A Short Guide to Lazy Russia Journalism

This about Politics, tagged , , , was written by for on June 5, 2016

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’ observation in 1926 that “anything is true if it’s about Russia” remains as prescient as ever.

 

A Short Guide to Lazy Russia Journalism

Nils van der Vegte

economist-welcome-to-moscowSo you’re a Westerner who wants to become a Russia journalist? Once you get past the self-serving bluster, it’s really a very safe, well-paid, and rewarding job – but only on condition that you follow a set of guidelines. Inspired by a post at the blog Kosmopolito on lazy EU journalism, I decided to provide a similar service for work ethic-challenged Russia journalists. Enjoy!

1. Mastering and parroting a limited set of tropes is probably the most important part of your work as a journalist in Russia. Never forget to mention that Putin used to work for the KGB. Readers should always be reminded of this: The “former KGB spy”, the “former KGB agent”, etc. Other examples include (but are not limited to) “Putin destroyed democracy”, “The Russian economy is dependent on oil”, “There is no media freedom”, “Russia is more corrupt than Zimbabwe”, “Khodorkovsky is a political prisoner and Russia’s next Sakharov”, “Russia is really weak” (but also a dire threat!), “Russia is a Potemkin village” and “a dying bear” that is ruled by “a kleptocratic mafia.” You get the drift…

2. Not sure who is doing what? Not sure how Russia works? Just make a sentence with the word “Kremlin”. Examples include “this will create problems for the Kremlin”, “the Kremlin is insecure”, “the Kremlin’s support of anti-Western dictators”, etc.

3. This “Kremlin” is always wrong, and its motives are always nefarious. If it requires many signatures to register a party – that is authoritarianism, meant to repress liberal voices. If it requires only a few signatures to register a party – that is also authoritarianism, a dastardly plot to drown out the “genuine opposition” amidst a flood of Kremlin-created fake opposition parties.

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Russian Federation Sitrep 2014.03.20

This about Politics, tagged , , , , was written by for , on March 20, 2014

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 that this decision was made in clear violation of the constitutional norms that were in place even then. The decision was made behind the scenes. Naturally, in a totalitarian state nobody bothered to ask the citizens of Crimea and Sevastopol.” He quoted the UN International Court ruling of July 22, 2010. If I were to pick two sentences to sum it up, they would be these: “Our western partners, led by the United States of America, prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun. They have come to believe in their exclusivity and exceptionalism, that they can decide the destinies of the world, that only they can ever be right.” The second: “Are we ready to consistently defend our national interests, or will we forever give in,  retreat to who knows where?” But it should be read: again, read what he says, not what people tell you he says.

UKRAINE FUTURE. Putin said he has no intention of absorbing other parts of Ukraine but this must be considered conditional. The warning is here: “But it should be above all in Ukraine’s own interest to ensure that these people’s [ie Russophones] rights and interests are fully protected. This is the guarantee of Ukraine’s state stability and territorial integrity.”  If it gets bad, he will. Yatsenyuk has said he will disarm the extremists. Let’s hope that he does but I think he’s the von Papen of this revolution and I doubt he’ll be around in six months.

LIFE IN UKRAINE. Now that the Crimea issue has been resolved, maybe our intrepid reporters can find the time to turn their attention to investigating fake voting in the Rada, vigilantes “lustrating” doctors, press people being beaten up (congratulations to Huff Post for carrying this one), neo-nazi thugs parading through towns, ditto beating up passers by, ditto beating up cops, ditto smashing up buildings, the “heroes” shaking down a gas station, people in the east turning back Ukrainian armed forces, big pro-Russia demos. Then again, maybe not.  But they won’t have to go far or stay in uncomfortable hotels: this stuff is all over the Net and just has to be looked for.

