Russian lies example, part 4. Time travelling.
People who only recently started watching, reading or listening Russian propaganda may be surprised by how the facts are presented there. They often make sense, but in some bizarre way. Facts stop feeling real. After some time one starts questioning not only Russian propaganda, but even some reliable sources. And actually that’s the point. One of the purposes of Russian propaganda is to make people question and doubt everything. I call it Russian postmodernism.
In order to see the fuller picture people usually read from various sources. This is logical, because sides may be biased, but reading two biased sides may bring some clarity. This was my approach as well. And I decided to watch Russian news about the Euromaidan, which started in 2013. And that was a day when I stopped watching Russian news. The reason was that it was not another opinion on the same fact. They presented wrong facts. In other words — they lied.
Ukrainian moot, Russian view
On 8th of December 2013 main Russian news, called “Weekly News” (Вести недели) on a main Russian channel Russia-24 (Россия-24) showed a lengthy episode on Ukrainian Euromaidan, called “Ukrainian Moot” (Украинское Вече)[1]. I mention these details so that it’s clear that was not some fringe view, but actual mainstream program. It’s all filled with various propaganda tricks, but the most important thing starts at the minute 4.
The host claims that first there were violent protests and storming of a presidential palace. After which organisers of the protests left innocent students on the main Kyiv square to stay there at night unprotected. This night police indeed dispersed the students on Maidan. And this dispersal was widely shown on the Western media.
Right after that the host accuses the Western media in lying — because they showed the violent dispersal of students on the main Kyiv square, without showing the pre-history — in particular the presidential palace storming.
The whole program is built on this fact — protesters stormed the palace, therefore police actions were just.
Actual events
On 30th of November 2013 police violently dispersed few people staying on main Kyiv square. No violent protests happened before.
On 1st of December 2013 thousands of people started rioting, including in front of presidential palace.
By all the laws of nature 30th of November happened before 1st of December and it’s impossible that police violence happened as a result of protesters riots. But that’s exactly what the host of the Russian program said. There are two possible explanations:
- Time machine has long been invented and is so casually used, that mixing causes and consequences is a usual thing
- Russian news lied
Russia builds their own version of reality. It’s a very similar to the approach taken in the Orwell’s 1984 book. In Russian reality time does not matter. It can be bend and turned around. What matters is that Russian point of view should be correct. If reality does not correspond to the Russian point of view, then the reality should be altered.
Ironically the Russian host was accusing the West in what he did himself — in lying about the causes and consequences.
Aftermath
Many Russians up until now think that Euromaidan started with violent riots and the police actions were consequences of that, not the cause. Host of the program mentioned in the next episode, that he “did a mistake” in the previous video, but he did not say where exactly. Russian press committee itself ruled that the “Ukrainian Moot” was indeed propaganda[2], but this was already late, since Revolution had finished by that time and the war with Russia had already started.
The program host Kiselev was promoted to become a head of a media group Rossiya Segodnya (btw translated as Russia Today, but not being the same thing as actual Russia Today) next day after the episode aired.
Many Ukrainians stopped believing or watching Russian news, including me.
Russian news did not change their policy on presenting the reality. Einstein said that time and space are relative, and Russians take these observations very close to the heart. Russian postmodernism claims that the truth is what people believe, since objective truth is nowhere to be found. And Russian news take this close to the heart too.
Believing Russian news is nonsensical — it may align with the actual non-Russian reality, but it does not have to. Use it on your own risk.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfSKpnHyj34 Украинское вече — Вести недели 08.12.2013
[2] https://www.kp.ru/online/news/1671048/