Putin's top propagandists openly talk of Russia losing to Ukraine and being tried in Hague

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Russian TV hosts Margarita Simonyan and Vladimir Solovyov openly speculated on the aftermath of a defeat of Russia in Ukraine for Vladimir Putin's inner circle. Simonyan's chilling monologue referenced the war crimes trials at the Hague for the Russian leadership. At the same time, Solovyov boasted that the world would be "turned to ash" hinting at a nuclear strike before the Kremlin would concede defeat.

Simonyan told Russia1: "They are getting ready to take our Crimea. We're doing the only thing we can do in this situation; we are bombing.

"We are bombing every day, we are bombing infrastructure.

"God knows we didn't want this, no one wanted this you and I didn't want this. I know the leadership didn't want this either.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/putin-s-top-propagandists-openly-talk-of-russia-losing-to-ukraine-and-being-tried-in-hague/ar-AA14G2qw

Happens when you have a government full of yes-men who are afraid to contradict their leader.

[Irish_Dem]

1. "We will be forced to destroy the world with nuclear strikes if we don't get what we want."

This is a country which needs to have any hint of legitimacy taken away.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. These assholes do not own Crimea

Putin may trade keeping Crimea for stopping the rest of the failed war

[Carlitos Brigante]

3. Is Solovyov the one who always dresses like he's cosplaying at a Star Trek Convention? Yeah,

fuck that guy too. I thought he got drafted..... Bet he can't wait to show off his "patriotism.

[Emrys]

4. That's the one. He failed his audition as a Bond villain, like many of the Russian propagandists.

Simonyan runs Russia Today, and if she passed the audition, would be a Bond movie Cold War bit part female baddie dispatched deservedly along the way in bizarre circumstances, not the one Bond ends up with in the final scene.

There's some footage from days of greater detente between Ukraine and Russia from a decade ago, when Zelensky was fulfilling his role as an entertainer, and Solovyov was ... well, I'm not sure what he was doing.

Link to tweet

Visegrád 24
@visegrad24

Back in a different time…

New Year’s Eve 2013.

Zelensky singing on Russian state TV, with Solovyov playing Travolta in the audience.

Russian-Ukrainian relations are now over for good, and Putin was the man to push the button.

[Twitter video]

Since then Solovyov has descended into the role of a state-sponsored TV and radio shock jock - like the misbegotten offspring of Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson, only with Putin's explicit imprimatur.

You could ignore everything he says as the flailing babbling of a madman who knows his time is soon up, but someone in the Russian hierarchy thinks there's some benefit in exposing the TV viewership to it and his guests' rantings on a nightly basis.

So if they're allowing this sort of thing to be aired on TV, you have to ask why. Is it softening up the public for worse news to come, giving a tame outlet to doubts that are already sown in the public's mind, or ...?

Journalist Julia Davis keeps track of their outpourings on her Twitter feed if anyone has the stomach for it: https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews

[Emrys]

5. "Solovyov boasted that the world would be "turned to ash" hinting at a nuclear strike"

Solovyov's recycling scripts from a couple of weeks ago, when China made its severe displeasure at repeated threats of nuclear war in its back yard or nearby known to Putin in no uncertain terms.

In fact, it's believed Chinese pressure was behind this:

Putin Ally Says Nuclear Weapons 'Should Never Be Unleashed'

Vladimir Putin and his Kazakhstan counterpart have made a pledge against nuclear arms as the Russian president faces pressure from allies over rhetoric coming from Moscow about the use of such weapons.

Putin signed the declaration at the Kremlin on Monday with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev which included the phrase "there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed," according to the Kremlin.

The wording was part of a wider declaration of friendship between Moscow and its former Soviet neighbor in which energy and trade ties were cemented and it reaffirms a 2006 Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone treaty.

But it comes less than a month after Tokayev said in a meeting in the capital of Astana on November 4 that there was a "worrying increase in reference to the use of nuclear weapons."

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-kazakhstan-treaty-nuclear-threat-china-1763083

[lindysalsagal]

6. The human capacity for delusion is fathomless.

I want a new species.