 

UTTER FAILURE. Whatever the EU and Washington thought they were doing in Ukraine, it has been an utter failure. And there is more failure to come. Ukraine is broke, thousands and thousands of people in the south and east want out, some very nasty people hold the power in Kiev. The West’s absurd “sanctions” (parodied here) have been mocked by the whole Duma requesting to be put on the list. Is Ukraine more united? more democratic? richer? Is NATO stronger? more attractive? How about the EU? Does it look like a good bet for the future? Are Washington-EU relations stronger? Is Russia weaker? divided? poorer? Putin less popular? Do the people of Western countries think their leaders are smarter, more competent, more electable than they did a month ago? Do people believe their media outlets? (read the comments, for example, here). And they just keep digging their hole deeper. Just think, if Nuland, Ashton and the rest had kept their meddling hands out, Crimea would still be part of Ukraine and the tensions inherent in the Ukraine concept would not have burst open. But the concept has been broken and it will likely get nastier before it’s over. Biden may think that Russia is “naked and alone” but note Putin’s thanks to India and China. The world has changed;  a lot of people are glad to see the “West” humbled.

SEA OF OKHOTSK. The relevant UN commission has agreed that a 52,000 sq kms section of the Sea is part of Russia’s continental shelf giving it exclusive rights to what may be a lot of resources.

HMMM. There is a report that more than $100B worth of US treasury bills were shifted out of New York.

JIHADISM. The Caucasus Emirate has announced, without details, the death of its leader Doku Umarov. It doesn’t say when so it may be that Kadyrov was correct when he said earlier this year that he had been killed. He was around for a long time – I see my first reference to him was in a Sitrep in June 2006 when he became President of the Chechen Republic/Ichkeria. As the obituary says, soon after he “raised the banner of monotheism and proclaimed the Caucasus Emirate.”

SYRIAN CW. The OPCW announces that more than 45%  of the Syrian CW stockpile has been removed with 2 more shipments loaded at Latakia in the last week.

 

© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Ottawa, Canada (http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/ http://us-russia.org/)

Hyperlinks ought to work immediately but, if not, right-click, copy link location, put it in your browser.

 

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Russian Federation Sitrep 2014.03.06

This about Politics, tagged , , , , was written by for , on March 6, 2014

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 are available. The discovery of neo-Nazis and the sniper story will accelerate the collapse. Washington will soon be talking to itself.

Snipers. On 21 February an agreement was cobbled together by representatives of the EU-Russia-Yanukovych-opposition (text here). Very soon snipers started killing people on Maidan Square – both police and protesters and the agreement collapsed. We have an intercepted conversation from 26 February in which an Estonian diplomat tells Ashton that his information is that the snipers were from the “new coalition” (ie the people now in power in Kiev). It is genuine. Easy deductions: the sigint part of the former Ukrainian security service bugged the call. Ergo it has defected from Kiev; ergo what’s the next revelation going to be? It now would seem to be a good bet that these guys bugged the Nuland phonecall too and maybe the Crimea communication too (see below). It took a day but the story has crossed the Atlantic and arrived on Fox.

Zen Judo. Russia wins if it does nothing; USA/EU lose if they do anything.

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Propaganda and the Narrative

This about Politics, tagged , , , , , was written by for on February 25, 2014

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 truths designed to shape opinion.

Let’s get the truths out of the way: Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych ran a corrupt and inefficient government. The condition of life for a great many Ukrainians is dreary, disappointing and declining. EU association had serious, perhaps majority, support in Ukraine at the time Yanukovych abandoned it. A lot, perhaps even a majority (but no one knows), supported, at least to some extent, the Maidan protesters and are glad to see the back of Yanukovych. Those could be agreed to, with some discussion about how big the support was and how bad Yanukovych was, by practically all people with any degree of informed knowledge. But those aren’t the things I am talking about.

