Moscow: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Sunday said that the main cause of his country’s difference with the US and its allies was its strong opposition to creation of a unipolar world fitting Washington’s agenda, media reports said.
Moscow is striving to create a multipolar world rather than one that is centred around the US, he said in an interview to Rossiya-1 TV channel, RT reported.
The Russian President claimed that America’s “satellite states” are also well aware of the US’ “egoistic” intentions, but, have chosen to ignore it, for the time being, “due to various reasons connected first and foremost with huge dependence in the economic sphere and defence”.
He also contended that some of Washington’s allies also see confrontation with Russia as a unifying cause.
He cited the US government’s efforts to attract European businesses to American soil, as well as a submarine deal last year where Australia suddenly junked a contract with a French manufacturer in favour of its US rival.
Putin emphasised that Russia “cannot and will not behave like this”.
“In the end, such a stance – the fight for a multipolar world, for respect for each and everyone in the international arena, for taking into account everyone’s interests – I don’t have the slightest doubt, will prevail,” he said.
The Russian leader also claimed that Western elites will only be “satisfied” and prepared to “admit us into the so-called family of civilised nations” if Russia disintegrates into several independent states, where the the West would “place (the resulting countries) under its control”.
On his decision earlier this week to suspend Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty – the last remaining nuclear accord between Moscow and Washington – he said that the move was required to safeguard his country’s security as well as its “strategic stability”.
According to the Russian President, he opted for this course of action in light of a more aggressive NATO, which has announced that “its prime goal is Russia’s strategic defeat”.
Artificial intelligence can help with this. For the past year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies has worked with FilterLabs.AI, a Massachusetts-based data analytics firm, to track local sentiment across Russia using AI-enabled sentiment analysis.
Sentiment analysis is a well-tested form of artificial intelligence that trains computers to read and understand human-generated text and speech. The analysis evaluates scraped public documents and comments across social media, news media, messenger app groups (including Telegram, which is widely used in Russia), and other popular forums to gauge what people are thinking and feeling at the local level, and whether that sentiment is trending positive or negative.
This data tells a different story about Russian public opinion, especially outside Moscow — a story Putin will not like.
Standard polling often concentrates on population centers including Moscow and St. Petersburg, which can skew national averages. Outside of those major cities, a more negative picture emerges. Our analysis shows that the Kremlin is increasingly unable to control public sentiment outside major cities with national propaganda.
Kremlin propagandists work iteratively, piloting slightly different messages successively and rolling them out in waves when their analysis signals that they are needed. Since the invasion, Russian state-sponsored propaganda waves elevated public sentiment toward the war for an average of 14 days across all regions and topics. As the war in Ukraine drags on, though, these positive waves of public sentiment are getting shorter, particularly outside the major cities, and are needing to be deployed with increasing frequency across Russia.
In other words, Russians appear to be less and less influenced by propaganda from Moscow, especially when it clearly contradicts the struggles in their daily lives. As Putin’s war of choice inflicts personal costs on citizens, Russians seem less willing to swallow the state narratives that are delivered over state television, which remains the primary source of information for most Russians.
Effects of Mobilization
The news is not all bad for Putin. Russian information operations remain formidable in their ability to mobilize and leverage state resources. They are particularly adept at muddling information environments, making people unsure of what to believe, and sapping their motivation.
But as the war drags into a second year and as more Russians feel its effects on their daily lives — especially the growing number of men drafted or conscripted into the armed forces — the limitations of Kremlin propaganda are increasingly apparent.
This is particularly true in the regions of Russia most heavily targeted by Putin’s mobilization. Some of the first data FilterLabs gathered after the invasion was from the republic of Buryatia, a mostly rural, underdeveloped region 3,700 miles from Moscow and bordering Mongolia. Many of those drafted into the Russian army regardless of age, military experience and medical history come from ethnic minority dominant regions like Buryatia. In April, a national propaganda campaign created a positive spike in local sentiment in Buryatia towards the war that lasted for 12 days before reverting to pre-campaign levels. But by late May, that cycle had shrunk to nine days. By June, as EU sanctions started to impact the economy and as information about western consolidation behind Ukraine and heavy resistance to Russian advances seeped into Buryatia, it took only eight days after a wave of propaganda for public sentiment to drop down to a negative steady state.
