Even Russian state TV is begging Putin to stop the war

There was a notable change of mood in Russia, as darkness fell over the country’s economy and the invasion of Ukraine caused major problems. While the beginning of President Vladimir Putin’s all-out war against Ukraine was greet with cheers and applause and requests for champagne on set, reality attracts even the most pro-Kremlin pundits and pundits on Russian state television.

Ugly the truth about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is going through the cracks, despite the government’s authoritarian efforts to control the narrative.

The Kremlin-controlled state media is doing its best to turn the tide, blaming all the victims of Russia’s aggression. On the Wednesday of the state television program Evening with Vladimir Soloviev, the presenter claims the bomb blast that hit a Russian maternity hospital this week was “fake” and that no one was injured there, despite pictures of pregnant women being carried from an explosion that killed at least one child. A guest on 60 minutes last saturday even declare Ukrainians “are shooting each other and blaming us.”

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declare that Russia never attacked Ukraine and repeated the same lies as Soloviev about the complete absence of patients in the maternity ward and children’s hospital bombed by Russia.

Putin’s most trusted propagandists are becoming ever more desperate to distort or deny evidence of atrocities for the sake of truth, finding their way through the barriers erected by the Kremlin. . The Russian people were also dissatisfied with the war, as well as the financial cost they had to pay for their leader’s ill-advised military conquests.

Even the infamous show run by Vladimir Soloviev—who was recently sanctioned by the European Union as an accomplice of Putin—The name is dominated by predictions of Russia’s doom and gloom. Andrey Sidorov, deputy head of the faculty of world politics at Moscow State University, warned: “For our country, this period will not be easy. It will be very difficult. It may have been more difficult than for the Soviet Union from 1945 to the 1960s… We are more integrated into the global economy than the Soviet Union, we are more dependent on imports – and for the most part. is that the Cold War was a war of minds, first and foremost. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union had a unified idea to build their system. Unlike the Soviet Union, Russia has nothing of the sort to offer.”

State TV expert Karen Shakhnazarov points out: “The war in Ukraine paints a scary picture, it has a very oppressive effect on our society. Ukraine, no matter how you look at it, is something where Russia has thousands of human connections. The suffering of a group of innocent people does not compensate for the suffering of other innocent people… I do not see the probability of the destruction of such a large country. We will need to bring in up to 1.5 million soldiers to control them all. At the same time, I don’t see any political force that can solidify Ukrainian society in a pro-Russian direction… Those who talk about their mass attraction to Russia clearly don’t see things that way. their. The most important thing in this scenario is to stop our military action. Others will say that sanctions will remain. Yes, they will stay, but in my opinion it is very important to stop the active phase of a military operation. ”

Drawing on traditional propaganda tricks popularized in Russian state media, Shakhnazarov accused the United States of starting the war – and trying to prolong it indefinitely. “What did they gain by prolonging the war? First of all, public opinion in Russia is changing. People were shocked by the mass of refugees, the humanitarian disaster, people began to imagine themselves in their place. It started to affect them. To say that the Nazis are doing it is not entirely convincing, strictly speaking… On top of that, economic sanctions will start to affect them, and severely. There will probably be a scarcity. A lot of the products we don’t make, even the simplest ones. There will be unemployment. They really think through these sanctions, they are hitting us constantly. It’s a well-planned operation… Yes, this is America’s war on Russia… These sanctions are hitting us very precisely. This threatens a shift in public opinion in Russia, a destabilization of our power structure…with the possibility of a total destabilization of the country and civil war. This doomsday scenario is based on the script written by the Americans. They benefited through our pulling out military operations. We need to end it somehow. If we achieve demilitarization and liberate Donbas, that’s enough… I can hardly imagine taking cities like Kyiv. I can’t imagine what it would look like. If this picture begins to turn into an absolute humanitarian disaster, even our close allies like China and India will be forced to distance themselves from us. This public opinion, with which they are saturating the whole world, can affect us badly… The end of this operation will stabilize things in the country. “

The host frowned at the apparent departure from the officially approved line of thought and passed to the commander-in-chief. However, the next expert also agrees with Shakhnazarov. Semyon Bagdasarov, a Russian Middle East expert, is emphatic: “We haven’t even felt the impact of the sanctions… We need to be ready for total isolation. I don’t panic, just call things by their own names.”

Soloviev angrily interrupted: “Gotcha. We should just lie down and die.”

Bagdasarov continued: “Now it is about Ukraine. I agree with Karen. We had experience before sending troops in, destroying military infrastructure and leaving. I think our army has accomplished its mission of demilitarizing the country by destroying most of their military facilities… To restore their army they will need at least 10 year … Let the Ukrainians carry out this demilitarization on their own. We can’t do it for them… As for their neutrality, yes, we should remove it from them, and that’s it. We don’t have to stay there longer than necessary… Do we need to move into another, but even worse, Afghanistan? There are more people and they are more advanced in handling weapons. We don’t need that. Enough is enough… As for sanctions, the world has never seen such massive sanctions.”

Dmitry Abzalov, director of the Center for Strategic Communications, points out that while energy prices will go up for most of the Western world, it will not ease the pain for Russians: “We are still will be the terminal people affected, and something incomparable, although other countries will also bear some losses. We’ll all go to hell together – except maybe China – but going to hell with the French or the Germans won’t make our people feel any better. ” Abzalov argues that after seizing more territories in eastern Ukraine, Russia should avoid it, believing that all Western companies that suspend operations in Russia will then rush back. about toxicity, not just sanctions… It will go away when the situation stabilizes.”

Before the invasion of Ukraine, state television experts predicted that Russia could get through it in minutes or days. Stunned by the fierce resistance of the Ukrainians, Soloviev described them as “the second largest army in Europe, after ours, prepared for eight years and equipped with everything you can get your hands on. imaginable”.

Soloviev added: “This is a terrifying war being waged against us by the US.”

To lighten the mood in the studio, the host used one of the entertainment of many Kremlin propagandists: play a different game Fox News clip of Tucker Carlson and his frequent guest Ret. Colonel Doug Macgregor. In the translated video, Macgregor predicted Russia’s easy military victory over Ukraine and total invincibility against Western sanctions. Soloviev sighed and smiled: “He is a lot more optimistic than my previous professionals in the studio.”