Captured Russian soldiers: We will be ‘dead’ if we are sent back home
James Kilner – March 10, 2022
A captured Russian soldier cries while speaking to his mother. Prisoners of war fear they will be killed if they return to their homeland
Russian soldiers captured by Ukrainian forces have said they will be “dead” if they return home, where they will be regarded as failures and killed.
Captured troops – who have been filmed in breach of the Geneva Convention – have begged not to be sent back to Russia, fearing they will be shot by their own people.
One soldier, speaking at a press conference in Kyiv, said that he had been told by his parents that a funeral had already been prepared for him.
The soldier, deployed with Russia’s 2nd Motor Rifle Division, said: “In Russia, we are already considered dead. I was given the opportunity to call my parents and they told me that a funeral for me had already been arranged.
“If we are exchanged, then we will be shot by our own people.”
It is also designed to show the Russians that their military has bombed Russian-speaking cities and killed civilians since Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, launched his invasion on February 24.
The Kremlin has banned descriptions of the invasion as a “war” and instead framed it as a “special operation” to save pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine from Nazis. It has also threatened to sentence anybody who criticises the war to 15 years in prison.
Part of the Ukrainian strategy has been to treat Russian soldiers with relative kindness, to contrast how the Russian army’s officers treat their own men.
Most of the captured Russian soldiers, looking exhausted and bewildered, have said that they had no idea that they were going to war. They also appeared short of food and equipment. Many said that they were conscripts and just wanted to go home. Some have been videoed crying on the phone while speaking to their mothers in Russia.
Up until Wednesday evening, the Kremlin insisted that it had only deployed professional soldiers to Ukraine. On Wednesday, after sustained pressure, Russia’s defence ministry admitted that it had used conscripts in Ukraine.
But, while the tactic of filming demoralised Russian conscripts has been praised as effective, the International Committee of the Red Cross has said that it breaks the Geneva Convention.
In a statement, a spokesman for the International Red Cross said: “The law states they must be protected. This includes from acts of violence, intimidation and ill-treatment.
“They also must be treated with dignity and not exposed to public curiosity – like circulating images on social media.”
Ex-Trump national security advisor John Bolton says ‘Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him,’ so he chose not to invade Ukraine
Oma Seddiq – March 9, 2022
Former national security advisor John Bolton said “Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him.”
Trump considered withdrawing the US from NATO while he was president.
Bolton said it’s one of the reasons that Putin did not invade Ukraine during Trump’s time in office.
John Bolton, who served as President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, on Wednesday said that Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t invade Ukraine while Trump was in office because “Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him.”
Bolton pointed to Trump’s outspoken criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military and diplomatic alliance established in the wake of World War II.
“I think one of the reasons that Putin did not move during Trump’s term in office was he saw the president’s hostility of NATO. It was widely reported in American media,” Bolton said during an interview with SiriusXM’s Julie Mason. “And to Putin’s mind, it’s a binary proposition: a weaker NATO is a stronger Russia.”
Video: People worldwide are protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
From Germany to Thailand, people are protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Protesters around the world, from Germany to Thailand, are hitting the streets to demonstrate against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Bolton went on, “Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him, and thought, maybe in a second term, Trump would make good on his desire to get out of NATO, and then it would just ease Putin’s path just that much more.”
Trump undermined NATO during his time in office. In 2018, he privately discussed withdrawing the United States from the alliance, raising concerns among national security officials.
Bolton, in remarks during a virtual event with The Washington Post on Friday, said that he believes Trump would have withdrawn from NATO if he had won a second term.
“I thought he put his foot over it, but at least he didn’t withdraw then,” Bolton said. “In a second Trump term, I think he may well have withdrawn from NATO. And I think Putin was waiting for that.”
Bolton also told Vice last week that he doesn’t think the former president would have stopped Putin if the Russian leader had invaded Ukraine while Trump was in office. His comments come as Trump has repeatedly said that Putin would never have invaded Ukraine had he been president and has criticized President Joe Biden over the US response to Russia.
Bolton served as Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 to 2019, when Trump ousted him after the two repeatedly butted heads. Upon leaving the administration, he criticized Trump in his 2020 memoir and detailed several explosive claims about the former president, including that he wanted to “give personal favors to dictators he liked.”