These trends are not unique to Buryatia. Significant shifts in Russian attitudes were detected across the country, sometimes over the prosecution of the war itself. For example, when Russian armed forces met much fiercer resistance from Ukrainians in March and April 2022, and reports of high death tolls filtered back into Russia, FilterLabs detected a decrease of support for the war in many regions of the country.
When the nationwide “partial mobilization” was announced in September 2022, there were demonstrable dips in the effectiveness of pro-war propaganda. We tracked sentiment across Russia’s eight federal districts, from Siberia to the far east, south to northwest, and the drop in public sentiment was clearly visible. Opinions trended negative and efforts to impact those opinions were less effective and shorter lived.
The analysis suggests that Russians, especially outside of Moscow, are not buying the propaganda as they once were. The Kremlin has also been unable to use its propaganda to sustainably mobilize popular sentiment around an affirmative agenda, in this case its war in Ukraine. Muddling the information environment and sowing mistrust has not generated positive support for Moscow’s misadventures.
Regime Fragility
The data suggest that the Russian government could be more fragile than it would like to admit. Corruption and weak institutions have contributed to state fragility in Russia for decades. The war appears to be exacerbating that trend.
In effect, our analysis suggests that the social contract between Russians and the Putin regime is fraying. Bankrolled by high energy prices over the last two decades, the public has acquiesced to Putin’s autocratic rule in exchange for improved living standards and functional public services.
The state propaganda apparatus — which has expanded from print media and TV into online platforms — has been crucial in crystallizing this acquiescence, especially since Putin came to power in the early 2000s. The Kremlin has used information operations to create a more chaotic, undiscernible media space and to obscure the regime’s fragile underbelly, adopting “foreign agent” and “extremism” laws and intimidating would-be opposition voices, all while supporting Kremlin-aligned politicians, authorities and policies.
However, the events of the last several years — the 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine, the protests spurred by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and the Covid-19 pandemic — have repeatedly demonstrated that propaganda narratives are not enough to cover up diminishing public trust in the legitimacy of the state. And the chaos itself can backfire — or at least quickly diminish its effectiveness — when out of step with lived experience, further undermining legitimacy in the state. Considering all this, telling Russian men and their families that it is in their interest to fight, and die, in faraway Ukraine is a harder story to sell.
It is difficult to get any reliable information out of Russia, but our research suggests the Kremlin’s hold on its people is perhaps not what it is made out to be. Despite Kremlin-pushed messages about high — or even increasing — levels of support for the war as the country marks the anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine, our analysis suggests that people’s overall feelings have changed very little in 2023 and that propaganda still isn’t as effective as it once was.
AI-enabled sentiment data analysis can provide a window into how Russians feel and how fickle public sentiment is. This poses internal threats to Putin’s legitimacy and thus his power. It also signals an inherent mistrust of state institutions that will be part of Russian society — especially outside of Moscow — well after Putin’s reign ends, whenever that may be.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
U.S. companies provided 50 percent of Europe’s liquefied natural gas supplies in 2022, along with 12 percent of its oil. Russian oil and gas shipments to the continent have shriveled by half, beset by boycotts, sanctions and an EU price cap. Global oil and gas trade routes have been redrawn and renewable energy development has received a massive financial and political shot in the arm.
The turnabout has put a new spotlight on the United States’ role as the world’s biggest energy producer, whose foothold in Asia has also strengthened in the past year. At the same time, the EU and the Biden administration are working more closely together to develop the next generation of clean energy — one that doesn’t include Russia — a transition that will lean heavily on U.S. fossil fuel in the coming few years.
“Europe’s energy divorce from Russia is nearly complete,” said Andrew Lipow, president of oil industry and market consulting firm Lipow Oil Associates. “We’re seeing a permanent change as far as how Europe gets its energy in the future. One result is the United States and European energy policy are going to be more closely intertwined.”
