What war looks like everyone's seen since Thursday morning. What it truly looks like in hundreds of thousands (and in a minute millions) of refugees, their stories about spending the night and days in dark cellars under fire, watching dozens of violent expressions recorded on the phones of films showing broken Russian columns and killed soldiers. You can besides see it in available Ukrainian tv channels and Ukrainian news portals (I usually usage centor.net).
The fact that in times of global economy (already ending) and planet social media – 1 can live in a completely different planet – I found myself looking at Russian news portals. There are respective of these with the very authoritative agencies TACC, Interfax and Ria Nowosti at the head, but there are besides classical all-thematic portals like lenta.ru or yandex.ru – at least in the version that is served for connection with abroad IP from Poland.
The first surprise – war does not necessarily occupy all the information. In fact, for a minute it seems that this is any kind of side, secondary, "cosmetic" military operation, not Russia's top nightmare since the beginning of this century. The full ideology (here are not where the shrewd columnons) is based on the thought that Russia's actions are simply a consequence to Ukraine's aggressive plans, which were about to attack the self-proclaimed republics, and in fact, acts of genocide have been committed there for many years. There are besides no maps, places of battles or global deployments of troops (which are full of Ukrainian services), but only a dry transmission of authoritative messages of the Army spokesman, who gave Ukrainian losses in a dry and wooden voice (notabene lower Russian losses given by Ukrainians). In general, reading this information you have the impression that any military action is attacks in self-defense, military forces of the Republic of Donetsk and Lugansk – attacks that end successfully and their troops entered several, respective twelve kilometers into Ukraine. There is no information at all that Ukraine is being attacked from all possible side and that everything is actually going towards the bloody siege of Kiev and Kharkiv, and the run is not a journey to overthrow the ominous Nazi government and flowers cast by the delighted Ukrainian residents of villages and towns and a murderous conflict to the very end.
Russian readers live in an imaginary planet – a run to defend peace and campaign, which will shortly bring back the average pro-Russian government and free Ukraine from the hands of the “Nazi-Bander clique”. Apart from being many times in Kiev I did not see any banners – there may have been an authoritative demonstration on Majdan once, but the taxi did not even gotta bypass the center, due to the fact that the road was mobile, and respective twelve men with flags were on the sidewalks – so in full something smaller than the Polish ONR demonstrations in any cities. In the first days, even the articles were prepared that the Ukrainian military and their border guards were dropping their weapons and welcoming the “liberators”, but gradually, everything is becoming more and more hidden and, in fact, there is small news from the front. Sometimes it is only optimistic that full regulation in the air is achieved, sometimes by surprise that the NATO base (in Okakow on the Black Sea – so a small far from Donbass) was liquidated – and this ominous NATO was expected to be a threat to the Black Sea Fleet (and not everyone knows how crucial this fleet is to the Russians). I have seen 1 analytical article that seems to have slipped through interior and external censorship – summarizing the situation that it is going according to plan, but it will be very difficult. The author mentioned all the lines of the front and made it clear – sometimes between poems and sometimes straight that the situation is variable, Ukrainian forces saturated with nationalistic propaganda do not quit and fight to the last soldier, and losses are inevitable and that they are large losses. After that, a message from the Russian Ministry of Defence appeared, which, to the surprise of everyone, stated that the Russian army was just taking losses and being killed and injured – only without any numbers.
But slow in the amount of information – 1 cannot keep a clear narrative. The portals describe as full as possible all sanctions (including the closure of airspace), currency problems (when I compose this – the Euro is after 105 rubles), interest rate increases up to 20% and subsequent steps that will not benefit the Russian economy. You can see breaking sponsorship contracts for sports with Gazprom and protests around the world. Besides, the Russian portals are suspended all the time (the cyber attacks can work both ways) – for example, the TACC does not work at the moment.
It remains to be hoped that Russian citizens will slow wake up and read between the lines. The long-term practice of communism has surely taught that as authorities compose about losses in general – it must be immense if "the attack goes according to plans, but there are delays" – it means that we got terrible whips, and if "the government has a gathering and there will be decisions to save the economy" – that the situation is hopeless and you gotta run rapidly to the ATM. More and more actual narratives not in the social media itself (those blocked information by Roskomandzor – a kind of propaganda defender – officially since 2008, the overriding IT marketplace regulator), but in films sent from Ukraine (everyone has a friend or household associate there) where it is impossible to hide broken columns, destroyed buildings and dead bodies on the streets. There is besides nothing that Russian propaganda has always shown – POWs talking about bad Kiev nationalists – by no means beyond any hypothetical references – I have not seen any films that on the another hand (about Russian prisoners) are seen in Ukrainian media. For Russians, too, this is simply a sign – in Ukraine no 1 gives up, and if he does not quit it means that they fight to the last man and fight very bloodyly.
So despite the false propaganda, the disgusting lie – Russian portals give hope. slow the Russian society begins to realize the scale and magnitude of the harm and crime, about the peace operation which is simply a brutal war and assault, about the large heroism of the defenders and about the immense losses and thousands killed. someway no 1 believes in the pro-Russian fresh government in Kiev or about the girls welcoming soldiers with flowers – alternatively everyone dreams of getting out of it somehow, due to the fact that everyone sees that sanctions are strong and Russia's economy is about to get on their knees. Propaganda will not work to the end and slow society will turn distant from the war. Now it's just time for a group of decision-makers and any effort to block madness – although fresh news headlines about raising the readiness of Russian atomic forces. This Russian society understands besides – war is not won...
