How the Russian media is covering the Ukraine scandal

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

How the Russian media is covering the Ukraine scandal

By Christian Caryl
Op-ed Editor/International
September 26, 2019 at 3:09 p.m. EDT

The Russian media loves President Trump’s latest scandal — which might surprise those Americans who think that the Kremlin automatically applauds everything he does. But it’s not quite that simple.

It’s a Monday night in Moscow, and Russia’s flagship current affairs talk show is starting off with a screaming match.

The Russian political scientist Sergei Markov is assailing three Ukrainian guests on the other side of the studio: “We all know that Ukraine is a symbol of catastrophe,” he yells. “Comrades, what have you done to your country?” The Russian audience applauds.

The Ukrainians try to protest but Markov just talks over them. Footage shows their newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, arriving in New York for the United Nations General Assembly — also the venue of his meeting with Trump, whose dealings with Zelensky’s government have enmeshed him in the biggest scandal of his administration.

But the hosts of “60 Minutes,” as the show is called, couldn’t be happier. One of them, Yevgeny Popov, is broadcasting live from New York, where he’s sitting with John Varoli, an American public relations consultant who learned to speak Russian during a stint as a journalist in St. Petersburg a few years ago. When Popov asks him about the president’s prospects in 2020, Varoli replies: “I think his victory is almost guaranteed, because the economy is flourishing and growing. A majority of Americans support him.” Varoli, who hastens to add that he’s not a Trump supporter, doesn’t cite any polls. (Last week, Gallup put Trump’s approval rating at 43 percent.) Varoli continues: “Trump is constantly breaking the law, but Obama also broke the law, Bush broke the law — all our presidents break the law.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/26/scandal-only-moscow-could-love/

[RDANGELO]

1. Interesting.

As long as they can denigrate Ukraine, that's what they will do.

[DetlefK]

2. Russian state-propaganda is known to lie by omission. There are no words to describe this scum:

* Amnesty International published a report about torture in Syria. Russian state-media extensively quoted the section how the Anti-Assad rebels torture people, completely ignoring the section how the Assad-regime tortures people.

* Some economists did a study about which country is the most corrupt. (The formula they used to calculate corruption was nonsensical: The moremoney a country has, automatically the more corrupt it is.) Russian state-media approvingly cited the study as it showed the US to be the most corrupt country. During that time, Russia was in a propaganda-war with Ukraine, constantly badmouthing Ukraine as corrupt. So, naturally, russian state-media ignored that that very same study showed Russia as more corrupt than Ukraine.

* When the former russian agent Sergej Skripal was killed in the UK with the russian chemical weapon Novichok, the OPCW was called in to conduct tests whether it actually had been Novichok. The official report of the OPCW confirmed that Skripal had been killed "by the chemical compound alleged by the british government." But as the report did not spell out Novichok by name, russian state-media reported that the OPCW had found that it had not been Novichok.

* Or when russian athletes were blocked from the Olympics for mass-use of steroids, russian state-media ran a puff-piece how those evil Olympia-organizers are discriminating against those poor athletes, not once mentioning the steroid-controversy.

* Or during some soccer-championship in France, when russian hooligans infiltrated and anbushed english hooligans and beat them up bloody, russian state-media reported on the incident but somehow forgot to mention that the attackers had been Russians.