The “Standard Western Media Narrative on Ukraine” (SWMN henceforth) goes quite a bit further than that. It would, I would say, consist of the following assertions

  1. Yanukovych was very much under the thumb of Putin (It’s very personalised: Russia is Moscow is Putin. But that’s another story.)
  2. A key Putin policy is to keep Ukraine and the other former USSR countries under his influence.
  3. Putin will not allow Ukraine or any of the former USSR countries to form an association with any other power.
  4. Using his influence, in furtherance of his aim to keep Ukraine under control, Putin forced Yanukovych to cancel the EU agreement.

Perhaps a little variation in the SWMN; maybe Putin bribed Yanukovych rather than ordering or threatening him. But these variances are unimportant and these four assertions are taken for granted in almost every Western report on recent events in Ukraine.

I say that these four are propaganda and I say they are because there are huge logic holes in them; therefore they cannot be true. They can only be believed if they are repeated so loudly, quickly and routinely that none of the audience gets a chance to think.

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Today’s Redundant Rant. Tiresome, Too. But I Amuse Myself.

This about Politics, tagged , , was written by for on February 6, 2014

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 fecal extrusions and watch the rest of you ingest them. And say “Yum Yum!” as you swallow them down. But, why would I PAY to do this when I could watch my toilet flush for free. But (HA HAH) you take the tie-eater seriously. (But, what the hell, you paid for him).

As an added bonus, Paul Goble will extrude more hyperventilation about Circassians.

But, Paul, I gotta tell ya, that’s so Last Week — last week it was Circassians being pissed off, today it’s dogs being slaughtered. But, hell, stuff moves along, maybe I’m out of date: maybe today the Big Story is dead bees in my honey. Get with the program, Jamestown, be up-to-date. Otherwise who gives a shit? We know that the Big Story is that Sochi Sucks (it’s a scale model of Russia which is Putinville. Which Sucks.) but, every day and in every way, it sucks in a different way. (Maybe today’s hot story is curtains.)

Why would I want to read your take on Last Week’s News about How Russia Sucks Today?

Anyway, your star, Paul Goble, buys all the crap about spending; then talks about how nasty old Putin pissed on the “reset”? The What??? You mean the famous button thingee in which Hillary didn’t even know that those tiresome Russkies had their own alphabet?

Why do I want to read this derivative/predictable drivel? I can read it for free anywhere: “Russia Sucks. USA great!”. I could write all your “inside” reports in my sleep.

TAKE ME OFF YOU FUCKING DISTLIST! PRONTO! INSTANTER! QUAM CELERRIME!  I send it to the trash anyway so save an electron!!

PS. Saakashvili, for fuck’s sake! What are you going to do when the Government of Georgia seeks to extradite him?

Patrick Armstrong Analysis,

Ottawa, Canada

Translation: Saakashvili says Putin the Wolf wants to Eat Him

This about Politics, tagged , , , was written by for on August 30, 2013

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 or imprisoned on Putin’s order.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili’s plans to go into wine making after his resignation are under threat: the Georgian leader has said that Vladimir Putin wants him dead or in prison. The Georgian leader has also said in an interview with Bloomberg that the Georgian Prime Minister, Bidzina Ivanishvili, is acting in concert with Putin.

“The Russian conditions are quite clear: I must either be killed or put into prison. This is what Putin wants”, Saakashvili told reporters. According to him, the Georgian prime minister, who has predicted that Saakashvili will be gaoled following his term in office, is the Russian president’s accomplice.

At the same time, Saakashvili said that he and Ivanishvili can only be judged by the Georgian people. “We shall see who will be arrested. I am not a zebra or one of Ivanishvili’s pets that can be caught and thrown into a cage. His wish is one thing, but reality is another. The Georgian people will put everything to rights. As for me, history will judge me and not just any old zoo director”, the “Georgia News” quotes the president as saying.

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Translation: Is Putin a KGB Agent, a Hipster, or a Mensch?

This , about Politics, tagged , , , , was written by for on July 23, 2013

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 latest term, the western media started up a real witch hunt against him: not a single day passes without an influential American, British or, in a pinch, a third rate Polish tabloid accusing him of all possible sins. Nevertheless, one year later Putin’s image in the west is starting to slowly but surely turn around. So who is he in the eyes of the western populace today — a “KGB agent” or a “real hipster”? Let’s examine this.

