You know about Russia’s devastating losses in the
Ukraine war. You’ve heard stories about Russian soldiers refusing to fight. You’re more than
familiar with Russia’s war crimes and crumby tactics. But you often don’t hear Putin’s
POV and what he’s telling his folks at home. Well, count your blessings. Because we’re about
to make you privy to the proclamations and accusations of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
As you probably know, when all this kicked off in February 2022, when the conflict that
staretd in 2014 turned into full scale war, Russia used different terminology from the rest
of the world in regard to what was happening. As the Russian Permanent Representative to the
United Nations Vasily Nebenzya explained, “Don’t call this a war. This is
called a special military operation.” On February 24, 2022, Putin appeared
on TV where he told his people that this was a special operation, not a war.
We guess Putin and his colleagues were hoping that Russians had never heard of the
expression, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like
a duck, then it probably is a duck.” Before we get to what Putin’s saying now, even
though he just said he wasn’t in the mood to face any more “boring questions,” we should
look at what he told Russians at the start regarding the so called “special operation.”
One thing that this show today is going to focus on is narratives. As a military analyst
rightly said recently, “The Ukraine conflict is about control of the narrative as much
as armed conflict.” Putin wants control, and his enemies want control. Control
is essential to victory, which is why everything Putin says is a kind of weapon. We’ll
explain what we mean by this throughout the video. When the war got going, Putin talked about
the “tragic events in the Donbas” and that his invasion was for the security of Russia. He blamed
“irresponsible Western politicians” for the war, who he blamed for overthrowing the elected
pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. This was very important regarding Putin’s
narrative. He has always said this is a proxy conflict with the West and certainly the USA,
which he says is the chief string-puller. This is why he felt happily vindicated when a leaked
telephone call between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to
Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, appeared on YouTube. In it, she indirectly talks about who
should be the next leader of Ukraine, as if she was handpicking the person. It doesn’t
mean she actually, practically picked him, although she obviously had her favorites. For
instance, she said, “I don't think Klitsch should go into the government. I don't think it's
necessary; I don't think it's a good idea.” She was referring to the former heavyweight
behemoth turned politician, Vitaly Klitschko. She added, “I think Yats is the guy
who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the...
what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside.” By Yats, she was referring
to Arseniy Yatseniuk, who did become the PM. Nuland got what she wanted, but as we said,
that doesn’t mean she had the power to put who she wanted into power. That colorful
conversation, in which she famously said, “BLEEP the EU,” certainly made it look like
the US was pulling the strings. After all, for many decades, the US has pulled strings
worldwide and installed various leaders, sometimes taking down democratically voted-in politicians
to replace them with tyrants. For Putin, Nuland had laid a golden egg right into his lap and
inserted a feather into his cap. He used this as an example of US interference in foreign affairs,
backed by what he called a history of meddling. She was embarrassed and later said she wouldn’t
comment on what she called “private diplomatic conversations.” Still today, people debate what
power the US had and currently has in Ukraine, with folks such as the economist and
public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs and political scientist John Mearsheimer,
saying this is definitely a proxy war. This is a matter we’re not going to comment
on. It’s a very complicated story, but we will say that Putin jumped on that phone call.
A call that might have been leaked by Russia. A Russian newspaper gloated, “Madame Nuland
doesn't only swear. She also gives detailed instructions on how the three puppets from Kyiv's
Maidan should act.” The White House didn’t deny the phone call was real, just saying it
was “a new low in Russian tradecraft.” It was indeed crafty if it was the Russians.
As we said, we don’t know how much power the US exerts over Ukrainian politics, but it has to be
said that this call provided Putin with a lot of ammunition. He told Russian citizens repeatedly
how the US was trying to destroy their country. The people believed him for the most part. Imagine
if the boot was on the other foot, and a top Russian politician had been caught talking about
trying to install a new anti-American President. And then he got elected. The US press would have
had a field day, and many people would have been, at the very least, suspicious. It’s hard
to blame the Russian people for not being suspicious of the US’s intentions.
Putin talked consistently about the expansion of NATO, an organization he said
he’d been “patiently trying” to come to an agreement with for many years. He complained of
“cynical deception and lies” coming out of NATO and what he called “pressure and blackmail.”
This is what he said then, and it’s what he says now. Nothing has changed in this regard.
