Putin's Strange New Messaging on Russian TV
Russia’s flagship news broadcast is a rare window into Kremlin thinking — which is becoming muddier as the war drags on.
In the Soviet period, watching the evening news broadcast on state television provided important clues into what was happening inside the Kremlin. One of my first jobs as a young Russian speaker living in Moscow was monitoring those broadcasts for American journalists — which leaders were shown shaking hands with whom could signal who was up or who was down in the Communist Party leadership.
Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has eliminated the last vestiges of independent media in Russia, the evening news broadcast “Vremya” on Channel One — Russia’s main state TV channel — is once again one of the few ways to peek inside the Kremlin. The news show is little changed since Soviet times, heavily focused on Putin and the Kremlin’s official business.
So for the past few weeks, I’ve turned back to monitoring Vremya every night at 9 p.m. Moscow time. I’ve been watching it frame by frame — not so much for signals of what’s happening in Ukraine, but for what is becoming of Russia.
... snip
5. Putin is laying the groundwork for the use of biological or chemical weapons.
In his Wednesday speech, Putin repeatedly alleged that the West was using Ukraine to make and stockpile biological and chemical weapons — and even, potentially, nuclear weapons — for use against Russia. There has been increased emphasis on this in recent days. Russian propaganda frequently asserts that an enemy is making moves that Russia itself intends to take, which has the effect domestically of shifting blame for such a step on the enemy instead of Russia. This suggests that if Putin decides to escalate in coming days or weeks, use of biological, chemical or battlefield nuclear weapons may be his plan.
More: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/17/putin-russia-state-tv-news-00018304
The entire article is worth the click to read. It was shared by a Russia expert that I follow.
= new reply since forum marked as read
And to some extent, that's still how it's done. Putin speeches are really important for tea-leaf reading. Speeches that are pre-approved by necessity (for example, a senior general's broadcast speech to military cadres) are also useful.
It's still tea-leaf reading. Often partly wrong, often partly incomplete, sometimes missing an important bit of information that makes it all 90 degrees out of synch. But it's a really good reason to *not* bar Russian media access, if only restricting it to what's in Russian.
A few comments. Numbers refer the the numbers in the link.
1. The terminology has been screwball for far more than 3 weeks or 8 years. "Fascist," "neo-nazi" and "nazi" all mean about the same thing. Obama was called a "fascist". It's a word I hate translating because the immediate urge is to translate it (like "nazi" and "neo-nazi"
to what they sound like in English. Orwell in '48 said that "fascist" in British socialist circles had come to mean basically anything unpleasant. "Fascist" usually means "anti-Soviet" or, now, "anti-Putin's pro-Russian nationalist line." There might be some shading in the different terms in Putinese, but I haven't noticed them.
"Fascist" is like "democratic." I consider each of them a shoe-cabbage. In French, "chou" sounds like English "shoe" but means "cabbage". When Brezhnev talked about "democracy" he did not mean anything any but the farthest left in the US understood it to mean, and he certainly didn't think it had anything to do with liberty.
2. Useful observation. But that can be for two reasons: Either they're being backgrounded because they're less trustworthy (or possibly on their way out) or Putin's simply foregrounding himself and showing he needs nobody and wants all the attention. Stalin did the same kind of thing.
Shoigu's been around since forever. Staunchly pro-Putin. But at the same time, that's because he views Rossiya and Putin as mostly overlapping. If they didn't, he'd be pro-Rossiya. He's an engineer by training, tooled around Siberia in the '70s and '80s putting up industrial facilities. (Reading his odd little set of reminiscences now. Mostly just quasi-Soviet dreck with more obscenities ever allowed in print before 1986, but some chilling statements. Since it was published in 2021 and has no literary meaning or widespread reader base, you have to assume that it had some official significance.)
3. Putin's probably worried about the economy. But he's *more* worried about the perception of the economy and the ability of Mother Russia to maintain its wards. That's the compact in that kind of society--you give up freedom for security. When security starts to fail like it did in the '90s.... Keep in mind this is the same kind of compact made by Hamas and Hezbollah, who only manage to survive disruptions to the social order and the social treaty by the use of widespread xenophobia. Like Putin. And Hitler. And even Xi.
4. Agreed. And many Russians will know that Mariupol is at least 85% Russian-speaking because of all the news last time Russia tried to take it in the name of "uniting all the Russians speakers." Which is why much of the emphasis isn't just on the Ukrainians self-bombing but specifically the nazi/fascist factions within Ukraine: So the theater in Mariupol wasn't blown up just by Ukrainians, but specifically by the Russophone-hating Azov Battalion. This twists the narrative to "more attacks = more love for Russians!" Not all buy it.
5. Maybe. That "frequently" makes the claim a tad weaselly. He's right--when you get wannabe totalitarians (or real ones) very often they claim the other side is doing something. Then when the "right" side does it, it can either say "not us, false flag" or say "they were going to do it, we just beat them to the punch" or, even worse, "they've been doing it, so what's the problem with us doing it, you what-aboutist?" I have suspicions and concerns, but no intuitions or evidence beyond my suspicions and concerns.
6. The focus on Crimea has a simple explanation: Welcome to the big anniversary celebration of its annexation. (Which is still misplaced, so I think it was intended as the 'we've taken Berlin' celebration to be held after Ukraine was a wholly owned subsidiary of Russia's army.)
As for diplomacy, that's a black box. Putin might be trying to say that he's in favor of a negotiated settlement--something that I think most of the Western leaders to immediately bite at and force Zelensky to agree to yet more dismemberment and humiliation of Ukraine. Consider the FT's position today and other sources that emphasize keeping Ukrainian *sovereignty*--not independence of action, military strength, or territorial integrity. Sometimes that's the "peace by any means" drivel, more of the "we must not win" thinking that got Ukr where it is today and saying negotiations might lead to a "fair" solution--unilateral invasion and military pounding and they want a "fair" solution that would give Putin part or much of what he wants, possibly more territory? Zelensky isn't just motivating leaders to act, he's boxing them in and keeping them from reverting to their usual form.
Putin, however, also might be setting up Ukraine for blame on the domestic and on the world stage. "Of course we had to conquer it--we were reasonable, offered many solution." That would play well for those who oppose the war but don't feel comfortable doing it. And it will play well among the many nations that are sitting on the sidelines, doing nothing but looking for a reason to wash their hands of the problem and say Ukraine deserved it, time to move on.
7. Putin's health. Something often discussed, mostly because there's a general hope that nature will do what people are afraid to do. But he's 70 and all kinds of things can happen to your health, not all of them predictable or easily fixed. On the other hand, at 70 you often don't look all that healthy. We can only hope, but it's unlikely that nature will correct its mistake in the next few days. (And if it does, who's going to replace him? *That* would be an interesting electoral campaign season. And the results would probably be rigged. In the sense that 99.999% chance is "probably".)