Europe’s reaction against its largest energy supplier’s attempt to remake the map has sent shockwaves through global markets. These were felt most acutely on the continent, where electricity and natural gas prices surged as much as 15-fold, prompting governments to spend more than $800 billion to ease consumers’ financial burdens.
The rapid reshuffling in oil and overseas gas shipments began after the February 2022 invasion and continued through the imposition of price caps on Russian shipments imposed late last year and earlier this month — shifts that will be felt for years.
“The energy world has changed,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said last week at an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the invasion’s aftermath. “It has changed in the here and now.”
“It’s astonishing what’s happened,” Assistant Energy Secretary Andrew Light said at the same hearing. “This energy struggle will continue. It changes the world.”
U.S. fossil fuel exports, particularly liquefied natural gas, played a huge role in keeping the European alliance together over the past year, said Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global and author of “The New Map,” a book examining the geopolitics of energy. Putin had hoped to use gas as a weapon to shatter European support for Ukraine, he said, a miscalculation that so far hasn’t come to fruition.
“The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that U.S. LNG exports are not only of economic energy importance,” Yergin said in an interview. “They’ve also now taken on a strategic importance. U.S. LNG has become one of the foundations of U.S. and European energy security, part of the replacement for Russian gas and has even become part of the arsenal of NATO.”
The U.S. supplied Europe with half of its LNG supply last year and is expected to cement its position as a steady source of the fuel to Germany and other EU member states. Enough export facilities, particularly around the Gulf Coast, are slated to open in the next three years to nearly double export volumes to 20 percent of overall U.S. natural gas output.
Frank Fannon, a former State Department first assistant secretary for energy resources under the Trump administration, said the decision by U.S. companies to structure their multi-year delivery contracts to allow buyers to ship the gas wherever they wanted played a major role in overcoming Russia’s switching off its pipelines. That market innovation allowed European buyers to persuade the Asian companies that held the gas contracts to reroute them toward the EU — for a price.
“I would find it unimaginable there would be a chance of weathering the storm in Europe but for American LNG,” said Fannon, who is now managing director of energy and geopolitical advisory firm Fannon Global Advisors. “It’s absolutely inconceivable. It isn’t just the volumes of U.S. gas, but also the way that American companies have transformed the market.”
Russia’s loss of major markets for its natural gas will continue to hurt Putin’s geopolitical influence and could have further implications for Russia, Fannon added. Moscow last year agreed to ship more natural gas to China, which is becoming one of its biggest customers for energy — a fact that may give Beijing more leverage over a Russia that’s increasingly isolated from the West, Fannon said.
“Russia is on its way to becoming a client state of China,” Fannon said.
In addition to the surge in gas shipments to Europe — from the U.S. as well other producers, such as Qatar — this year’s mild winter will probably help prevent a repeat of the spike in gas prices seen last year, when the benchmark in the Netherlands spiked to levels more than ten times the U.S. price. Europe’s storage started this year at more than 80 percent full, making it far easier to top them off by the time temperatures turn colder this fall.
By itself, the United States’ relatively recent role as the world’s largest gas exporter doesn’t necessarily add geopolitical clout to the White House, said Ira Joseph, global fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. That’s because unlike its counterparts in the Middle East and other energy powerhouses, the U.S. government doesn’t have direct control over its oil and gas export industry.
While the Biden administration publicly said it was pressing allies to divert their LNG cargoes to Europe, it’s unlikely companies in Japan or elsewhere needed much persuading given how much money could be made selling their supplies of U.S. gas to desperate European companies, Joseph said.
“U.S. LNG is going to Europe because they’re paying a higher price,” Joseph said. “It’s not a natural gas Marshall Plan here. There’s no American Inc. exporting LNG.”
In the oil market, U.S. crude exports rose by more than 10 percent for the first 11 months of 2022 compared with the same period of 2021, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Shipments hit record highs in the final quarter of the year.