McDonald’s didn’t just close 850 restaurants in Russia – it froze a whole 30-year investment
Tim Carman – March 9, 2022
MOSCOW, RUSSIA – 2022/03/09: The logo of the McDonald’s fast food chain seen on the roof of the restaurant. (Photo by Alexander Sayganov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) (SOPA Images via Getty Images)
On its Instagram account, McDonald’s Russia doesn’t peddle celebrity menu collaborations, clever cultural memes or corporate-branded swag, as does its counterpart in the United States. Mickey D’s in Russia takes a different approach to cultivating customer relationships: It gives them video walking tours of Moscow and St. Petersburg, inviting locals to better appreciate the architecture of the cities they call home.
The tour guide will, with his preferred McCafe drink in hand, traverse the snow-covered streets of the city to point out, say, the St. Petersburg Mutual Credit Society building, the first building specifically constructed in Russia for a commercial bank. “The building resembles the palace buildings of the Renaissance era,” according to a translation of the video post.
The relationship McDonald’s has with its Russian customers is unusual: It is part hustler, part history professor, part corporate benefactor, part Stuart Smalley. “Let’s write to each other sincere wishes and congratulations for the coming year in the comments and go into 2022 with a great mood,” reads a translated Instagram post from Dec. 30.
Nearly two weeks after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, and after activists and investors pressed the company, McDonald’s announced Tuesday that it would temporarily close 850 restaurants in Russia. In the announcement, Chris Kempczinski, chief executive of McDonald’s, said, “Our values mean we cannot ignore the needless human suffering unfolding in Ukraine.” He also acknowledged the tight relationship that the chain has developed with Russians in the 32 years since the Golden Arches opened its first restaurant in 1990, when the country was still under Soviet control.
“In Russia, we employ 62,000 people who have poured their heart and soul into our McDonald’s brand to serve their communities,” Kempczinski said in an email to employees and franchisees. “We work with hundreds of local, Russian suppliers and partners who produce the food for our menu and support our brand. And we serve millions of Russian customers each day who count on McDonald’s.
“In the thirty-plus years that McDonald’s has operated in Russia, we’ve become an essential part of the 850 communities in which we operate.”
But McDonald’s was also in a unique position to cut its ties, however temporarily. Unlike many fast-food chains whose international units are operated by franchisees, McDonald’s owns 84% of its restaurants in Russia. As an industry expert told The Washington Post, McDonald’s made a seismic corporate shift with its decision to place humanitarian concerns above shareholder profits. According to a corporate filing, McDonald’s restaurants in Ukraine and Russian accounted for 9% of the company’s 2021 revenue, because the chain owns so many of the outlets.
The price of McDonald’s shares has been steadily dropping since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24.
But in making its decision, McDonald’s also had to do something more than forgo profits: It had to sever ties with communities that it has served for decades – and with supply chains that it had created, virtually out of thin air. In a matter of days, an unprovoked war wiped out, for an unknown period of time, what it took McDonald’s more than 30 years to build.
When the first McDonald’s opened in 1990 on Moscow’s Pushkin Square, a short walk from the Kremlin, the debut was seen for what it was: The free-market system poking its camel’s nose under the Iron Curtain.
Because of politics and endless red tape (one person later claimed that opening a single McDonald’s in Russia required 200 signatures from local officials), it took George Cohon, president of McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada, 14 years to launch the first fast-food joint in the former Soviet Union. He made sure to do it right. He built the largest McDonald’s at that time – a 23,680-square-foot restaurant, with 27 registers and seating for 700 customers on multiple levels.
From the start, the McDonald’s in Moscow accepted rubles, which made the fast-food interloper even more attractive to everyday Russians. “A shrewd strategy that is expected to attract local customers, who have grown increasingly impatient at seeing quality products on sale for foreign currency only,” a Time magazine reporter wrote in a February 1990 article.
Wrote a New York Times reporter at the time: “Usually Muscovites can merely salivate outside several richly stocked groceries and restaurants newly opened for Westerners, exclusive marts that want none of the internationally valueless rubles and so bear the sign: ‘For hard currencies only.'”
