'Fear and lies': How Putin wants Russia to see the war
"It’s smarter to be free and to try to report something from abroad, than to sit in jail," says Tikhon Dziadko, editor in chief with Dozhd, an independent TV station that until earlier this month was able to broadcast from Moscow.
Now he is sitting with his colleagues in Istanbul, Turkey, having fled his own country.
On Thursday 3 March, everything changed for him, when Russia announced strict new laws including a potential 15-year jail term for those who questioned its invasion of Ukraine.
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"Vladimir Putin, I think, he decided that all the games in democracy, all the games in pretending that there is some sort of law in Russia, all these games are over," said Mr Dziadko, speaking to French station ARTE.
"This is a brand new world, I don't like this world, but that's what I have to face."
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The bombing of the children's hospital in the southern Ukrainian port of Mariupol this week was dismissed by Russian officials as "fake news". Russia claimed the former maternity hospital had long been taken over by troops.
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"The majority of Russians get their news from state-controlled TV channels," says Olga Irisova, editor-in-chief of the website Riddle which seeks to explain Russia to the outside world.
She argues that
Russian authoritarianism rests on three pillars: a relatively stable economy that is currently being shaken by biting sanctions, leaving two final pillars, "fear and lies". (BBM)
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"The main narrative of Russian state TV media are now pushing is that the West provoked Russia, is that the West actually implemented the so-called 'Nazi' regime in Kyiv and this Ukrainian regime has been engaged in genocide of Russian speaking people in Eastern Ukraine for eight years," she says.
She says people in Russia are very sensitive towards this narrative "because in almost every Russian family there are some relatives that were killed during the Second World War and unfortunately most of the TV viewers, they buy this narrative".
She says the narrative also seeks to portray the Russian military and its soldiers and "liberators" of Ukraine, opposing the nationalists there. They are also denying that they are targeting civilians.
Instead, she says the Russian state-controlled media says: "The Ukrainian army are using people as live shields…That's how they are trying to frame what’s going on."
As unbelievable as this may seem to people who are used to a more free and questioning media in the West, she says many people will continue to buy into this narrative, particularly when the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.
"That's an important psychological part of this process," she says, even for those who feel deep down that something is not right:
"For Russian society, the older generation especially, it's really hard to believe that Russia could have attacked Ukraine. In that situation, we are the invaders, we are the bad guys and from a psychological point of view, it is just easier to believe the official narrative, that we are liberators, fighting for a good cause."
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"The Russian media system has moved from a place where there was a limited and constrained spectrum of views to unanimous propaganda," says Felix Light, a journalist with the Moscow Times who has now left the capital, along with much of the foreign media there.
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Mr Light says that whilst he lived in Moscow, there were always two camps of so-called 'independent' media in Russia: the ones implacably opposed to the system "who would go after Putin's family and report on corruption"; and the ones who were "liberal, independent and opposition minded, but also who had made their compromises with the system and still had their connections".
"They had friends in high places in the Russian political system but what this war has meant that all of that is not any use. Even these people are fair game for repression now."
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Russia's Novaya Gazeta newspaper, whose editor Dmitry Muratov was a co-winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize, said last week it would remove material on Russia's military actions in Ukraine from its website, because of the censorship.
However, the newspaper said it would continue to report on the consequences that Russia is facing, including a deepening economic crisis and the persecution of dissidents.
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On the day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine last week, he told the BBC: "Our peace-loving Russian people will now feel the hatred of the world because we are starting a third world war in the centre of Europe."
Ms Irisova says the fact that this publication is remaining, in some capacity is important.
"It's a very hard choice. It's either you are closed down completely, or you are repeating the lies of Russian propaganda," she says.
She says Novaya Gazeta announced its new editorial policy alongside a picture of a nuclear bomb, which was "very telling" and a message she says readers of the publication would understand.
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Earlier this week, Russian actor Jean-Michel Scherbak wrote on social media that he was ashamed his country had started a war in Ukraine.
He said his mother, a long-time supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, blocked him online.
The 30-year-old actor who is based in Europe says: "She texted me on Facebook saying that I was a traitor and that I had made my choice."
The falling out between families over this conflict is something Olga Irisova says she is also aware of. "The younger generation is more aware of what is going on in Ukraine," she says.
"Russian society is very polarised and divided right now, and I have also heard from my friends that unfortunately their relatives, their parents, they became victims of propaganda. Some of my friends who also live abroad and not in Russia, they also got messages from their relatives asking, 'Are you ok? We've heard that Russians are being beaten in Berlin or in London just for being Russians, and that's actually another narrative that Russian propaganda pushes."
She says that some parents have told their Russian children living abroad: "You don't know about Nazis, you are brainwashed by Western propaganda."
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In almost every area of Russian society, there has been division over Russia’s invasion.
In the western region of Kostroma, police detained a Russian Orthodox priest, Father Ioann Burdin, over his church sermon against the war and a link he had posted to an anti-war petition.
However, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill has voiced support for Russia’s "special operation", saying Russian values were being tested by the West, which offered "only excessive consumption and the illusion of freedom".
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An opinion poll published by Russian state polling agency VTsIOM last weekend, found Vladimir Putin’s approval rating had risen 6 percentage points to 70% in the week to 27 February, as the invasion of Ukraine began.
FOM, which provides research for the Kremlin, also said President Putin’s rating had risen 7 percentage points to 71% in the same period.
OpenDemocracy.net says it is important to note that Russian opinion polls are often used by the Kremlin to claim that the invasion is supported by the Russian public and it is not clear how the pool of people to poll is chosen.
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Journalist Felix Light says it would be a mistake to believe that there is little Russian support for the war: "It isn’t one man’s war in that there is a very real body of opinion among part of the Russian public that is sort of supportive of this," he says.
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This week, Russia’s finance ministry announced it would spend an additional 455 billion roubles (€3.25 billion) from the state budget on pay-outs to families with children aged between eight and 16, as well as increases to pension pay-outs.
What is interesting about this, is that it comes at a time when Russia can least afford this additional spending, as the cost of war mounts. It could be seen as a sign that the Russian leader is worried about his popularity at home, after his gamble of a quick and successful territorial grab in Ukraine failed to pay off.
This is new territory for Vladimir Putin, says Felix Light.
"Despite being an authoritarian leader, he’s always been very careful to make sure he’s on the right side of the public opinion.
"He was not expecting the reaction from the world and the economic damage that has been done. If he thought this was his final gift to the Russian people, he was very much mistaken."
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"Unfortunately, these sanctions they hit not only oligarchs, they hit ordinary Russians including those who have opposed Putin for all these years," says Olga Irisova who says some Russians are already struggling to access both their savings and some medicines that they need.
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Whilst no one can ever truly know what Vladimir Putin thinks, it was clear from his diatribe in his address to the nation just days before the invasion began, that he wanted Russia to be able to re-assert its imperial greatness in Ukraine.
"Clearly he miscalculated," says Irisova.
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(Very long, interesting read at link)
MOO)
