To commemorate the final closure of the Da Russophile blog and its permanent transfer and redirection to this site, here is a reprint of an excellent article by Nils van der Vegte (with a little editing from myself) that appeared in Jon Hellevig’s and Alexandre Latsa’s 2012 anthology on Putin’s New Russia. Truly Will Rogers’ […]
RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 20 March 2014 PUTIN SPEECH. After the referendum (by the way, perfectly normal numbers for this sort of thing see Falklands Islands, Kosovo and others) the process of re-joining Russia has begun – Putin’s speech here. One of his points was the illegality of Khrushchev’s transfer in 1954 “What matters now is
RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 6 March 2014 Information battlespace. Just as in the Ossetia War, Western governments and media are in full propaganda mode. And, again, their citizens and news consumers will eventually find out they are being lied to. But this time it will be sooner because the New Media is stronger and alternative views
I assume that most of the people who read this blog agree that a great deal of what might be called the “Standard Western Media Narrative on Ukraine” could better be termed propaganda. That is to say that it is a constructed narrative designed to produce deep-rooted convictions. Or, more bluntly, constructed lies and selected
Got this in the mail from Jamestown. My response. Not that I expect much of an answer. What a load of crap! Saakashvili, the as-yet-unindicted-former,-but-now-despised,-boss-of-Georgia (saved and given a comfortable retirement in the USA. His creator.) is going to feed us more lies. Wah hoo! I so want to be there to hear him emit
In a Bloomberg interview, Georgian President Saakashvili says he is like a lamb before the “wolf” Putin and his stooge in Georgia, Ivanishvili – head of the “Georgian Dream” party that recently won the elections. Saakashvili is afraid of Putin For the time being, the Georgian president is confident that he is to be killed
In his Odnako blog Evgeny Super asks why Putin’s image seems to be improving of late. Turned off by the propaganda against the Russian President, he argues, Westerners are beginning to give him grudging respect. The Russian President’s Demonic Image Collapses in the Western Media Literally from the very first day of President Vladimir Putin’s
The latest US-Russia.org Expert Discussion Panel focused on an assessment of Putin’s historical legacy, on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Here I try to answer whether history will see Putin as the “founder of a modern and successful Russia”, or as a tragic figure who threw away his chance of greatness to the “delusion of indispensability”:
From their latest Editorial / anti-Putin rant, via Mercouris. It is not with the ideological rhetoric that I have an issue with; it’s The Guardian, after all. Nor am I especially interested in defending Pussy Riot’s prosecution (my own views on the matter jive with Kononenko’s). I do however have an issue with the The Guardian
Two months ago I wrote an article in which I used data and statistics to show that Russian journalists today under Putin are, contrary to extravagant claims in the Western media, far safer than in several acknowledged democracies such as India or Brazil; far safer than ordinary Russians; and indeed, far safer than they were
If I had a cent for every Russia story from the past week that featured the (conclusively debunked) “sixth wave of emigration” meme… And if wishes were fishes. Still, the coverage of Russian reactions to Putin’s return does demonstrate the venality and general fecklessness of the Western MSM. As Adomanis correctly noted, it is “negative
Two weeks ago, I received a Facebook message from Kim Zigfeld, she of the infamous La Russophobe, asking me if I was interested in an interview with her. It didn’t take long for me to come to the wrong decision! And so commenced our interview. It was a long grind. After ceaseless goings back and forth,
During the past two years, Russian “dissident” liberals Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov have produced a frankly maniacal quantity of so-called “Independent Expert Reports” (there are now seven of them) that purport to debunk the “persistent myths imposed by official [Kremlin] propaganda”. The authors say that their latest exegesis, melodramatically entitled “Putin. The Results. 10
This is a list of common Russophobe myths about Russia and its people, and the successor to a March 2008 post on a similar theme. Please be sure to check the supporting notes at the bottom before dismissing this as neo-Soviet propaganda. Also partially available en français & на русском thanks to Alexandre Latsa’s translation. 1 MYTH: Life has
Debunking Russophobic drivel is somewhat akin to grenade fishing – so damn easy that you almost feel a bit guilty for stooping to such a level and wasting your time. But that’s what makes it really fun. So although Fedia Kriukov, Eugene Ivanov, Eric Kraus and the folks over at Russia: Other Points of View