Tends of thousands of people showed up on opening day, including politicians and celebrities, even though a meal (burger, fries and drink) cost about 5.5 rubles back then. “The equivalent of half a day’s wages for the average worker,” the Moscow Times noted in a 30-year retrospective on the first McDonald’s. Russians waited in long lines – a routine quite familiar to them – to get their first taste of a “Big Mak.” The store sold “34,000 burgers on its first day – smashing the burger chain’s previous first-day record of 9,100,” the Moscow Times reported.
But McDonald’s did more than open restaurants in Russia. The company built an infrastructure to provide products and ingredients to the chain’s growing number of storefronts. The move was both practical and necessary if McDonald’s wanted to maintain its standards: For starters, the ruble was difficult to convert into foreign currency, so it made sense for McDonald’s to invest its earned money inside the country. But Russia was also famous for shortages. So the company decided to build a plant outside Moscow to process beef, produce sauces and test for quality control.
McDonald’s brought in agronomists to help Russian farmers grow nonnative potatoes. The company introduced bakers from Canada, the United States and Europe to develop baking systems for the chain. Executives flew in meat experts to help Russian ranchers raise their cattle. By 1999, between 75 and 80% of the company’s raw materials “were being sourced from more than 100 local producers in Russia,” according to a 2010 report by the IBS Center for Management Research.
McDonald’s, the report added, “made significant contributions to the development of Russia’s foodservice and processing industries, agriculture, and business practices.”
But the chain also helped push Russian culture into the convenience era. It introduced not only McDonald’s iconic foods to the country but also breakfast menus and even the drive-through. “Initially, people bought the food from the drive-thru windows, then parked their cars around the store and went inside the restaurants to eat whatever they bought,” according to the 2010 IBS report.
As in every country where McDonald’s opens restaurants, the chain didn’t just shove its Western offerings down Russia’s gullet. It worked to cater to local palates. In the late 1990s, when Russia’s economy was hit with hyperinflation, McDonald’s tried to attract customers by adding Russian dishes to the menu, including “cabbage salads, burgers with pork patties, chicken and mushroom soups, all of which were sourced locally,” according to a 2008 case study.
McDonald’s also introduced items apparently not available in stores outside Russia, including bone-in chicken wings, McShrimp and even a McWrap wannabe stuffed with those fried shrimp. But even the regular menu items seemed to be a cut above the same versions elsewhere: In 2019, a reporter with Business Insider ordered a Big Mac from the original McDonald’s that opened in Moscow and compared it to one available in New York City.
“The Russian Big Mac seemed to have the same ingredients as its American counterpart – two beef patties, American cheese, lettuce, onions, pickles, and the signature Big Mac sauce – but it just tasted better,” Katie Warren wrote.
Given this history, it should come as no surprise that Russians flocked to McDonald’s in the hours before the company pulled the plug on the 850 restaurants. As they did in 1990 with the first location, Russians again were standing in long lines for a taste of a Big Mak. This time, they were even waiting in their cars at the drive-through.
On Wednesday, many hours after Kempczinski had already made his announcement, the Instagram account for McDonald’s Russia finally posted the news.
“Dear friends!” the translated post begins. “It’s very difficult for us to report this news, but due to the current situation, McDonald’s has to temporarily suspend all businesses in our network.”
The company, careful to maintain the relationships it has developed, made a point to say it will continue to pay its Russian employees through this period.
Invading Russian troops ‘will be dog food’ insists defiant Ukrainian general
Andy Wells, Freelance Writer – March 10, 2022
Service members of pro-Russian troops drive an armoured vehicle in the separatist-controlled settlement of Rybinskoye in the Donetsk region, Ukraine. (Reuters)
As the war in Ukraine rages on, a defiant Ukrainian General has sent out a stark warning to Russian troops entering the country.
Vladimir Putin’s soldiers in Mykolaiv, a key staging post for control of the Black Sea, have been met with fierce resistance, putting an early end to Russia’s attempt at advancing.
General Dmytro Marchenko, of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, has now told The Times that Ukrainian resistance is not phased by Russian soldiers continuing with their bombardment.