He has talked about the US and its Allies and their arrogance in interfering with other
countries’ domemstic and foreign affairs. He said the US feels “absolute superiority”
among all nations, and Russia, he said, after the fall of the Soviet Union, was
exploited when it was the most vulnerable. He said the “arrogance” of the US knows no
limits and international law does not matter one bit to this country and its closest Allies,
especially when it comes to the Middle East, where, Putin said, the US conducted an “illegal
use of military power” creating what he called “international terrorism” and a humanitarian
disaster in such places as Libya. This backs up his present narrative, which, you know
already, he needs people to believe in. Please don’t shoot the messenger. We’re just
telling you what he said. It doesn’t mean he’s right or wrong. We’re just repeating his words. He
was saying it as justification for the invasion, explaining that NATO’s push eastwards was another
example of this exceptionalism. He said Russia was deceived and betrayed by NATO. For this to make a
bit more sense we should mention that, for Putin, NATO is just a front for US foreign policy.
He even went as far as to call the US and its Allies a bunch of “con artists,” which, you have
to admit, would be quite funny if circumstances weren’t the opposite of funny. He called the
US itself an “empire of lies,” although he admitted that it was still a “great country.”
Still, he said that if countries don’t go along with what the US wants, they are gonna
feel the pain, or “the squeeze,” as he likes to say. He said Russia was willing
to talk it over with the US and its Allies, but now the squeeze has been put on Russia, adding
that the US wants to “finish us off and utterly destroy us.” Ironically, he talked about how the
US wants to spread its values, values he called degenerate and counter to human nature, which,
to anyone who knows the history of the Soviet Union, is some pretty hardcore hypocrisy.
But this is what the Russian people heard, and many of them might have agreed with
him, further proved by Putin going up in the popularity ratings. He was doing what any leader
would do by inventing a Good vs. Evil scenario, picking out bits of truth and embellishing
them with exaggerations and subjective theories. He was fine-tuning his narrative.
His main point is that Russia is innocent of all wrongdoing and is being bullied by the world’s
superpower. He issued a stark warning in this regard, stating “that any potential aggressor
will face defeat and ominous consequences.” He was referring to nuclear weapons. After this
he clarified his statement by saying they would only be used if used against Russia, and he said
NATO was not ever going to get away with expanding toward the East. Totally unacceptable, he
said. Not on his watch. “For our country, it is a matter of life and death,” he said. “This
is not an exaggeration,” he added, “It is a fact.” So, can you imagine what many Russians,
huddled as a family in front of their TVs, were thinking at that point? He then told them
that Russia’s special military operation was for the people of the Donbas, who had “pinned their
hopes” on Russia helping them after many had died at the hands of Ukrainian forces in what he
called a genocide. He invoked the term Neo-Nazis, whom he said had a stronghold in Ukraine.
He even told his viewers that his right-wing enemies in Ukraine had gone as far as to
“aspire to acquire nuclear weapons,” adding, “We will not let them do that!”
Of course, you know differently. You’ve heard a different story. You don’t believe
Ukraine is highly contaminated with Neo-Nazis, although you do know the country has had some
issues with the far-right wing in the past. You don’t believe in Russia’s innocence, as
Putin describes it, but the fact is, this is what the Russian people have heard many times.
It didn’t help matters of transparency when in March, Russia adopted what Reporters Without
Borders said was a “draconian” press law, in which Putin said any news journalist
found writing content that was “false” or “mendacious” in relation to the Ukraine
situation could be sent to prison for 15 years. With that in mind, how can people in that
country read stories that disagree Putin and his rather handy explanation of
things? After that law was introduced, the BBC, Bloomberg News, CNN, ABC, and CBS News
stopped reporting in Russia or collecting news there. It was too dangerous for the journalists.
Putin wanted to make his narrative unchangeable. As one critic said, “We are looking on
helplessly as Russia’s independent media are being silenced to death… Vladimir Putin
has delivered the final blow and completed the destruction of Russia’s independent media.”
