Russian consul general Vyacheslav Svetlichnyi
Question: why so many Ukrainian sounding names among Russian diplomatic and
government staff?
PI
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:14 AM, Stefan Lemieszewski <[email protected]>wrote:
>
> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/03/putin-s-crimea-propaganda-machine.html
> Daily Beast
> 4Mar2014
> *Putin's Crimea Propaganda Machine*
>
>
> To justify its invasion of Crimea, the Kremlin and state-run media went
> into full fabrication mode this weekend. Here are the lies that Russia is
> telling its viewers back home.
>
> Russia invaded Ukraine over the weekend, justifying its incursion by
> claiming it needed to protect Crimea's ethnic Russian population from
> supposed neo-Nazi extremists. This was pure propaganda, of course--Vladmir
> Putin has been keen to annex land that used to be part of Russia, as he did
> in Georgia in 2008, and seems to think that the Ukrainian army will and
> should immediately surrender to the Russian one.
>
> Still, Putin needed a story to spin, no matter how full of holes, and thus
> the neo-Nazi claims. But as it turns out, Crimea's streets are not exactly
> paved with extremists--a fact that has proven troublesome for Russian state
> TV channels looking to find token far-right bogeymen. They've had to resort
> to tricks to get the right characters for Russian audiences--making much,
> for instance, of Sachko Bilyi, a buffoon who visited a local parliament
> with his AK-47 machine gun. No one in Ukraine thinks much of Bilyi, other
> than that he's a clown, but Russian TV is now claiming that squads made up
> of thousands of Bilyis are terrorizing Ukraine's civilians and intimidating
> MPs.
>
> The Russian media also reported on "skirmishes" on the streets of Crimea
> and showed a video about "extremists in Crimea attacking Russian soldiers."
> As it turns out, the video was actually made on February 20, when close to
> 100 protesters, aid workers and journalists were shot by snipers in Kiev.
> That day, several cameramen filmed the terror on location--one of them
> standing nearby for a very long time. When his video surfaced on Russian
> TV, purporting to be from Crimea, it made many suspect that the cameraman
> was from Russia and that Russian journalists may have had an arrangement
> with the snipers so that they wouldn't draw fire.
>
> For additional help manufacturing scenes of outrage, Russian provocateurs
> in Simferopol organized a nice mise-en-scene for Putin's propaganda
> machine. A bus filled with people dressed like paramiliatry fighters,<http://raymond-saint.livejournal.com/285235.html>toting machine guns and grenade launchers, were filmed by Russian
> journliasts. It appeared instantly on the Internet and Russian TV channels,
> labeled as "The Right Sector from the Western Ukraine attacking peaceful
> Russian citizens and killing soldiers in Crimea."<https://vine.co/v/MKPUve5hl5I>But if one looks closely, it is possible to make out several important
> details: the bus from 'the Western Ukraine' in fact has a Crimean license
> plate number, and the fighters are armed with GM-94 grenade launchers and
> AK-100 machine guns, which are only used by Russian soldiers. Another
> question: how did Right Sector extremists manage to get to Simferopol on a
> big bus after all the roads to Crimea were blocked three days ago by armed
> police and Russian soldiers? Several jounralists tried to pass through the
> cordons, but in vain. Apparently only armed fighters and extremists can get
> permission to go to Crimea. Later, Russian consul general Vyacheslav
> Svetlichnyi dismissed reports <http://lenta.ru/news/2014/03/01/nokill/>of casulaties amongst Russian citizens and soldiers in Crimea as mere rumor.
>
> Then there was the story about how a local state administration in Kharkiv
> hoisted a Russian flag instead of a Ukrainian one on the local
> parliamentary building. The rumor went viral thanks to a 25-year-old
> blogger in Moscow<http://ipress.ua/ru/news/flag_rossyy_nad_harkovskoy_oblgosadmynystratsyey_vivesyl_natsyst_yz_moskvi_51452.html>,
> nicknamed Mika Ronkainen. "Right now! Kharkiv administration was set free
> and the Russian flag was hoisted. Guess by whom?" he wrote on his social
> network account. <https://vk.com/id110246819> Later, journalists
> established that Ronkainen likes to be photographed in Nazi uniforms and
> takes part in the Putin-supported Russian xenophobic movement "Locals".<https://www.facebook.com/andriy.movchan/posts/808210675873159?stream_ref=1>Apparently the real story was that several buses of Russian "tourists" were
> taken to Kharkiv to imitate local populations showing enthusiastic support
> for Russia. They not only hoisted Russian flags, but reportedly beat
> Ukrainians who expressed indignation at Russian aggression in Crimea.
> Lines and crowds at border checkpoints are very hard to fake, so Russian
> TV instead filmed the line next to the border checkpoint with Poland,
> labeling it as "thousands of Ukrainains running away to Russia from the far
> right."
>
> Among the other potent, but false, myths of the Putin propaganda machine:
> that panicked Ukrainians are fleeing en masse to Russia to escape the new
> government in Kiev, and that the Ukrainian army is unfit for combat and soldiers
> are defecting <http://ria.ru/world/20140302/997769130.html?utm_source=fb1>to the Russian side.
>
> As for the former, lines and crowds at border checkpoints are very hard to
> fake, so Russian TV instead filmed the line next to the border checkpoint
> with Poland, labeling it as "thousands of Ukrainains running away to Russia
> from the far right." (Ukrainian journalists figured out the real location
> by noticing that a plate on the checkpoint listed the name of the city of
> Shegyni, which is on the Polish border.)
>
> And as for the Moscow propagandist rumor that Ukrainian soldiers are
> clamoring to become Russian citizens, the only ones who seem eager to join
> Russia's side are the Berkut riot policement, the ones allegedly involved
> in the mass murder of protesters in Kiev. Russian citizenship for them is
> the only hope for salvation from criminal prosecution and prison.
> Meanwhile, even as the Russian media is reporting that "Ukrainian soldiers
> went over to the Crimean authorities' side peacefully and without any shots
> fired...the majority of them will swear allegiance to local authorities," in
> the Ukrainian media, one in fact discovers that several Crimean regiments
> were approached by the Russian army and that they refused to lay down
> arms. <http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/03/2/7017095/>
>
> No one in Ukraine or in the West doubts that the Russian invasion was
> provoked by anything other than Putin's desire to reestablish the USSR 2.0.
> But every invader wants to look like a liberator, and in order to do so,
> Putin needs his scary extremists, his scared Ukrainians and his Crimean
> soldiers welcoming him with open arms. Meanwhile, the question now is: what
> will Putin do with his army in Ukraine? We can only hope the Russians shoot
> down their own myths and delusions, and not the local population.
>
> =========
>
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