He said: “It’s unpleasant to say this but their corpses are food for stray dogs.
“We’re not able to retrieve them because of continuing Russian fire in those areas.”
A residential building damaged by shelling, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Mykolayiv, Ukraine. (State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Reuters)
Marchenko insisted that Ukrainian troops “won’t shoot any Russian soldiers who give up” but warned: “The rest of them will become dog food.”
While troops have been forced to a retreat in Mykolaiv, Vladimir Putin continues his deadly onslaught in other parts of the country – including striking at maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol.
Watch: Mykolaiv mayor gives update on his besieged city https://s.yimg.com/rx/vrm/builds/40459743/xdomain-vpaid.html?id=3
Boris Johnson described the attach as “depraved” and said the UK was considering more support for Ukraine to defend itself against airstrikes.
Mariupol deputy mayor Sergei Orlov said this morning that at least three people had been killed in the strike, including a six-year-old child.
Around 17 people were reportedly injured in the strike against the hospital, where the vast majority of patients are pregnant women – many of whom were in labour.
A person is carried out after the destruction of Mariupol children’s hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. (Reuters)A car burns after the destruction of Mariupol children’s hospital, in Mariupol, Ukraine. (Reuters)
Defence minister James Heappey accused Russia of committing a war crime by striking the hospital, telling BBC Breakfast this morning: “We ask ourselves the question how did this happen? Was it an indiscriminate use of artillery or missiles into a built-up area, or was a hospital explicitly targeted?
“Both are equally despicable, both, as the Ukrainians have pointed out, would amount to a war crime.”
Pressed on whether he thinks the attack constitutes a war crime, he replied: “Yes, if you deliberately target a piece of civilian infrastructure like a hospital, yes.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the strike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol as an ‘atrocity’. (Getty)
“If you use indiscriminate artillery into an urban area without due regard for the reality, you could hit a protected site like a hospital, then that too in my view is.”
President Zelenskyy posted footage online showing the damage from what he said was a “direct strike” on the hospital, with windows blown out and debris strewn through the corridors.
In a call on Wednesday evening, Johnson joined Zelenskyy in condemning the strike, noting that this, together with reports Russian forces had failed to respect ceasefire agreements, was “yet further evidence that Putin was acting with careless disregard for international humanitarian law”, Downing Street said.
More Russian troops were killed in Ukraine in 2 weeks than U.S. troops in entire Iraq War, U.S. estimates
Peter Weber, Senior editor – March 10, 2022
Dead Russian soldier in Ukraine Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images
Russian forces continue to make inroads in southern Ukraine, but few military experts seem to think the war is going very well for Russia. The invading army has suffered “very, very significant casualties,” a U.S. official told CBS News on Wednesday, putting the U.S. estimate at between 5,000 and 6,000 Russian troops killed in action. That’s comparable to losses in World War II battles, the U.S. official said. It’s also, as Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich notes, “more than the number of Americans killed during the Iraq War.”
The U.S. estimate is about halfway between the 500 Russian casualties Moscow claims and the 12,000 Russian deaths claimed by Ukraine. The U.S. intelligence estimate also puts Ukraine’s casualties at 2,000 to 4,000 killed troops plus hundreds or thousands of slain civilians.
Putin planned his “disastrous” Ukraine war “in high secrecy in order to avoid leaks,” and his risk-reward analysis was skewed by a lack contingency planning from his tiny circle of generals, misplaced optimism in Russia’s sanctions-proofing, and the surprisingly “deplorable state of Russian expertise on Ukraine,” Russia expert Alexander Gabuev at the Carnegie Moscow Center tweeted Wednesday. The result is “a tragedy for Ukraine, and a catastrophe for Russia.”
“Putin truly believed people would greet (Russians) with flowers. Instead, they were met with Molotov cocktails,” Ukrainian diplomat Volodomyr Shalkivskyi said at Australia’s National Press Club on Thursday. “Russian soldiers going into Ukraine did not have extra ammo or food in their packs. They did however have a parade uniform for a Russian victory parade through Kyiv,” he added. “You cannot win a war against a free people determined to fight for their freedom. There is no way we will give up.”
