The Propaganda War Between Russia and the Western Alliance Over Ukraine

Soon after Russia began its special military action on February 24^th, 2022, a surprised America under the Biden administration, NATO, EU and the broader Western Alliance, began a high decibel media campaign to demonise Vladimir Putin and the Russian military. They haven’t gone so far as to condemn the Russian people at large, but they are trying to turn them against Putin as the sanctions bite, and perhaps effect a regime change. It is naive of the West, but that is the wish. There appear to be shortages, of sugar, of tea, of condoms, but Russians, the older ones have been there before.

Part of the propaganda campaign was, no doubt, to distract attention from its own folly that brought on the attack, as pointed out by former President Donald Trump. Trump was and is not in favour of making an enemy out of Russia.  President Biden, on the other hand, did not think Putin would have the gumption to call the Western bluff. After all, Russia had never reacted with its military in three decades of provocation.

An American professor, Noam Chomsky, a Liberal-Left icon, once said, ‘Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state’.

America and the Europeans have framed Russia, as if it were still the USSR. Its democracy is not taken seriously, its parliament, its clutch of wealthy oligarchs that dazzle the earth with their capitalist gains notwithstanding. The West, greedy as ever, is busy freezing Russian assets, snatching away the Chelsea Football Team, seizing luxury yachts. Next, they intend sanctioning everyone in the Russian parliament.

In India, the only way to get the Russian point-of-view is to extensively search the internet, because we can no longer turn on Russia Today. In addition, pro-Russian You tube channels, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and other social media perches, disappeared. Even some independent Russian digital media, amenable to donations, working from outside Russia, blinked off the internet.

Very recently, The Russian Embassy in India has started putting out bulletins and programmes on You Tube. But it is anybody’s guess how long it will be before these too are blocked.

What we get 24x7 is a stream of human-interest stories on the suffering of ordinary Ukranians, and scenes of destroyed buildings, burnt cars, the carnage being caused by Russian bombardment and missiles, the children and babies they are wantonly killing. There are constant blubbering interviews with suddenly displaced refugees.  These are interspersed with announcements of  sanctions imposed, with further threats about more to come. Biden does not listen to Zelensky’s entreaties for air cover, membership of the EU, membership of the NATO. As the end approaches, Zelensky says he can’t agree to any Russian demand on his own, he needs a referendum.

Nobody in the Western Alliance talks of the culpability of NATO and its ever-expanding thrust into Eastern Europe, incorporating one former satellite of the former USSR after another, over the last thirty years. All protests from Russia were ignored.  Former President Mikhail Gorbachev saying that it was a violation of the spirit of the agreements at the dissolution of the USSR was also ignored.

Today, those who are still outside NATO’s embrace, such as Sweden and Finland, who have lived peacefully because of their scrupulous neutrality, are being scared into thinking of applying for membership. Likewise, former Soviet satellites Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Russia, in turn, is threatening consequences if there are more additions to NATO on its doorstep. The road to WWIII is indeed defined if the Western Alliance does not back down. Russia has made it clear it will use nuclear weapons if its existence is threatened. NATO must be thinking the same thing.

Meanwhile, civilian targets are being destroyed, said the Western media feeds, calling Putin a ‘War Criminal’ and reporting Russia to the ICJ. Western media neglects to state that the Ukraine armed forces locates its missile launchers and rockets, along with its soldiers, in densely populated civilian areas and buildings, in order to use the populace as human shields. This includes Ukranian soldiers dressed in civilian clothes, and even some in Russian uniforms for ambushes on Russian military convoys. Schools, Malls,theatres are employed, and when they are destroyed with people trapped or buried underneath, there’s the propaganda  value.

This general tactic of using civilians, or pretend civilians, is very popular in the Gaza Strip to garner public sympathy. That it is being cynically applied in Ukraine by President Zelensky, does not prevent the Western Media into building him up as a hero, and extol the virtues of the Ukranian resistance.

On CNN, many US retired generals are interviewed on a daily basis.  As lifelong soldiers, being rather more straight-forward than politicians or professional journalists, some have spilled the beans. There are NATO trainers and combat experts embedded with the military in Ukraine. Also trained mercenaries of various provenance. This, even as the official position is that NATO can and has been only supplying arms and ammunition from outside.

NATO involvement by way of finances, training, armaments, logistical support, intelligence, is not recent, or initiated post the Russian action of February 24^th, but several years old.

The Ukraine Armed Forces have been terrorising the largely Russian-speaking   Donbass region for all the years since 2014-2015 when the Minsk Agreements were arrived at, but not implemented on the ground.

It is an intensification of the harassment in the Donbass region that prompted the unilateral declaration of independence from Ukraine of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in February 2022. This was promptly followed by Russian recognition and the move into Ukraine.

What the Western media does not like to dwell upon is how well the battle is going for the Russians. Instead, they quote President Zelensky that thousands of Russian soldiers, as many as 6,000, have been killed so far, including five Russian Generals. He also claims, Ukranian forces have destroyed scores of Russian tanks, fighter aircraft and helicopters. Why then, one wonders, does Zelensky call for a Russian ceasefire almost every day? And if this is true, why is Vladimir Putin undeterred, and planning on inserting more troops recalled from Armenia?

 In fact, a land corridor is more or less captured now between Russian ally Crimea, a peninsula surrounded by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and these two new republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Kherson, also in the Donetsk region, had been taken. With the imminent fall of Mariupol port in South Eastern Ukraine, and the ongoing attack on Odessa, the main port near it, things are looking grim. When both are captured, Ukraine will become land-locked. It will be cut off from the Black Sea/Sea of Azov altogether.

The key battle that will break the back of the Ukraine resistance is the capture of its capital Kiev. Russian convoys have made their way up from the South and East of the country but are not inclined to conquer the city street-by-street with its more than 500,000 structures. Russia can, of course flatten it and its features of considerable historical, sentimental and religious value. Reluctance to do so has resulted in a siege and selective destruction, the cutting-off of food, water, utilities, communications, that is making it increasingly difficult for its two million residents, including all of Ukraine’s main troops.

If it took nine months for Mosul in Syria to fall, there is no reason to expect the fall of Kiev to be over quick. However, the Syrian experience will be used by Russia to hasten matters, because the sanctions and their bite does not allow a long window of time.

This brings us to the Russian attack via Belarus, its ally, that has now permitted the location of Russian nuclear weapons on its territory. It is located to the north of Ukraine, and shares one of its borders with Poland, as well as another with Lithuania and Latvia, all NATO countries. The Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus are to warn-off any NATO adventurism. And then there are its hypersonic missiles, now used twice in Ukraine, for the first time by any power. It is from Belarus that the battle has been joined for the cities and territories on the Western side of Ukraine.

That Ukraine, like Belarus, was one of the founding members of the USSR in 1922  is why Russia thinks it is righting a historical wrong. If only the West did its homework.

(1400 words)

March 23^rd, 2022

For: The Sunday Guardian

Gautam Mukherjee