Some of the increase came as global economies gained steam after pandemic supply chain disruptions began to ease. What has changed, analysts said, was that the United States was becoming a supplier of choice for European and Asian countries that were stepping away from Russia.
At the same time, Exxon Mobil and other major U.S. oil companies are still loath to invest their bumper profits in new oil field projects, instead preferring to return money to shareholders. That’s a signal that even with Russia’s withdrawal from Europe’s oil markets, the good times for U.S. oil may eventually fade, said Morgan Bazilian, public policy professor at the Colorado School of Mines.
“It’s sort of changed the scale of that American energy landscape,” Bazilian said. “Will it last? You’re seeing more financial responsibility, but that will not translate to a lot more oil and gas.”
The future looks brighter for U.S. LNG exports, which actually fell in 2022 after having risen for years. An explosion in June forced Freeport LNG, the Texas company that is the country’s second-largest LNG exporter, to shut down, eliminating 20 percent of U.S. gas shipments abroad. Freeport started shipping out gas in limited quantities earlier this year.
Europe’s growing demand for LNG has caused Germany and other EU countries to spend billions on new natural gas import terminals. That should feed demand for more U.S. natural gas at least in the short term, analysts said.
Where LNG may have a bigger influence in Europe is in reinforcing the more traditional role the United States has had in Europe — that of military protector, said Matt Gertken, senior vice president for geopolitical strategy at BCA Research.
“Increased European reliance on liquefied natural gas entails increased reliance on maritime trade and supply line security, wherein the U.S. Navy plays an indispensable role for Europe,” he said.
Still, an increased flow of oil and gas east across the Atlantic may be a relatively short-term phenomenon, analysts said. Instead, Europe is accelerating development of renewable energy in a way that could lead to less need for U.S. oil and gas in the not-too-distant future.
It has added some LNG import terminals to bring in more gas, but it is also investing heavily in hydrogen infrastructure, electric vehicles and a new generation of small, modular nuclear plants — the sorts of projects that the Biden administration has been pushing in the United States. Carbon capture technologies to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere — heavily promoted in Biden’s climate law — are also expected to find fertile ground in Europe.
Countries in the European Union had planned even before the war to shift away from oil and gas in the long term. But Putin’s decision last year to turn off the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines has convinced European leaders to “supercharge” their move toward manufacturing as much of their own energy as possible, said Maroš Šefčovič, the commission’s vice president.
“It has accelerated all our efforts in getting as much as possible from indigenous European [energy] sources, which are renewables,” Šefčovič said in an interview.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
President Joe Biden on Tuesday personally accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to “starve the world” — the most direct and public indictment from the U.S. for Moscow’s role in weaponizing global hunger amid its war in Ukraine.
U.S. and European officials, since Russia’s invasion, have accused Russia of weaponizing food from both inside Ukraine and across the world. Moscow has blockaded key trade routes and held back critical supplies from the world markets that have sent food and fertilizer prices skyrocketing — ultimately benefiting Russia as a rival food exporter. But Biden’s decision to call out the Russian president by name during a speech in Poland for his role in exacerbating the growing world food crisis shows his increasing willingness to directly confront Putin as the war approaches the one-year mark, and while Russia tries to convince other countries that the U.S. is to blame for the food crisis.
“Putin tried to starve the world, blocking the ports in the Black Sea to stop Ukraine from exporting its grain — exacerbating the global food crisis that hit developing nations in Africa especially hard,” Biden said to the crowd gathered in Warsaw.
In addition to Russia deliberately targeting agricultural infrastructure inside Ukraine, the fallout of the war has hit dozens of African nations especially hard — driving up the cost of bread and food staples for vulnerable populations already reeling from long-running drought and the pandemic.
One lifeline to help stabilize global food prices, and get supplies to poorer countries, has been a fragile diplomatic agreement among Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations which has allowed a slower flow of key food supplies to leave Ukraine. But that agreement expires March 19, and Russian officials are already raising sanctions relief in exchange for staying in the deal.
