia 1, four days a week: “A Sunday Evening” on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and “Duel” on Thursdays. His personal contribution to poisoning the minds of compatriots is now measured by 14 weekly hours of zombiefying. If you add to this his hours-long radio broadcasts, this will probably set a world record worthy of the Guinness book.
“A Sunday Evening” on Wednesday, September 28, 2016, was particularly full of content. The pace was set by the Stalinist Nikolai Starikov and the “expert” Semyon Bagdasarov, who had tried, but failed, to make their way to the State Duma on a wave of hysteric patriotism. It turned out unexpectedly that the Kremlin puppeteers, with whose consent Solovyov had been allowing Starikov to propagate Stalinism and Bagdasarov to call for a war against the rest of the world for several years, proved to be unprepared to let the two madmen win parliamentary seats.
The State Duma can tolerate controlled madness only. The foxy Zhirinovsky is very well aware of this, but the simple-hearted Starikov and Bagdasarov won’t understand this. For this reason, some notes of resentment against the leadership that failed to appreciate their efforts slipped out this time in their otherwise customary show of hatred.
For example, the “expert” Bagdasarov was indignant throughout the screen time over the spinelessness and irresoluteness of the Russian leadership which tolerates all kinds of accusations, such as the Joint Investigation Team’s report. “Enough to make excuses, we must act!” he demanded and immediately explained how Russia should respond to “allegations” that it downed the Malaysian Boeing. “The USSR always used to retaliate. We must deliver a retaliatory strike on Ukraine! How long are we going to tolerate a fascist regime in Kyiv?! They must be brought down!”
Among other constructive proposals of Bagdasarov were: “to recognize the DNR and the LNR” and “to bomb all of them in Syria.” He then clashed with the communist MP Kalashnikov, and it became clear why the all too furious and obscurant Kalashnikov occupies a Duma seat, while the furious and obscurant Bagdasarov does not. The point is that the furious and obscurant Kalashnikov has suggested all the time, however, that not only bombs, but also diplomacy should be used, always emphasizing the talents of Lavrov and Zakharova. And once, responding to one of Bagdasarov’s regular calls “to punch the whole world on the nose,” went as far as to say: “We are not strong enough to punch everybody on the nose.”
Solovyov’s studio never forgives this kind of words. And who from? It would be OK if it were a certain Gozman. But here a socially close one, communist Kalashnikov, is around with this liberal defeatism! Everybody bawled out Kalashnikov. The Orient researcher Satanovsky was the first to repulse the renegade. He called for doing as the USSR used to do: “Let’s take a wartime approach: we’ve taken Berlin and will talk later.”
Then Solovyov decided to put a question point-blank. “And why do we still recognize the Kyiv leadership?” he asked TV viewers in astonishment. And, to make TV viewers not only astonished, but also indignant, he added a fair share of lies to his provocation, saying: “And now they deny the Holocaust!” Solovyov did not specify which of the Ukrainian top officials denies the Holocaust. Undoubtedly, such rogues occur in Ukraine as well as in Russia and other countries. But other countries do not interest Solovyov, and the lies about “justification of the Holocaust” are of an auxiliary nature. His aim is to lay the groundwork for the main lie that fascists are in power in Kyiv and they must be destroyed by all means.
“What makes Russia strong is the truth!” Solovyov repeated every 5-10 minutes. This monotonous slogan resembled the advertisement of a toilet cleaning gel or an antiperspirant. Closing the program about the report of the Joint Investigation Team on the Malaysian Boeing crash, Solovyov got back to the subject of the truth. “Our job is habitual – to find the truth and take it to people!”
As lies are the foundation of Putin’s regime, any threats to the latter will result in the consolidation of this foundation, growth of its overall weight, reinforcement of it with additional components and strengthening structures. By contrast with other resources, the resource of lies is inexhaustible. Taking into account that the ring of isolation around Putin’s regime is going to compress in the near future not so much because of Ukraine as because of, first of all, Syria, we can surely predict that the concentration and overall scope of lies in Russian television programs will increase considerably.
