This is an article in the Guardian about how the war in Ukraine is effecting a village in Russia. It appears to be based on internet contacts with people who live in the village. This kind of long-distance journalism is a bit of a thing in the liberal media, when it comes to Russia, the author, Pjotr Sauer, is the Guardian’s Russia correspondent, so perhaps he did actually go to the village.
The main theme of the article is how the village is emptying as men sign up to fight in the army.
A few comments on this:
Despite the losses and the grief, none of those interviewed openly challenged Moscow’s rationale for the invasion or voiced resentment towards the capital.
Which shows us what? That – the reality is that most people in Russia, (even when interviewed anonymously), still support the war, in general terms.
Many instead spoke of duty and sacrifice, repeating the Kremlin’s false claim that Russia is defending itself from “neo-Nazis” and the west.
Ah, here we go. “false claim”. “false claim” means anything which contradicts the liberal narrative. You can easily tell it is a propaganda device. Clearly, anyone who claims to be even slightly rational can delineate the Russian narrative, It is about NATO expansion and the rights of ethnic Russians and their fellow-travelers in Eastern Ukraine. You have to have your eyes sewn shut not to notice that there are certain objective features which correlate with the Russian narrative; Bandera is indeed revered in Western Ukraine, (a student of mine, from Poland, has just been there and told me that Bandera flags are flying everywhere); the AZOV battalion which has played an outsized role in the whole conflict was indeed designated as being too right-wing and unsavoury to receive US funding by the US congress, before 2022 there were plenty of stories in the liberal media, even in the Guardian, about what an awful right-wing group it was/is; after the ‘revolution’ in Maidan there was a rush of extreme right politicians into office, (though many have now withdrawn from Parliament); there was indeed legislation which downgraded the status of Russian in Ukraine, despite it being the first language of millions including millions of ethnic Russians, and so on. And; in terms of ‘false claim’ about the West; well, what exactly were NATO and all those CIA bases doing in Ukraine? The point is; you can certainly argue about the weighting of these factors, which are complex and not reducible to a simple binary – but the very move which does, that, reduces the discussion to a simple binary and, naturally, says Russia’s side of this binary is ‘false’, shows us that we are in a world of cult propaganda, not serious objective analysis. Pjotr Sauer is a ‘hollow man’. He is trying to manipulate people’s minds in the service of armed aggression, while claiming to be journalist.
Nor did they dwell on the suffering in Ukraine – at least not to the Guardian.
This is a stereotype (trope) – which turns up all the time in liberal media coverage of the response of ordinary Russian people to the war. They are supposed to be wringing their hands with shame, guilt and remorse about the ‘suffering in Ukraine’ caused by their ‘unprovoked invasion’. It is absurd. Is Pjotr Sauer wringing his hands with grief and shame because the UK is assissting the US in its illegal war on Iran, or, for that matter, because British cruise missiles are killing Russian civilians? [1] I doubt it. And, in that case, the wars are, indeed, unprovoked. (Let’s not rehearse it all now; but, in essence the Ukraine war was provoked by the West pushing NATO up to Russia’s borders, flooding Ukraine with anti-Russia military-intelligence elements, faciliating an anti-democratic coup in Kiev, and turning a blind eye to Kiev ignoring the Minsk agreements). Anyway, in general, in wars, people do not usually, unfortunately, regret the suffering of their enemy. Why should Russians be any different?
Analysis by the BBC Russian Service and the independent outlet Mediazona, which have tracked confirmed Russian military deaths since the start of the invasion, shows that a disproportionate share of the more than 200,000 identified fatalities come from rural areas and small towns.
Probably true in a general way given that these are the areas of Russia which are less economically developed and where, therefore, people are more likely to be swayed by offers of high pay in the army. But; if Pjotr Sauer thinks BBC Russian service and “independent” Mediazone are reliable sources he needs to go back to year one of his journalism course. The BBC Russian Service is a state funded propaganda operation* – like RT. Mediazone was founded by people associated with the notorius ‘Pussy Riot’ group [2] who thought it was funny to cause a scandal in a Russian Orthodox Church. (Another amusing thing about liberal journalists is that they accept as virtuous anyone in Russia who is against ‘the regime’, even when, if these groups behaved in the West as they do in Russia they would condemn them. – Another example of this being how Navalny was idolized by the Western liberal media, despite his views on immigration being somewhat to the right of Farage). ‘Indpendent’ means ‘against the regime’. No information on the foreign based MediaZone website as to who funds them, just a general ask for donations. Go figure.
Information about supposed Russian casualties in the piece appears to come from MediaZone. No serious journalist would regard a rag with opaque funding run by ex scandalistas in open conflict with Russia as a reliable source for information on Russia! On Russia the critera for source-checking is not: ‘reliable, transparent funding. robust editorial controls’. it is; “is it anti Russia?”.
There is another, and deeper, point to make about this ‘believing the Kremlin’s false claims’. I would argue that a critera to be a ‘good’ journalist is to be able to identify with the other person, fully, in their sitz in leben. To approach them, your subjects for a journalistic story, in a way which recognises they live in their world, a different one to one your live in, and to respect that. To evaluate them in their own terms. But what these liberal journalists do is judge their subjects from their own point of view. It is a colonial mindset. An embarrasing kind of ignorance. (Like Trump calling the Iranian leadership ‘loonies’).
* Actually there is a nuance here. The BBC’s claim that its license fee funding model means it is ‘independent’ is a fiction. It fully depends on the government to legislate for that – so it is entirely dependent on maintaing the approval of the government. However; in as much as it permits a certain ‘hands-off’ approach what this does in practice, is allow an institutional liberal hubris to develop.
Notes
- https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-war-russia-britain-missiles-9.7123656
- https://www.dw.com/ru/%D0%B3%D1%80%D1%83%D0%BF%D0%BF%D0%B0-pussy-riot-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B0-%D0%B2-%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B5-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82-%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0/a-18430676