Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

What drives Russian propagandists?

I’ve been wondering the same question asked in this column: Why are smart, educated, worldly people lying like crazy when it comes to Ukraine?

Toeing the party line comes naturally to them. I’m sure they don’t even consider it lying – in much the same way as taking stuff from a factory or an office was never considered stealing back in the days of the Soviet Union. It was just the Soviet way.

There is one other peculiarity of the latent Soviet-style newthink. When you live in Russia, you become convinced that nothing in that country ever changes. Every regime isforever.

http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/alexei-bayer-what-drives-russian-propagandists-387173.html

Former head of Ukrainian Security Service: Putin can’t conquer Ukraine but he can start a WW3

I agree with this analysis. Don’t think of the Russian military as a powerful combined-arms team. Think of Russia as a corrupt-as-hell country (Mexico?), with nukes and best-in-the-world propaganda.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/04/26/former-head-of-ukrainian-security-service-putin-cant-conquer-ukraine-but-he-can-start-a-ww3/

Night Wolves motorcycle ride met with protests

I suspect that internally, Russia needs to use many different forces against each other. Everyone needs to be scared. So there are coalitions of gangs, mafias, Chechens, spies and police, and the Kremlin needs each of these to fear the others.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/04/25/an-ultra-nationalist-russian-biker-gang-is-invading-europe-and-poland-isnt-happy/

Putin promises an ‘immediate response’ if EU-Ukraine trade agreement goes through

Russia has voiced opposition to the creation of a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), the economic core of a wide-ranging Association Agreement concluded in March 2014 by the European Union and Ukraine.

Critics in Russia say the deal would have a negative impact on the Russian economy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Ukraine that changing national legislation to prepare for the agreement would trigger “an immediate response from Moscow.”

Ukraine, in turn, argues that Russia is not a party to the Association Agreement and has no right to interfere.

http://www.businessinsider.com/putin-promises-an-immediate-response-if-eu-ukraine-trade-agreement-goes-through-2015-4

Kuban Cossack Youth Back Ukraine Rather than Moscow

The Kuban region was majority Ukrainian until one year the Czar decided that everybody was not Ukrainian, but Russian. This is yet another example of the great void in Russian identity. There isn’t really an ethnic component to it, only a political one.

Despite the efforts of Moscow to suggest that the Cossacks are the unified advance guard of “the Russian world” and to create a wholly controlled Cossack establishment consisting of people with no links to the Cossack past, many Kuban Cossacks and especially the younger ones now support Ukraine against Russian aggression.

In an article this week on Rufabula.com, Igor Kubansky says that the Russian authorities in Moscow and the Kuban have sought to involve the Cossacks in “the information war” against Ukraine but that these efforts are backfiring because real Cossacks and not just those who are play-acting are on the side of the people not the Kremlin.

Indeed, Kubansky says, Moscow’s efforts in this regard are failing for two reasons. On the one hand, many of those who call themselves Kuban Cossacks consist of people “who do not have any Cossack roots and for whom service in the Cossacks is a kind of official support for Russian imperial chauvinism.”

That reflects, he continues, the way in which many supposedly “Cossack” units were restored beginning in the late 1980s, where anyone who declares himself to be a Cossack is considered one regardless of his background or his knowledge of Cossack history, suffering and traditions.

That has made it easy for the authorities to suggest that the Cossacks are all on their side because many who are supposedly Cossack leaders are little more than opportunists who will do and say anything Moscow wants but who do not reflect the views of the Cossack community, however much Russian propagandists claim otherwise.

And on the other, Moscow’s efforts are failing because its propaganda is so crude and inconsistent that no one and especially no Cossack can take it seriously. Thus, it is absurd to say that when a Ukrainian leader says “Glory to Ukraine” that is “fascism” while when Russians and the Cossacks they control say “Glory to Russia” that is “patriotism.”

Further, Kubansky asks rhetorically, “why is Kuban Ataman Vyacheslav Naumenko who cooperated with the Nazis [now to be considered] a good figure, while [Ukrainian nationalist Stepan] Bandera to be held up as a blackguard and ‘fascist’?” “Why is the anti-communist struggle of the Cossacks worthy of respect but the anti-communist fighters in Western Ukraine only deserving of all possible denigration? There is no answer.”

The gap between Russian claims and Cossack realities, he continues, is prompting the Cossack youth of Kuban to declare its support for Ukraine and its opposition to Moscow. Real Cossacks remember what Moscow did to them after 1917 and know all too well what the siloviki [law-enforcement agents] and the Kadyrovites [followers of Ramzan Kadyrov] are doing now “under the protection of the FSB.”

http://www.interpretermag.com/kuban-cossack-youth-back-ukraine-rather-than-moscow/

Odesa minorities cry foul as new ‘people’s council’ report their persecution

Very subtle propaganda.

The Russian media are full of reports about “alarming” arrests and intimidation in Odesa of members of a newly-formed ‘People’s Council of Bessarabia’ who were merely trying, so the reports say, to defend the rights of the area’s national minorities. The reports certainly are alarming, but for different reasons. Representatives of national minorities in Odesa have condemned the formation of this body as a provocation, deny its claims about discrimination and persecution and challenge its members to identify themselves and explain why they’re seeking a repetition of the scenario in eastern Ukraine..

The Russian reports by, among others, the official TASS news agency, mix up two different although not unrelated stories in order to come up with mass arrests of “citizens of the Odesa oblast who joined together in the People’s Council of Bessarabia.” Concentration on the ‘Council’ is perhaps not surprising given that its website is registered in Russia, its members and foreign supporters like the Bulgarian far-right Ataka party, known for their pro-Russian position.

http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1429061566