That’s something U.S. officials and lawmakers have dismissed, citing Russia’s ongoing attacks in Ukraine — which the U.S. in recent days labeled “crimes against humanity.”
“Sanctions lifting should not be on the table given the continued, prolific attacks against Ukrainians,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview. “I hope [the deal is] continued but we can’t let the pressure up on Russia.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Beijing announced on Saturday that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, will travel to China on a state visit from February 28 to March 2.
The announcement of the trip comes a day after Beijing, looking to play a role in mediating a resolution to the Russian war on Ukraine, published a 12-point “position paper” aimed at ending the conflict.
“At the invitation of President Xi Jinping, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko will pay a state visit to China from February 28 to March 2,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The Belarusian foreign ministry confirmed the planned visit, saying the Chinese and Belarusian foreign ministers discussed it in a telephone call on Friday.
Lukashenko has backed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and allowed its territory to be used in the Russian assault. Lukashenko said last week that his country was prepared to join Russia’s war against Ukraine, if attacked. That prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to warn the Belarusian leader not to get directly involved in the war.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday said he will visit China in early April and seek Beijing’s help in ending the war in Ukraine. “The fact that China is engaging in peace efforts is a good thing,” Macron said, according to French media reports.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy also said he would like to engage with Beijing following the proposals unveiled on Friday toward resolving the conflict. Zelenskyy said he was open to considering some aspects of the Chinese “position paper” and would welcome the chance to discuss the proposals with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A meeting with Xi could be “useful” to both countries and for global security, Zelenskyy said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday accused NATO of actively participating in the war in Ukraine and working to dissolve his country.
During an interview aired on the state-owned Rossia-1 channel to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin claimed that by “sending tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine” the North Atlantic Alliance was taking part in the war.
He further accused the West of having “one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part … the Russian Federation.”
The Russian president said Moscow could not ignore NATO’s nuclear capabilities moving forward and argued that his country was in a fight for its own survival within “this new world that is taking shape [and] being built only in the interests of just one country, the United States.”
“I do not even know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will be able to survive in the form in which it exists today,” he added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday accused NATO of actively participating in the war in Ukraine and working to dissolve his country.
During an interview aired on the state-owned Rossia-1 channel to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin claimed that by “sending tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine” the North Atlantic Alliance was taking part in the war.
He further accused the West of having “one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part … the Russian Federation.”
The Russian president said Moscow could not ignore NATO’s nuclear capabilities moving forward and argued that his country was in a fight for its own survival within “this new world that is taking shape [and] being built only in the interests of just one country, the United States.”
“I do not even know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will be able to survive in the form in which it exists today,” he added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
MOSCOW — Every year, during the anniversary of the battle that turned back the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union, the city of Volgograd is briefly renamed Stalingrad, its Soviet-era name.
During this year’s commemoration, however, authorities went further. They unveiled a bust of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and paraded soldiers dressed as secret police in a bid to emphasize the parallels between Russia’s past and its present.
“It’s unbelievable but true: we are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who traveled to Volgograd to deliver a speech on February 2. “Again and again, we have to repel the aggression of the collective West.”
Putin’s statement was full of factual inaccuracies: Russia is fighting not the West but Ukraine, because it invaded the country; the German Leopards being delivered to Kyiv date back only to the 1960s; there’s no plan for them to enter Russian territory.
But the Russian president’s evocation of former victories was telling — it was a distillation of his approach to justifying an invasion that hasn’t gone to plan. These days in Russia, if the present is hard to explain, appeal to the past.
“The language of history has replaced the language of politics,” said Ivan Kurilla, a historian at the European University at St. Petersburg. “It is used to explain what is happening in a simple way that Russians understand.”
Putin has long harkened back to World War II — known in the country as The Great Patriotic War, in which more than 20 million Soviet citizens are estimated to have died.
Invoking the fight against Adolf Hitler simultaneously taps into Russian trauma and frames the country as being on the right side of history. “It has been turned into a master narrative through which [Putin] communicates the basic ideas of what is good and bad; who is friend and who foe,” said Kurilla.
