Moments before war, the Kremlin is adding fuel to the media fire

It is no secret that due to the Kremlin’s activities near the borders of Ukraine and its eagerness to “resolve” some perennial problems by threatening to use military force in Europe, the current geopolitical situation is quite heated and very unpredictable. Tanks are being moved left and right, while the rhetoric of some of the “politicians” on one side has become noticeably aggressive.

The eclipse of the minds of Russian “politicians”

Fine, let us not euphemize – the rhetoric of Kremlin “politicians” has become unbearable to anyone with at least a grain of common sense. Aside from mentioning Ukraine, these Russian politicians, activists and journalists are also naming Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland and stressing that these lands must be returned to the Kremlin by any means necessary. In order to do this, the notorious Vladimir Zhirinovsky is ready to wipe London and New York off the face of the Earth. Just think about it – a Russian State Duma deputy, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, is saying these things. And he is not the only one in Russia planning to occupy its neighboring states, potentially by launching nuclear strikes against several cities of NATO members.
Let us now think about what would happen if a member of the Latvian parliament and leader of a party would say something like this. Imagine, for instance, leader of the party Harmony Jānis Urbanobičs or co-chairman of the Union of Greens and Farmers and beekeeper Armands Krauze announcing live on TV that it is time we take back the island of Ruhnu from Estonia, Palanga from Lithuania, Abrene from Russia, and that maybe we could later occupy Estonia so that the Livonian phoenix can finally be reborn from the ashes!

“Victory” march of Russian propaganda

Usually, military conflicts of any size begin with exchanging pleasantries in the media environment and, if necessary, by engaging the propaganda machine. This is most often done by criminal illegitimate regimes who force others to lie in their stead to justify the crimes already committed, as well as the misdeeds that are to be carried out in the future.
In this regard, we should take our hats off to the specialists of Russian propaganda, who have been quite successful in exploiting the media environment and information technologies to create a false reality that paints the Putin regime in a favorable light. The victory march of schizophrenia – what else is there to say? At times, one can only wonder how the Kremlin propagandists are able to differentiate the truth from the lies they have created themselves. It is evident that some of them are so deep into it that they do not even want to wake up from their own fake reality.
At this point, the Kremlin’s propaganda has crossed all the lines, i.e. economic sanctions along with Covid-19 and several other issues have forced the Kremlin to go all in – including in the media environment – completely shameless. Now, the Kremlin’s media outlets are lying and spreading disinformation on an unprecedented level.

Russian intelligence services are exploiting social media, television, the press, forums, conferences and even high-level political summits to force the public to believe that it is Ukraine not Russia that has since 2014 done nothing but escalated the situation in the region. For instance, if we believe the words of the walking Belarusian biological weapon Aleksandr Lukashenko (who is eager to spread Covid-19), Ukraine wants to occupy not only parts of Russia, but also Belarus.

Kremlin always the “victim”

The Kremlin, as always, is arguing that Russia has always been and still is an innocent victim that has from time to time been forced to show aggression against its neighboring states. The reason for this – Western “Russophobia”. If I remember correctly, “it was Finland’s own fault for being too close to Leningrad”. Perhaps it is time for Finnish-speaking polite green men to show up in Karelia? Moscow is officially handing out this “Russophobe award” to virtually anyone who has talked negatively about the Kremlin’s aggressive policy of occupying other countries – with the help of tanks, of course. There is a good reason the Putin regime is enthusiastically rewriting history and justifying the crimes committed by the USSR, as well as the atrocities carried out by the Putin regime, namely occupying the Crimean Peninsula and starting a war in Eastern Ukraine, not to mention the Chechen wars, as well as anything that Russia intends to do in the near of far future. These include the annexation of Belarus, seizing Kazakhstan, eradicating Ukraine and restoring the USSR, the latter being schizophrenic Putin’s lifelong dream. I do not see any other reason for the ultimatums Russia delivered to NATO recently. In this regard, the Kremlin’s propagandists are mentioning the Baltic states with increasing frequency.
What concerns the Kremlin’s attempts to rewrite history, we should remember Putin’s epic fantasy tale about World War II published in summer of 2021. The essay was aimed at justifying Stalin’s cooperation with Hitler. In his magnum opus, Putin also stressed that is was not the USSR that started the war, but other countries instead. Now, the message is quite similar, i.e. Ukraine is “provoking” (planning to invade) Russia. This made up story it is being circulated 24/7 in the Kremlin’s media outlets and is forcing the loyal propagandists to compete with each other on who will come up with the most horrifying stories about the “atrocities” committed by Ukraine.
The Kremlin is using disinformation to establish an artificial reality that corresponds with the sick philosophy of the Putin regime. The result is a chaos of information that is being ably manipulated by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, churning out stories such as the “crucifixion of a boy in underwear”, the color revolutions organized by the US in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s favorite story about a nonexistent girl named Lizochka who used to live in Germany. Back then, Angela Merkel was forced to pretend that she did not hear that or that perhaps the interpreter had made a mistake. This is, however, highly unlikely as Merkel has perfect command of the Russian language.

 

One thing is certain – the Kremlin is plotting something. There is a reason a false reality is being devotedly established in the media environment. In this version of reality, Ukraine is the aggressor who has been incited by NATO, while Russia is the knight in the shining armor ready to fight against Nazism and Fascism. It is difficult to predict whether this will end with a large-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia to liberate it from made up Fascists and Nazis, but I believe the current situation simply cannot end well – well, except for the outcome of complete capitulation of the Putin regime.

Baiba Zile
independent Latvian journalist