The Russian government then went about blocking and banning all kinds of websites in Russia where
people might get to read a more expansive tale of the tape regards to Ukraine. Russia even
clamped down on a woman on Instagram that disagreed with Putin’s narrative. She said she
might now be looking at six years in prison. She wasn’t being paranoid. A guy named
Ilya Yashin was recently sentenced to 8 years for criticizing Putin
on a YouTube live stream. This guy spoke the truth when he said after
being sentenced, “With that hysterical sentence, the authorities want to scare us all,
but it effectively shows their weakness.” Whatever you think about the western media, at
least folks like Sachs and Mearsheimer haven’t been blocked or banned, even if they have been
criticized a lot. Admittedly, Sachs did get pulled off the air when he started talking about
the Nord Stream explosion being a US operation. Still, it was easy enough to find that out. Anyone
can hear what he has to say. In Russia, the people aren’t so fortunate. Regular news sites rarely
criticize their leader, but some journalists have. Two of them said in May, “Putin and his circle
are doomed to face a tribunal after the end of the war. Putin and his associates won’t be able to
justify themselves or flee after losing this war.” They also released the statement, “Putin
is a paranoid dictator. Putin must go. He started a senseless war and is leading
Russia into a ditch.” As far as we know, they haven’t yet been fitted with a pair of cement
shoes or had their organs vaporized after having a harmless-looking cup of tea, but when they wrote
their critical articles, they added at the bottom. “Disclaimer: This material is not
approved by the state; therefore, the Presidential administration will delete
it… In other words: TAKE A SCREENSHOT URGENTLY before it’s deleted.” They were
brave, considering the possible consequences. But there is another factor that has made Putin
paranoid and thus more likely to lie to his people Putin has been saying there are spies in his
midst, writing lies at the bequest of the West. In September, that’s what he said about a
Russian journalist who was jailed for 22 years. After hearing that there would be trouble if they
said anything that contradicted Russia’s Defense Ministry on Ukraine, other journalists had to
flee the country. Putin wants his narrative encased in iron. If his foundation collapses,
so does his leadership. At the end of the day, the power is always with the people.
The Russian Defense Ministry, at one point, was saying there were no civilian casualties
in Ukraine because Russian strikes had been so accurate. If photographs or video showed
differently, it said that was because the Ukrainians had been bombing themselves. It
sounded ridiculous, but with no independent media, that’s the story everyone in Russia heard.
The message is pretty clear. If you’re not with him, you’re against him and against the
fatherland. There’s no middle ground or nuance to the narrative, as there is elsewhere. In December,
Putin said about the people criticizing him: "The Russian people will always be able
to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a
fly that accidentally flew into their mouths. I am convinced that such a natural and necessary
self-purification of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion, and
readiness to respond to any challenges.” We are not sure a man who’s been talking endlessly
about the threat of Nazis chose wise words there. We all know which group in the 1930s and 40s liked
to talk about purifying society to strengthen it… Putin’s assumption was wrong as both St
Petersburg and Moscow saw widespread protests against his “special operation,” leading
to the arrest of many peaceful protestors. It’s these folks, he later said, that
need purifying. This included mothers of sons who’ve gone to Ukraine and not returned
dressed in anything but a body bag. Putin has embraced the totalitarian spirit, but that’s
not how he explains it. He says his critics are diseased. They’ve contracted a virus from
the West. They’re infected with fake news. This is what tyrants learn in their college class,
Totalitarianism 101…We’re kidding, of course… Tyrants learn their skills through experience.
There have been more protests as the war has gone on. At the start, Putin talked in a way that
made people think his special operation would be like a German blitzkrieg. It’s been anything
but, and now Putin is saying the war “might be a long process.” Anyone would think he’s
on the payroll of the world’s arms industry because this war is already expensive, and it
will have even more massive reverberations to economies and the people living in them. This
doesn’t pain Putin. It doesn’t vex Vladimir. Still, he said in December that he wouldn’t
be calling up more troops to serve. He told the Kremlin’s human rights council, “In these
conditions, the talk about some additional mobilization efforts makes no sense. There
is no need for this for the state and for the Defense Ministry.” This came right after
some Ukrainian drone strikes that hit Russian turf. Putin had already ordered another 300,000
conscripts at that point. If the Ukraine war had been distant until then, it was now coming home.
Putin hasn’t changed at all, though, regarding the fundamental matters he talked about at the start
of the war. As we said, he wouldn’t speak at one point, reportedly saying he was sick of being
asked to reply to the same old boring questions. He’s said what he has to say in this regard.
He won’t give up or change tack regarding what he sees as a US-led proxy war against his country.