Satellite images show a large Russian military convoy deployed near a Ukrainian airport northwest of Kyiv
Lauren Frias – March 10, 2022
Troops and military vehicles deployed in Ozera, northeast of Antonov Airport.Maxar Technologies
A Russian military convoy was seen deployed in towns north of Kyiv, satellite images show.
The convoy was spotted near the Antonov Airport in Hostomel, Ukraine, which is 54 kilometers, or 33 miles, northwest of the capital.
The deployment points to Russian efforts to move further into Ukraine amid its ongoing assault on the country.
Satellite images show a Russian military convoy driving through a town near a Ukrainian airport north of Kyiv.
The convoy was spotted near the Antonov Airport in Hostomel, Ukraine, which is 54 kilometers, or 33 miles, northwest of the capital.
The images taken by Maxar Technologies point to a Russian effort to expand its presence throughout Ukraine outside of Kyiv amid its ongoing assault on the country.
“On this morning’s imagery (collected at 11:37 AM local time on March 10th), the large Russian military convoy that was last seen northwest of Kyiv near Antonov Airport has largely dispersed and redeployed,” Maxar reported.
“Armored units are seen maneuvering in and through the surrounding towns close to the airport, elements of the convoy further north have repositioned and are deployed in forests/along tree lines near Lubyanka with towed artillery howitzers in firing positions nearby,” according to an email from the space technology company.
Other images captured fuel storage tanks on fire near the airport on fire and military equipment deployed around the airport itself.
Fuel storage tanks on fire and military equipment deployed around Antonov Airport.Maxar TechnologiesFuel storage tanks on fire and military equipment deployed around Antonov Airport.Maxar Technologies
CIA director: Putin’s “propaganda bubble” is failing in Ukraine
Zachary Basu – March 10, 2022
CIA Director Bill Burns testified Thursday that he believes Vladimir Putin is “losing the information war” in Ukraine, undermining the Russian leader’s ability to rally support at home and abroad for his war of aggression.
Why it matters: Putin has spent two decades building a “propaganda bubble” and laundering disinformation through state media, Burns said. That’s why the U.S. has adopted the novel approach of attempting to preemptively debunk Russia’s narratives about Ukraine, blunting the impact of “false flag” operations that succeeded in the past.
Driving the news: The Biden administration has in recent days warned that Russia may attempt to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, after Kremlin-controlled media began propagating stories about dangerous bioweapons labs in Ukraine allegedly funded by the U.S.
The U.S. government has rejected these claims as complete fabrications and suggested that Russia may use them as “false pretexts in an attempt to justify its own horrific actions in Ukraine.”
Exploiting disinformation around chemical weapons has long been part of Putin’s “playbook,” Burns said, pointing to Russia’s poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal in 2017 and opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020.
Russia has also sought to cover up the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons in Syria.
What they’re saying: “I am convinced that our efforts at selective declassification, to preempt those kind of false flag narratives and the creation of false narratives, have been so important,” testified Burns, a former veteran career diplomat and U.S. ambassador to Russia, to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“In all the years I spent as a career diplomat, I saw too many instances in which we lost information wars with the Russians,” he continued.
“In this case, I think we have had a great deal of effect disrupting their tactics and their calculations and demonstrating to the entire world that this is premeditated and unprovoked aggression built on a body of lies and false narratives. So this is one information war that I think Putin is losing.”
The big picture: Even as Putin has “intensified his domination of state-run media” and “strangulation of independent media,” Burns suggested Russia is struggling to fully control the narrative at home.
“There are lots of Russians who have VPN accounts, who have access to YouTube to this day, who have access to information, and I don’t believe he can wall off indefinitely Russians from the truth,” Burns testified.
The bombing of a maternity ward and children’s hospital in Mariupol on Wednesday is one particularly potent example, as Russia has scrambled to rationalize the brutality of an attack that has triggered outrage all over the world.
Zoom in: Some Russian officials have claimed that the hospital was occupied by a neo-Nazi militia, and that no civilians were targeted.
Others have said the airstrike was “staged” by Ukraine.