Putin’s announcement of his full-scale assault on Ukraine was no exception. On February 24, 2022, Russians awoke to a televised speech announcing the start of “a special military operation” to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine.
“The official narrative was: ‘there are fascists in Ukraine, and we want to help people there. We are fighting for the sake of a great cause,’” said Tamara Eidelman, an expert in Russian propaganda.
On the streets, however, Russians seemed confused.
Asked in the early days of the war what “denazification” meant by the Russian website 7×7, one man suggested: “Respect for people of different ethnicities, respect for different languages, equality before the law and freedom of the press.”
Russia’s laws punish those seen as discrediting the Russian Armed Forces or spreading fake news by using the word “war” | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images
Another interviewee ventured a different definition: “Destroy everyone who is not for a normal, peaceful life.”
The term “special military operation” at least was somewhat clearer. It suggested a speedy, professional, targeted offensive.
“There is a certain mundaneness to it — ‘yes, this is going to be unpleasant, but we’ll take care of it quickly,’” said Eidelman, the propaganda expert.
А week after the invasion, Russia’s laws were amended to punish those seen as discrediting the Russian armed forces or spreading fake news, including by using the word “war.”
Historical parallels
As the special military operation turned into a protracted conflict, and the facts on the ground refused to bend to Putin’s narrative, the Kremlin has gradually been forced to change its story.
Images of a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol or corpses littering the streets of Bucha were dismissed by state propaganda as fake or a provocation — and yet by spring the terms “demilitarization” and “denazification” had practically disappeared from the public sphere.
New justifications for the invasion were inserted into speeches and broadcasts, such as a claim that the United States had been developing biological weapons in Ukraine. In October, Putin declared that one of the main goals of the war had been to provide Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, with a stable water supply.
But the appeal to history has remained central to Putin’s communication effort.
While World War II remains his favorite leitmotif, the Russian president has been expansive in his historical comparisons. In June, he referenced Peter the Great’s campaign to “return what was Russia’s.” And during an October ceremony to lay claim to four regions in Ukraine, it was Catherine the Great who got a mention.
“Every so many months, another story is put forward as if they’re studying the reaction, looking to see what resonates,” said Kurilla.
The search for historical parallels has also bubbled up from below, as even supporters of the war search for justification. “Especially in spring and early summer, there was an attempt to Sovietize the war, with people waving red flags, trying to make sense of it through that lens.”
In the city of Syzran, students were filmed late last year pushing dummy tanks around in a sports hall in a re-enactment of the World War II Battle of Kursk. More recently, law students in St. Petersburg took part in a supposed restaging of the Nuremberg trials, which the region’s governor praised as “timely” in light of Russia’s current struggle against Nazism.
More recent statement by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin himself have made the idea of “war” less taboo | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Throughout, the Kremlin has sought to depict the conflict as a battle against powerful Western interests bent on using Ukraine to undermine Russia — a narrative that has become increasingly important as the Kremlin demands bigger sacrifices from the Russian population, most notably with a mobilization campaign in September.
“Long before February last year, people were already telling us: We are being dragged into a war by the West which we don’t want but there is no retreating from,” said Denis Volkov, director of the independent pollster Levada Center.
The sentiment, he added, has been widespread since the nineties, fed by disappointment over Russia’s diminished standing after the Cold War. “What we observe today is the culmination of that feeling of resentment, of unrealized illusions, especially among those over 50,” he said.
Long haul
With the war approaching the one-year mark, the narrative is once again having to adapt.
Even as hundreds in Russia are being prosecuted under wartime censorship laws, slips of the tongue by top officials such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and even Putin himself in December have made the idea of “war” less taboo.
“We are moving away from a special military operation towards a holy war … against 50 countries united by Satanism,” the veteran propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said on his program in January.
According to Levada, Russians are now expecting the war to last another six months or longer. “The majority keep to the sidelines, and passively support the war, as long as it doesn’t affect them directly,” said Volkov, the pollster.