Putin is becoming a hipster

Among the deluge of articles denouncing Putin’s tyrannical nature, something new has appeared in the foreign media the other day — the fashionable Esquire magazine released an article titled “Vladimir Putin is becoming a hipster”. In a jocular manner, the author analyzes Putin’s looks and behavior and claims that he is the most advanced hipster of our time. Here are just some of the arguments:

  • He wears fashionable sunglasses
  • He uses hipster headphones
  • He doesn’t care about the digital world and buys analog typewriters for his staff
  • He showed a thumbs up when a nude Femen activist jumped out in front of him
  • He’s fit, likes to perform in public and loves his own image

But it’s not the Esquire article itself that’s interesting, it’s the reaction to it from fellow journalists. In response, the American Flavorwire published a furious riposte, where the author, practically foaming at the mouth, argues that Putin isn’t a hipster at all. At least because he oppresses sexual minorities and allegedly kills off political dissidents outside the country.

Giggling about whether he’s a hipster only draws attention away from the true nature of the man.

In short, one cockamamie article responds to another. However, we have to note that as of late, the carefully crafted by the western media image of Putin as a “comrade of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Kim Chen Un” is often being rejected by Westerners themselves.

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Putin’s Birthday, Birth Of A Legacy

This about History, tagged , , , , , was written by for , on October 15, 2012

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”:

While there are several criticisms one can make of Putin’s practice of democracy, his prolonged stay in power isn’t one of them.

As Evgeny Minchenko pointed out, there are many Western examples of very long, but non-authoritarian rule. Canadian PM Jean Chrétien ruled for 20 years, the Federal Chancellor of the FRG Helmut Kohl – for 16 years. Icelandic President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson has been in power from 1996 to the present day (nobody even bothered challenging him in 2000 and 2008). Charles de Gaulle, one of the figures Putin quotes as his inspiration, ruled for 11 years; the student protests against him in 1968, ironically, only ended up increasing support for him. Another of Putin’s heroes, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was US President from 1933 until his death in 1945, and remains a political colossus in the American imagination.

Nor is there anything particularly anti-Constitutional about what Putin did. Unlike in Georgia, where Saakashvili planned to retain power by moving powers to the Prime Ministership (but was foiled in this by an oligarchic coup), or for that matter in the “new democracy” of Hungary, where the ruling Fidesz Party headed by Viktor Orbán recently rewrote electoral law to cement its dominance for what may be many decades to come, Putin has strictly abided by the letter of the Constitution. United Russia did not use its Constitutional majority to extend the number of allowed Presidential terms, transform Russia into a parliamentary republic, or tweaking electoral law away from proportional representation towards majoritarianism (this would have a far bigger effect in consolidating United Russia’s power than low-level electoral fraud – and be much less politically damaging besides).

While one might argue that Putin went against the “spirit of the Constitution” by seeking a third term, that is an inescapably vague and ambiguous concept, one suited only for rhetoric. If we are going to consider the “spirit” of things, would it not then be against the “spirit of democracy” to condemn Putin for returning to the Presidency when he remains by far Russia’s most popular politician, enjoying a 10% lead over Medvedev even during the latter’s heyday?

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The Guardian’s Pussy Worship

This about Society, tagged , , , was written by for on July 29, 2012

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 explicitly misrepresenting or outright lying to support its agenda – a modus operandus that is now all too common to it and makes a mockery of the “facts are sacred” values it claims to uphold. In this “fisking”, I will only highlight the most egregious violations of basic journalistic standards.

“Their protest is not made of slogans and placards, but is crafted from art, dance and performance. Putin and his henchmen know how to deal with the former – the hundreds of thousands who have spilled into the streets in the last eight months – but their handling of the these women is much less assured.”

