Russian TV channels and Ukrainian propaganda

By Kamal Ali

Russia’s Rossiya 24 television channel starts its evening bulletin with news from Malorossiya (Small Russia) – the name Russia has given to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine. This is how Russia openly supports separatism in the neighboring country. The goal is to divide a sovereign nation that has no desire to become a Russian military outpost, a frontline or buffer zone for the former imperial master.   

Moscow knows that the world understands everything that’s happening in the region. Yet, it is behaving in a way as though it does not understand anything. But everything is quite clear: This is the Kremlin’s tried and tested “road map” involving a sham referendum at the initial stage followed by a bloodbath and genocide. And then an uncertain future – as we have been in the cases of Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and the Dniestr region. 

Russia deployed its troops in Crimea, carrying out “Anschluss” of the region. In the two other regions of Ukraine, i.e. Donetsk and Lugansk, the Kremlin used the method it had already tested in the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova. Human lives and security of ordinary people are not worth anything to Russia. What's the most important is the expansion of Russian territory. 

The participants in the TV program on Rossiya 24 spoke at length about the “great Russian humanitarianism”. Eight to nine angry men were in the studio, facing each other. The most silent and prominent of them was Tsareyev. The others were the heads of Russian research centers. The nice names of these research centers do not mean anything. I suspect the research groups consist only of the directors and their wives. But it isn’t that important.

They all have been tasked with saying the same thing, using different words and phrases. And they were coping with the task. The heads of eight to nine Russian research centers shared the same standard view: What Russia and the Ukrainian separatists are doing is right, and what the rest of Ukraine and the world are doing is certainly not right.  

I cannot tune in Ukrainian TV channels at home, but I have no doubt that their rhetoric is quite the opposite, one-sided and more radical. I can understand Ukrainians. They are faced with overt Russian aggression.  

Kiev has only one thing to do if it is to back down: it will have to agree with the “Lavrov federation”, which in the Kremlin’s plans means the first step towards the legalization of the separatists. 

The next step will be the emergence of “NKR” (Nagorno-Karabakh republic) clones and the breakup of the country. 

Bakudaily.az