The Russian embassy in London suggested on Twitter that a wounded pregnant woman photographed at the site of the bombing was a crisis actor — prompting the platform to remove the post for violating its rules on “denial of violent events.”
The bottom line: “The realities of killed and wounded coming home in increasing numbers, the realities of the economic consequences for ordinary Russians … the realities of the horrific scenes of hospitals and schools being bombed next door in Ukraine — I don’t think he can bottle up the truth indefinitely,” Burns said.
Even Russian State TV Is Pleading With Putin to Stop the War
Julia Davis – March 10, 2022
MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV
There is a notable mood shift in Russia, as darkness sets over its economy and the invasion of Ukraine hits major problems. While the beginning of President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war against Ukraine was greeted with cheers, clapping, and demands of Champagne in the studio, the reality sobered up even the most pro-Kremlin pundits and experts on Russian state television.
The ugly truth about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is slipping through the cracks, despite the government’s authoritarian attempts to control the narrative.
The Kremlin-controlled state media is doing its best to flip the situation upside down, blaming the victims of Russia’s aggression for all of the casualties. On Wednesday’s edition of the state TV show The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, the host claimed the fallout of Russia’s bombing of a maternity hospital this week was “fake” with no one there to be injured, despite photos of pregnant women being carried away from the blast that killed at least one child. A guest on 60 Minutes last Saturday even claimed Ukrainians “are firing on each other and blaming us.”
On Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed that Russia never attacked Ukraine and repeated the same lies as Soloviev about the total absence of patients in the maternity ward and children’s hospital bombed by Russia.
Putin’s most trusted propagandists are becoming ever more desperate to distort or deny the evidence of the atrocities because the truth is finding its way past the roadblocks erected by the Kremlin. Russian citizens are not pleased either with the war, nor with the financial price they have to pay for their leader’s ill-conceived military conquests.
Even the infamous show run by Soloviev—who was recently sanctioned as an accomplice of Putin by the European Union—became dominated by predictions of Russian doom and gloom. Andrey Sidorov, deputy dean of world politics at Moscow State University, cautioned: “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.”
State TV pundit Karen Shakhnazarov pointed out: “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. 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.”
Resorting to the traditional propaganda tropes prevalent in Russian state media, Shakhnazarov accused the United States of starting the war—and trying to prolong it indefinitely. He speculated: “What are they achieving by prolonging the war? First of all, public opinion within Russia is changing. People are shocked by the masses of refugees, the humanitarian catastrophe, people start to imagine themselves in their place. It’s starting to affect them. To say that the Nazis are doing that is not quite convincing, strictly speaking… On top of that, economic sanctions will start to affect them, and seriously. There will probably be scarcity. A lot of products we don’t produce, even the simplest ones. There’ll be unemployment. They really thought through these sanctions, they’re hitting us with real continuity. It’s a well-planned operation… Yes, this is a war of the United States with Russia… These sanctions are hitting us very precisely.
“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. 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.”
The host frowned at the apparent departure from the officially approved line of thinking and deferred to the commander-in-chief. However, the next expert agreed with Shakhnazarov. Semyon Bagdasarov, a Russian Middle East expert, grimly said: “We didn’t even feel the impact of the sanctions just yet… We need to be ready for total isolation. I’m not panicking, just calling things by their proper name.”
Soloviev angrily sniped: “Gotcha. We should just lay down and die.”
Bagdasarov continued: “Now about Ukraine. I agree with Karen. We had prior experiences of bringing in our troops, destroying the military infrastructure and leaving. I think that our army fulfilled their task of demilitarization of the country by destroying most of their military installations… To restore their military they will need at least 10 years… Let Ukrainians do this denazification on their own. We can’t do it for them… As for their neutrality, yes, we should squeeze it out of them, and that’s it. We don’t need to stay there longer than necessary… Do we need to get into another Afghanistan, but even worse? There are more people and they’re more advanced in their handling of weapons. We don’t need that. Enough already… As for the sanctions, the world has never seen such massive sanctions.”
