Ruminants of Kremlin Propaganda

Over breakfast with my family on the morning after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I read a report by Marta Shokalo, editor of the Ukrainian service at BBC. “I dressed my ten-year-old son. We had breakfast as far from the windows as possible, but he was so scared he vomited. We brought candles and some water to the basement. That will be our shelter if things get worse.”

February 2022. In Europe.

The war in Ukraine is not the first armed conflict on European soil since World War II — everyone from the former Yugoslavia knows this — but it is undoubtedly the most dangerous for peace and stability. Not only in Europe, but globally.

As we watch the reports of fighting in disbelief and shock, we also have to deal with the "whataboutists" — those who ruminate and regurgitate talking points from Putin’s disinformation arsenal. Warriors for “alternative facts.” Yesterday they were amateur epidemiologists, today they’re Kremlinologists and geopolitical experts.

Have the Americans done plenty of dirty deeds? True. Have Palestinians suffered grave injustices? I agree. Are there neo-Nazis in Ukraine? Yes, there are. But there are plenty in Russia too. And even in our own backyard we have party youth organizations that call on Breivik for help, and "patriotic" societies with public-interest status. None of that, in my view, is a valid reason for a foreign invasion.

Was Western policy opportunistic, hypocritical, inconsistent, and short-sighted for years? Certainly. But none of that — absolutely none of it — can justify or legitimize the aggression against a neighbouring country or the blatant violation of international law.

I’m not a Kremlinologist, but I happen to be among the first people who had the chance to meet Putin. In January 2000, I accompanied a group of European parliamentarians — the first Western delegation, as the British Guardian put it — to meet with the then-interim president of the Russian Federation, just two weeks after Boris Yeltsin’s dramatic resignation.

The main purpose of the visit was to assess the situation in Chechnya, where fierce fighting was ongoing over control of the capital, Grozny. Before our trip to the southern Caucasus, Putin received us in the Kremlin. The meeting began with what would later become his trademark: a nearly two-hour delay.

When our delegation leader, Lord Russell-Johnston, scolded him like a schoolboy for the delay, Putin flushed red — from rage, not embarrassment — and replied through clenched teeth and with an icy stare that the meeting would last “as long as necessary” to exhaust all our questions.

What followed wasn’t a meeting so much as a three-hour string of Putin monologues. He ended with a lecture telling us not to draw conclusions until we had seen the situation in Chechnya with our own eyes. “Don’t be fooled by foreign propaganda,” he snapped.

To be honest, during our 48 hours in Dagestan and Chechnya, what we mostly saw was propaganda.

It started even before departure, in Moscow, when they tried to hand us Russian military uniforms. What better PR than a delegation of Western politicians in uniform, “witnessing the truth” of Russia’s “pacification” of Chechnya.

“Why, exactly?” Russell asked the Ministry of Interior staff.

“For safety reasons,” replied a Russian officer. “There are Chechen snipers in the area we’re visiting.”

“Thank you very much,” Russell replied with typically British sarcasm, “but if they’re out there, they’ll probably be aiming at you — not me.”

In Chechnya, we visited a primary school accompanied by Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo, who handed out computers to bewildered children. The school hadn’t had electricity for months, and before we even left, the computers were being packed back into boxes and reloaded onto the truck they came in.

This surreal experience helped me understand something about Putin’s political communication. It doesn’t rely on facts and doesn’t even attempt to be convincing. It isn’t so much an attempt to deceive — even they don’t believe such shoddy lies would convince anyone at home or abroad.

Whether in the cynical talk of “pacification” in Chechnya twenty-two years ago or today’s ominous claims about the “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine, the aim is ritualized and ruthless displays of power.

Inside Russia, citizens are expected to repeat and internalize these disinformation lines as proof of loyalty and blind obedience to the regime. Toward the outside world, the message is contempt: I don’t respect you enough to even lie convincingly.

But there's a crucial difference between the year 2000 and today: social media.

Maskirovka — the Russian term for intentional disinformation — is now on steroids. In 2000, we knew little about Chechnya due to lack of information. Today, the confusion stems from too much information — and misinformation.

No one has weaponized social media more effectively than the Kremlin. Compared to 2000, today there are far more people outside of Russia who consume and parrot Kremlin disinformation. Some do so out of financial or political opportunism; others because these lies skilfully manipulate their emotional and ideological biases.

Trolls whisper what the whataboutists want to hear — so they’ll do exactly what the trolls want.

The champions of alternative facts cling to their Pavlovian anti-Americanism, even when they often defend the very values that Putin’s war seeks to destroy.

I’m stunned by the naivety of those who believe that bartering away Ukraine’s right to determine its own future would stop this aggression. Churchill said appeasers are “people who feed the crocodile, hoping it will eat them last.”

Russian missiles aren’t falling on Kyiv because Ukraine wanted to join NATO — although, given what's happening, that desire is hardly unreasonable. The real reason is that Ukraine is a liberal democracy. Weak, vulnerable, plagued with problems like corruption and clientelism — yes — but still a democracy, where governments are freely elected and replaced. That is something Putin cannot and will not tolerate on his borders, lest his own subjects get similar ideas.

Russia joined the Council of Europe exactly twenty-six years ago — three months after I started working there as a young European civil servant. Upon joining, top Russian leaders, including Yeltsin, pledged to resolve conflicts peacefully and to renounce the doctrine of the “near abroad,” under which Russia had trampled across Europe — from Hungary in 1956 to Czechoslovakia twenty-two years later.

But paper accepts anything. After Georgia, Crimea, and now Ukraine, those commitments mean nothing.

As I write this, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers is deciding on measures under Article 8 of the organization’s statute. Russia’s right to representation has been suspended for flagrant violations of its obligations and principles.

I lost my illusions much earlier.

It happened when Russia passed laws banning “homosexual propaganda,” and later when the government started crushing civil society, freedom of expression, media freedom, and the right to peaceful protest — by labelling activists “foreign agents” and through other repressive tactics.

Until then, Russia’s response to every human right or civil liberties violation was that it was all a misunderstanding, or a result of “false” information. But from that point on, it became clear: they do not share or accept the core principles of an open, democratic society. And they stopped pretending otherwise.

It was a painful realization.

I love Russia. I love Russian culture. I have many Russian friends and acquaintances. Until that moment, I wanted to believe that the post-Berlin Wall reunification of Europe, based on shared democratic values, could remain a cornerstone of our future.

But from that moment on, things only went downhill.

And those values are now being trampled not only in Russia but across several European countries — some of which are currently condemning the invasion of Ukraine, albeit tactically.

Still, that cannot justify the pathetic attempts to excuse the inexcusable or relativize the responsibility for this aggression.

People who look for blame anywhere but the Kremlin for the Russian tanks rolling through Ukrainian streets should be ashamed — not only in front of the Ukrainians now caught in a war, but also in front of the many Russian citizens who do not support this war and who, despite pressure and threats, are protesting against it.