Meanwhile, reports of Western weapons deliveries have been used to reinforce the argument that Russia is battling the West under the umbrella of NATO — no longer in an ideological sense, but in a literal one.
“A year of war has changed not the words that are said themselves but what they stand for in real life,” said Kurilla, the historian. “What started out as a historic metaphor is being fueled by actual spilled blood.”
In newspaper stands, Russians will find magazines such as “The Historian,” full of detailed spreads arguing that the Soviet Union’s Western allies in World War II were, in fact, Nazi sympathizers all along — another recycled trope from Russian history.
“During the Cold War, you would find caricatures depicting Western leaders such as President Eisenhower in fascist dress and a NATO helmet,” said Eidelman, the expert in Russian propaganda.
“This level of hatred and aggressive nationalism has not been seen since the late Stalin period,” she added.
The anti-West sentiment in Russia has been fed by disappointment over the country’s diminished standing after the Cold War | Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
On Tuesday, three days before the one-year anniversary of the invasion, Putin is scheduled to give another speech. He is expected to distract from Russia’s failure to capture any new large settlements in Ukraine by rehearsing old themes such as his gripes with the West and Russia’s past and present heroism.
There may be a limit, however, to how much the Russian president can infuse his subjects with enthusiasm for his country’s past glories.
In Volgograd, proposals to have the city permanently renamed to Stalingrad have been unsuccessful, with polls showing a large majority of the population is against such an initiative.
When it comes to embracing the past, Russians are still one step behind their leaders.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
MOSCOW — Among the perks offered to those stamping their feet to stay warm outside Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium there were hot drinks, payouts, free food or a day off from class. Others had simply been told by their employers to attend, independent media reported.
“We’re from the Russian Post,” a young man with dark hair said glumly, burying his face into his coat. Minutes earlier, a woman in a white wooly hat had called out his name from a list and handed him a paper invite in the colors of the Russian tricolor.
“Invite to the festive program ‘Glory to the Defenders of the Fatherland,’” it read.
The mass event at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium on Wednesday could hardly be called spontaneous. But it was certainly a crowd-puller.
Тens of thousands were reported to have poured through the metal detectors installed on the grounds of Luzhniki, once the gem of the World Cup Russia hosted in 2018 and a symbol of its international appeal. Now it is a favorite location for staged patriotic rallies.
This event was timed for Defender of the Fatherland Day on February 23, a traditional holiday in Russia which this year acts as an upbeat to the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a day later.
The lineup included a number of pop stars who are regular faces at patriotic events, such as singers Grigory Leps and Oleg Gazmanov, both of whom are on the EU’s sanctions list.
Тhe singer Shaman belted out his ballad “We’ll rise,” dressed in a T-shirt reading: “I am Russian.”
But the real star was President Vladimir Putin who looked visibly pleased after walking on stage to chants of: “Russia! Russia!”
“Right now there is a battle going on our historic lands, for our people … we are proud of them,” he told the crowd. “Today, in defending our interests, our people, our culture, language, territory, all of it, our entire people is the defender of the fatherland.”
Earlier, a group of young children described as being from Mariupol were brought on stage with footage of a destroyed city playing in the background. “I want to thank Uncle Yurya for saving me and hundreds of thousands of others,” one of the girls said before being encouraged to hug а military commander said to have “saved” more than 350 children.
Generally, public messaging has tended to avoid putting too much focus on Ukraine and the war — a term which in Russia is still a criminal offense — and more on a broader and less contentious narrative of patriotism and support for the country’s armed forces.
Тens of thousands were reported to have poured through the metal detectors installed on the grounds of Luzhniki, once the gem of the World Cup Russia hosted in 2018 | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images
At the stadium, some law enforcement officers, but few visitors, brandished Zs, the letter that has become a symbol of the war. Similarly, across the city, billboards featured veterans and modern-day soldiers and slogans such as “We stand together!” but rarely did they explicitly mention Ukraine.
Access to the concert was strictly controlled. There were no tickets for purchase and only a handful of media were allowed in. Attendants had to sign up beforehand via youth organizations, state companies and educational institutions.