Dmitry Abzalov, director of the Center for Strategic Communications, pointed out that even though energy prices will go up for most of the West, it won’t do much to ease the pain for the Russians: “We’ll still be the ones taking the terminal hit, and an incomparable one, even though other countries will also suffer some losses. We’ll all be going to hell together—except for maybe China—but going to hell together with the French or Germans won’t make our people feel any better.” Abzalov argued that after taking additional territories in Eastern Ukraine, Russia should get out of Dodge, believing that all Western companies that temporarily paused their operations in Russia would then rush to come back. “It’s about toxicity, not just sanctions… It will go away once the situation stabilizes.”
Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, state TV experts predicted that Russia could overtake it in a matter of minutes or a few days. Stunned by the fierce resistance on the part of Ukrainians, Soloviev described them as “the army that is second in Europe, after ours, and which has been prepared for eight years and armed with everything you can imagine.”
Soloviev added: “This is a frightening war that is being waged against us by America.”
To lighten the mood in the studio, the host resorted to one of the favorite pastimes of many Kremlin propagandists: playing yet another Fox News clip of Tucker Carlson and his frequent guest Ret. Col. Doug Macgregor. In the translated video, Macgregor predicted Russia’s easy military victories over Ukraine and its total invincibility to Western sanctions. Soloviev sighed and smiled: “He’s a lot more optimistic than my previous experts in the studio.”
Russian state television goes off message by denouncing Ukraine war
James Kilner – March 10, 2022
Russia 1 is usually a reliable source of propaganda, but guests on one of its most popular shows spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine – Russian Defense Ministry Press Service
Russian state television has broadcast calls for Vladimir Putin, the country’s president, to stop his war in Ukraine during a programme in which pundits openly likened the invasion to “Afghanistan, but even worse”.
Vladimir Soloviyev, usually one of the Kremlin’s most reliable chief propagandists, had to interrupt guests on his prime time television talk show to stop their criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He told Mr Soloviyev: “I have a hard time imagining taking cities such as Kyiv. I can’t imagine how that would look.”
He went on to call for the conflict to be brought to an end, saying: “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 stabilise things within the country.”
Later during the broadcast of An Evening with Vladimir Soloviyev, one of Russian television’s most-watched programmes, guest Semyon Bagdasarov, an academic, said: “Do we need to get into another Afghanistan, but even worse?”
He said that in Ukraine “there are more people and they’re more advanced in their weapon handling”, adding: “We don’t need that. Enough already.”
The reference to Afghanistan, a conflict that scarred the Soviet Union and still scars Russia, was particularly poignant. The Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, 10 years after it invaded, humiliated.
Historians have said that the Afghanistan failure and the disillusionment that millions felt after it helped pull down the Soviet Union two years later. Thousands of Soviet soldiers were killed in the war, which became deeply unpopular at home.
The invasion of Ukraine has been likened to the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan in the 1980s – AP Photo/Estate of Alexander Sekretarev
A clearly irritated Mr Soloviyev, who owns a villa in Italy that has been seized and sanctioned by the European Union, interrupted Mr Bagdasarov.
The Kremlin relies heavily on state television to project the message that Putin’s so-called “special operation” to rescue the Russian kinfolk of Ukraine from Nazis is going to plan.
Kremlin state television is one of the few sources of information about the war for the Russian public, after authorities restricted access to some social media sites and forced independent stations off the air.
News of the setbacks in Ukraine appears to be filtering back to Russia. Over the weekend, a video emerged which showed mothers of soldiers angrily confronting a regional official and accusing the Kremlin of using their sons as “cannon fodder”.
The prime time Vladimir Soloviyev show is not the only one that appears to be straying off-message.
On the Russian ministry of defence’s television channel, Zvezda, a serving army officer explained to a talk show audience how Russian soldiers were dying in Ukraine.
“Our guys over there, from Donetsk and Luhansk, and our special operation forces are dying and our country,” he said.
“No, no, no,” interrupted the presenter who gets up from his desk gesticulating and marches across the studio shouting: “Stop!”
“Our youth are still dying,” the soldier continued.
By this time, the presenter had come up to him and shouted: “Can you stop now? I will tell you what our guys are doing there. Our guys are smashing the fascist snakes. It’s a triumph of the Russian army. It’s a Russian renaissance.”
