We will not go into the details of Girkin’s arrest, because we can only be interested in the fate of this scoundrel from the aspect that this arrest shows about the stability of Putin’s regime. Is this arrest a sign of strengthening or weakening of the regime? Does this mark new cracks in the monolith of the regime or, on the contrary, a sign of the consolidation of power around Putin and his inner circle?
Although Girkin, a former colonel of the Russian Security Service (FSB), is a bright media star on the Putin regime’s public stage, he is not directly connected to the Kremlin’s top leadership. He is not considered a significant player. There is no confirmation of the widespread talk of a strong back who is supposedly behind him. The main argument – but how could he mumble for so long, expressing his dissatisfaction with the leadership of the army and lately also with the head of state – Putin – is easily refuted.
The fact is that he only recently started making clear hints that Putin himself is to blame for all the troubles of the war, and the consequences were not long in coming. Arrest and likely several years in prison. As they say, got lost.
Girkin’s arrest marks a new stage in the evolution of Putin’s regime, which began after the so-called Prigozhin coup at this year’s summer solstice. The range of deception in the Russian public space is narrowing significantly. Until this regime, persons socially close to the regime could freely judge political processes (in a unified, anti-liberal discourse), but now “their own” will also have to think about what is allowed and what is not allowed.
Those who experienced the censorship of the USSR remember that at that time only such information and such opinions could appear in the public space, which fit into a single, homogeneous, internally non-contradictory vision of the world. Even communist zeal was regulated. Not too much, not too little. Historical experience shows that the strengthening of censorship strangleholds stabilizes the regime. As soon as the strangleholds of censorship in the USSR loosened and people could speak more freely, the rapid collapse of the system began.
Today’s Russian propaganda is unimaginably contradictory and fuzzy. There is no single, comprehensive ideological construction that explains any situation, as it was in the times of the USSR. On the contrary.
The main principle of today’s propaganda is to muddy the waters, to sow doubt. Everything is relative. There is no truth in principle. Nothing is as it seems. Everyone lies and no one can be trusted. In the world, man is a wolf to man: if you don’t bite first, then they will bite you. Our enemy is the West, there is a life and death struggle. Either we bend them or they destroy us (because we don’t bend and can’t be bent).
This Russian propaganda works very successfully in Russia itself, where the most popular opinion is: everything is not so clear-cut, and, admittedly, also in the West. Sometimes in Latvia it is not clear why the West has such a tolerant attitude towards the crimes of Putin’s regime. Russia is treated like a raw egg, and just now Russia was the presiding country in the UN Security Council.
Here we come to another, extremely important issue, which was revealed quite by accident by this arrest of Girkin. The world’s most influential print publication, The New York Times (NYT), put a headline on the article about Girkin’s arrest, which made all supporters of Ukraine boil with indignation.
The NYT affectionately calls this terrorist, a war criminal who, according to his associates and eyewitnesses, personally enjoyed killing and torturing as “Russia Detains Igor Girkin, a Critic of Putin’s War Effort in Ukraine.” As if Girkin is some kind of oppositionist and political opponent of Putin, which he is not even close to.
The NYT is not far behind another no less influential media – CNN. On this TV channel, Girkin is called a military blogger. In the NATO country of the Netherlands, a war criminal sentenced to life imprisonment is, according to CNN, a military blogger, critic of Putin (!). CNN also interprets the war as Putin’s war.
Headlines most accurately reflect the editorial position. CNN and NYT are publications whose position is followed and matched by thousands of other publications around the world. The tone set by these standard media resonates in the mainstream of the average US and not only US society.
If, from the point of view of the leading US media, the war in Ukraine is not Russia’s war, which was caused by the invasion of this country’s armed forces into a sovereign neighboring country, but Putin’s war, in which the “poor” Russian population, enslaved by Putin, is involved against their will, then one can only conclude that Russian propaganda does not eat billions of dollars in vain.
The old, good, favorite story of the Kremlin’s “useful idiots” – it is no longer the people’s fault that they have such an evil leader – works without fail. Countless testimonies that confirm the unpleasant fact that a large part of the Russian population not only support the war in Ukraine, but also support the crimes taking place there, are ignored. The truth is even harsher. Russian social networks are full of demands to be even more ruthless.
If Putin is to blame for everything, then Russia and the Russian people are at least partially vindicated. Although the object of “laundering” is fundamentally different. Not so much Russia itself and the people of Russia, but those people in the West who call us not to cut ties with Russia and to continue dialogue (read: business).
These headlines didn’t come out of nowhere. They reflect the basic motive of the behavior of the Western political class today – to wait patiently for Putin to disappear from the scene. How, in what way, that’s another question. It will happen at some point, and we just need to wait until then.
Of course, we can wait and hope for a quick collapse of Putin’s regime, but objectively, the durability of this regime depends on the attitude of the rest of the world. So far, it’s nowhere near what this mode deserves. As Estonian President Alar Karis said: “I don’t want to live in a world where we have to have a dialogue with people who kill children, bomb kindergartens, hospitals and schools. Their place is in prison.”
Unfortunately, the views expressed by Karis are not in vogue in the Western political class. But the kind of view expressed by the NYT and CNN is exactly what is needed, even though it is what is keeping the Putin regime alive and fanning the flames of war in Ukraine. If there was a consensus in Western society that Putin is absolute evil, the same as Hitler, then Putin would already have been neutralized and his regime’s war spirit would have been stifled.
Meanwhile, calling Putin a president, a legitimate politician, who should be treated just like any other head of state, creates this ambiguous situation when, on the one hand, Russia is considered an aggressor and perpetrator of war crimes, and on the other hand, a cooperation partner in many issues. Not only in business.
I don’t want to criticize the West too harshly, because it could have been worse. In today’s Western political class, there is no shortage of those who would be ready to reconcile with Putin even tomorrow for breakfast. Spitting out all sorts of interests of Ukrainians, Latvians and Poles. According to the basic principles of Putin’s propaganda – there are no good ones. All bad, so nothing to pretend. We share such a pie.
2023-07-24 02:15:06
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