He even recently compared the West to the Nazis, although this kind of fury didn’t
mirror his foreign minister's words, who recently said that he had “a certain
hope that a compromise can be reached.” It seems obvious that Putin hopes that
both countries can reach a compromise, but it also seems obvious that if he doesn’t get
what he wants, this war will be a very a long and bloody one. Recently, he again talked
about existential threats and how Russia is fighting for its life. He said, “The struggle
we are waging is a struggle for our sovereignty, for the future of our country and our children.”
It’s almost exactly what he was saying in February when he took to the airwaves, but the
Russian people watching him then were perhaps feeling a bit less pessimistic
about the whole affair than they do now. Late in 2022, Putin said that his military’s
tactics “fully justified themselves.” He tried not to sound bothered about the failures
in what’s turned into a protracted war. But analysts are now saying he would feel better
if he had an attractive off-ramp very soon. Things really haven’t happened as he’d hoped.
As one Pro-Kremlin commentator recently said: “The military operation is, no question,
tougher going than had been expected. It was expected that 30 to 50 percent of the
Ukrainian Armed Forces would switch over to Russia’s side. No one is switching over.”
Putin also said recently that the West’s sanctions are really hurting his country,
calling them an “economic blitzkrieg.” He admitted that there have been “deep, structural
changes [to] our economy” and it is hurting the masses. Still, what he thinks about the
West hasn’t changed. In that same speech, he claimed yet again regarding the US, “There
is only one goal. The destruction of Russia.” He also said that the West’s power over
global communications is a weapon just as useful as an explosive. The West, he said,
will mount a propaganda campaign so cunning that his own people will turn against him.
As far as an information war is concerned, the US holds most of the cards since it controls
most of the tech. Putin knows that there’s not much he can do about this weakness. He explained
not long ago, “An unprecedented information campaign has been unleashed, which involves
global social networks and all Western media, the objectivity and independence of
which turned out to be just a myth.” Still, Putin also likely knows that independent
journalists, some of whom have won Pulitzers and have done some impressive investigative work
in the past, are being called Putin-apologists for having another take on the grand narrative
of this war. Putin must be able to recognize that their voices are not banned or sequestered.
They have channels on YouTube, pages on Substack, and accounts on the newly transparent
(maybe) Twitter. There will be transparency, which is more than you can say for Putin’s Russia.
He’s being a total hypocrite, too, considering he’s acting like the information czar of Russia;
a real-life Big Brother. He reminds us of George Orwell’s book 1984, which explains, “Doublethink
means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting
both of them.” He condemns misinformation and then spreads it, but arguably every country
has done that in the past. After all, if you control the past, you control the
future; if you control the present, you control the past. That’s not us. It’s Orwell again.
The people of the West are at least free to read and watch what they want, and they can make up
their own minds about what’s going on in Ukraine, who’s behind it, and if Mr. Putin is a tyrant
or if he’s just fighting back against dastardly imperial America. Maybe the story is not so
simple, and like most important historical tales, it’s full of grey areas worthy of
lengthy, polite, intelligent discussion. With that in mind, calling anyone who disagrees
with him scum and a traitor is very harsh and plainly not true. He should know that in this
day and age, suppressing information often works against you because, at some point, it comes
out, and then no one trusts you. If Putin’s theory that the US-led West is trying to kill
off Russia is real, then surely people will see that for themselves if they have access to
enough data. If Russia is under threat and is being hard done to, they will see that, too.
Putin said lately that he has no regrets about the invasion and still believes Russia is
acting “correctly and in a timely manner.” Not too many analysts think he will actually use
nuclear weapons and bring about mutually assured destruction. At a December meeting, he said, “We
have not gone mad; we are aware of what nuclear weapons are. We aren't about to run around the
world brandishing this weapon like a razor.” He reminded everyone present that Russia
doesn’t have nuclear weapons in other countries’ backyards. He said that’s the policy
of the US. He also reminded the attendees that the US had mulled over preemptive military strikes
and that the US was not “shy to openly talk about it during the past years.” White House analysts
called this mere “saber-rattling.” Let’s hope so. Some analysts say he’ll concentrate more on cyber
warfare from now on. Controlling narratives and hacking infrastructure can be just as helpful
in war these days as conventional weapons. But let us hope for constructive dialogue with a
happy ending and transparency among nations since the truth, we’ve heard, sets you free. The
suppression of it, as Orwell said, might look like “a boot stamping on a human face…forever.”
Now you need to watch “Insane Ways Vladimir Putin Survived Assassination Attempts.” Or, have a look
at “Why Putin's Invasion of Ukraine is a Failure.”