Just a few weeks ago many influential figures on the U.S. right loved, just loved Vladimir Putin. In fact, some of them still can’t quit him. For example, Tucker Carlson, while he has grudgingly backed off from full-on Putin support, is still blaming America for the war and promoting Russian disinformation about U.S.-funded bioweapons labs.
For the most part, however, America’s Putin lovers are having a moment of truth. It’s not so much that Putin stands revealed as a tyrant willing to kill large numbers of innocent people — they knew or should have known that already. The problem is that the strongman they admired — whom Donald Trump praised as “savvy” and a “genius” just before he invaded Ukraine — is turning out to be remarkably weak. And that’s not an accident. Russia is facing disaster precisely because it is ruled by a man who accepts no criticism and brooks no dissent.
On the military side, a war Russia clearly envisioned as a blitzkrieg that would overrun Ukraine in days has yet to capture any of the country’s top 10 cities — although long-range bombardment is turning those cities into rubble. On the economic side, Putin’s attempt to insulate himself from potential Western sanctions has been a debacle, with everything indicating that Russia will have a depression-level slump. To see why this matters, you need to understand the sources of the right’s infatuation with a brutal dictator, an infatuation that began even before Trump’s rise.
Some of this dictator-love reflected the belief that Putin was a champion of antiwokeness — someone who wouldn’t accuse you of being a racist, who denounced cancel culture and “gay propaganda.”
Some of it reflected a creepy fascination with Putin’s alleged masculinity — Sarah Palin declared that he wrestled bears while President Barack Obama wore “mom jeans” — and the apparent toughness of Putin’s people. Just last year Senator Ted Cruz contrasted footage of a shaven-headed Russian soldier with a U.S. Army recruiting ad to mock our “woke, emasculated” military.
Finally, many on the right simply like the idea of authoritarian rule. Just a few days ago Trump, who has dialed back his praise for Putin, chose instead to express admiration for North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Kim’s generals and aides, he noted, “cowered” when the dictator spoke, adding that “I want my people to act like that.”
But we’re now relearning an old lesson: Sometimes, what looks like strength is actually a source of weakness.
Whatever eventually happens in the war, it’s clear that Russia’s military was far less formidable than it appeared on paper. Russian forces appear to be undertrained and badly led; there also seem to be problems with Russian equipment, such as communications devices.
These weaknesses might have been apparent to Putin before the war if investigative journalists or independent watchdogs within his government had been in a position to assess the country’s true military readiness. But such things aren’t possible in Putin’s Russia.
The invaders were also clearly shocked by Ukraine’s resistance — both by its resolve and by its competence. Realistic intelligence assessments might have warned Russia that this might happen; but would you want to have been the official standing up and saying, “Mr. President, I’m afraid we may be underestimating the Ukrainians”?
On the economic side, I have to admit that both the West’s willingness to impose sanctions and the effectiveness of those sanctions have surprised just about everyone, myself included.
Still, economic officials and independent experts in Russia should have warned Putin in advance that “Fortress Russia” was a deeply flawed idea. It shouldn’t have required deep analysis to realize that Putin’s $630 billion in foreign exchange reserves would become largely unusable if the world’s democracies cut off Russia’s access to the world banking system. It also shouldn’t have required deep analysis to realize that Russia’s economy is deeply dependent on imports of capital goods and other essential industrial inputs.
But again, would you have wanted to be the diplomat telling Putin that the West isn’t as decadent as he thinks, the banker telling him that his vaunted “war chest” will be useless in a crisis, the economist telling him that Russia needs imports?
The point is that the case for an open society — a society that allows dissent and criticism — goes beyond truth and morality. Open societies are also, by and large, more effective than closed-off autocracies. That is, while you might imagine that there are big advantages to rule by a strongman who can simply tell people what to do, these advantages are more than offset by the absence of free discussion and independent thought. Nobody can tell the strongman that he’s wrong or urge him to think twice before making a disastrous decision.
Which brings me back to America’s erstwhile Putin admirers. I’d like to think that they’ll take Russia’s Ukraine debacle as an object lesson and rethink their own hostility to democracy. OK, I don’t really expect that to happen. But we can always hope.