“I was signed up by my university,” a young man dressed in a light gray hooded sweater said. Asked whether it had been mandatory, he nodded and looked away.
He declined to give his name and, fearing reprisals, others were similarly wary to talk. “We don’t speak Russian,” a woman of Central Asian appearance said, after being asked what had brought her there.
“It’s very cold today, and we’re just having a snack, thank you, goodbye,” said another woman in a fur coat, who stood outside with a group eating sausage sandwiches and pickles in the snow.
A similar rally in Luzhniki was held in March last year, when Russia marked the eight-year anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. And another in October on Red Square after a ceremony annexing four more Ukrainian regions, despite them not being fully under Russian control.
In fact, since 2014 the rallies have become a fixed feature of Putin’s leadership.
“After Crimea’s annexation, Putin went from aspiring to the legitimacy of an elected president to that of being an almighty Leader. And if you’re a Leader, you need a crowd to gather around you,” analyst Nikolai Petrov, a consultant at Chatham House think tank, told POLITICO.
But even the most fervent Kremlin supporter would struggle to portray the rallies as spontaneous. In fact, the traditional scenes of rows of similar buses transporting similar-looking people who then wave similar-sized Russian flags are more like North Korea than Woodstock.
However, said Petrov, the Kremlin is unlikely to consider this a weakness. “The Kremlin doesn’t need people to mobilize themselves, even in its support,” he said. “The whole idea of such events is to demonstrate loyalty, not some kind of fanatical love.”
Though the Luzhniki concert was the big showstopper, other festivities are expected across the country in the coming days.
According to the business outlet RBC, the presidential administration has sent out guidelines to regional authorities on suitable activities. Suggestions reportedly included painting military-themed murals, staging flash mobs with people lining up in the form of a star-shaped war medal, and arts and crafts workshops to produce, among other things, knitted socks that could later be sent to soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
The real star of the show was President Vladimir Putin who looked visibly pleased after walking on stage to chants | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images
Russians who have family or friends involved in the “special military operation” have also been encouraged to record personal video messages and share them online under the hashtag #ourheroes.
In one such video posted on Instagram — a platform that has been banned in Russia as extremist but is still widely used via VPN — a teary-eyed woman from the town of Prokhladny in Kabardino-Balkaria dressed in uniform tells her husband: “You’re our rock, our defender. I wish for you to come back victorious, healthy, unharmed. I love you very much.”
Back at Luzhniki, ahead of the rally, loudspeakers promised attendants free hot tea, porridge and sausages.
Meanwhile, coordinators continued to call out names from their clipboards to groups of middle-aged women in mittens and fur coats and men in dark jackets and hats. “Smirnova, Oxana Pavlovna!” one such organizer yelled. Answering to that name, a woman walked forwards and accepted her entry ticket with little emotion.
After getting their names ticked, a trickle of people headed straight back to the metro, away from the grounds before the celebrations had even started, some of them with the Russian tricolor flags they had been given still in hand.
With another anniversary, the annexation of Crimea, around the corner in March, they are likely to be back soon.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Vladimir Putin said “Russia and China are reaching new levels of cooperation” after meeting Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, in Moscow on Wednesday.
The Russian president hailed the relationship between Beijing and Moscow as important to “stabilize the international situation,” adding that he awaits a visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to the BBC.
Shortly before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin and Xi signed a statement proclaiming that there were “no limits to Sino-Russian cooperation.” While Russia has become economically more dependent on China since the start of the conflict, Beijing has refused to publicly provide military support.
Wang told Putin that the relationship between China and Russia would “not succumb to pressure from third parties,” and pledged to deepen strategic cooperation with Moscow.
Earlier Wednesday, China’s top foreign policy official also met Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, at the end of a tour of European capitals.
Shortly after meeting Wang, Putin spoke at a rally at Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium to mark the one-year anniversary of launching his war on Ukraine, which falls on Friday. He praised Russian soldiers who “fight heroically, courageously, bravely” and said the war is taking place on Russia’s “historical frontiers.”