The Protests for Fair Elections got at very, very most 100,000 at the biggest such rally, the one on Prospekt Sakharova in December – a count made by Russia’s most liberal mainstream newspaper. (Other estimates ranged 60,000-80,000). That is, they numbered in the tens of thousands. If they want hundreds of thousands, they had better look elsewhere… say, Spain.

“The trial takes place in the same courthouse where alleged fraudster and billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former boss of the Yukos oil company and Putin’s political enemy, was tried.”

Not an alleged but a CONVICTED fraudster, in a judgment ruled sound by the ECHR.

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The Guardian And Putin

This about Media, tagged , , , was written by for on July 27, 2012

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 under Yeltsin. Why then does one get the exact opposite impression from reading the Western media on this subject? Mainly that is because they lean on rhetoric and hyperbole over fact; they deny the utility of comparative perspective; and in some cases, they outright lie or make things up. The Guardian is an example par excellence of all this. On reading a certain Guardian editorial, longtime DR commentator Alex Mercouris noticed that its figure of 200 journalist deaths under Putin clashed irrevocably with ALL estimates from reputed press freedoms watchdogs, most of which converged on a figure of 40 deaths or less. Did The Guardian just make up its own facts? Unable to rest without an answer to this question, Mercouris embarked on an investigation to find out the origins of this massively over-inflated figure… and why The Guardian left it up on their site unchanged for SIX MONTHS after having become aware of their mistake. I am happy to present:

The Guardian and Putin

Alexander Mercouris

As readers of the British newspaper the Guardian know, the Guardian has conducted for many years a fierce campaign against Vladimir Putin.  This began almost from the moment of Putin’s appointment by Boris Yeltsin as Prime Minister in 1999.  I still remember an editorial the Guardian published at the time which called on Yeltsin to sack Putin just a few weeks after he had appointed him.

On 18th December 2011 the Guardian published another in its long line of anti Putin editorials under the provocative title “Truth is being murdered in Putin’s bloody Russia.” The language used in this editorial was extreme even by the Guardian’s standards.  I was particularly shocked by the final sentence, which referred to the Russian state as “slack, slimy and savage”.  Such language seems to me completely inappropriate in an editorial in a serious newspaper with an international readership.

The editorial appeared in print form in the Guardian’s Sunday supplement the Observer and online in the Guardian’s website on “Comment is Free”.  The timing of the editorial on 18th December 2011 is important.  Parliamentary elections took place in Russia on 4th December 2011 over the course of which the pro Putin party United Russia suffered a substantial loss of support, triggering protests amidst allegations of vote rigging.  An unauthorised protest took place in central Moscow on 5th December 2011, which turned violent.  A much bigger peaceful protest took place in Moscow on Bolotnaya Square within sight of the Kremlin on 10th December 2011.  This was followed by a further big protest in Moscow on Sakharov Avenue on 24th December 2011.  The editorial therefore appeared at a tense time in Russia, when the protest movement in Moscow against Putin was at its height and when the Russian and international news media were buzzing with speculation that Putin might be on his way out with rumours circulating of troop movements in Moscow and of a violent crackdown being planned against the protest movement.

The editorial was supposedly written in connection with the murder in Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan in the northern Caucasus of a journalist called Khadzimurad Kamalov.  In emotional and angry language the editorial condemned Kamalov’s murder, which it linked to the murder of what it said were “around 200” other journalists who had supposedly been killed in Russia since Putin came to power.  Amongst the murdered journalists named in the editorial was the famous journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was killed outside her apartment in 2006.  The editorial accused Putin and his government of complicity in these murders as part of a “bloody” campaign to “murder the truth”.

In other words at a time when Putin was facing a challenge in Moscow from the protest movement and at a time when speculation of a violent crackdown on the protest movement in Moscow was rife the Guardian published an editorial that accused Putin and the Russian government of complicity in the murder of “around 200” journalists and which referred to Russia as a “slack, slimy and savage” state.

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