Schrodinger's War
Compartmentalising, silence, smoke and screens
(From The Lvivski Review)
There was little new in the state television news yesterday.
The evening reports followed a familiar structure: ‘news’ of progress in Ukraine as the Russian armed forces supposedly captured (in their parlance, ‘liberated’) more villages.
Also ‘news’ of a supposed drone attack on a bus in Bryansk, that was transporting children on a trip from Belarus, and Russian agencies uncovering ‘terrorist plots’ in various areas around the country.
Further demonisation of Ukraine, a long-term strategy which must have some impact on the Russian population, particularly on children.
Evening news tonight headlined with the supposed bombed bus, including images from the reported injured children in hospital.
‘This is fascism’ was the item’s heading, with commentary taken from Belarus’ President Alyaksandr Lukashenka in a further example of Moscow outsourcing its information operations.
What is interesting about this item is that Russian sources (official and nonofficial) hardly ever mention ‘Ukraine’ or ‘Ukrainian’ in their news items about drone attacks, a position so ubiquitous that it is almost certain state policy designed to avoid drawing attention to the consequences for the Russian people of the war.
However, the newsreader was in this singular instance keen to emphasise that it was a ‘Ukrainian drone’ that allegedly hit the bus, in an almost certain deliberate move to demonise the Ukrainians (though note that the victims in the report were not Russian—they were from Belarus.
An other almost certain policy move is to stress Moscow’s international relations, in order to demonstrate that the ‘West’s’ efforts to isolate Russia are failing. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been in Kazan hosting a Russia-ASEAN conference, in which he played up ties with Asia.
International relations are poor, though, with the ‘West’, especially with Enemy Number One, the UK.
The Russian Molodaya Gvardiya pro-Kremlin youth group held a protest outside the British Embassy, as the Embassy hosted a reception to mark the King’s Birthday. Guests were heckled and questioned as they rushed into the building, much to the Molodaya Gvardiya’s disgust.
The group followed the Kremlin’s line that London supposedly controls Ukraine and forces Ukraine to fight, and also that London is supplying the arms, including Storm Shadows, that the ‘fascist Ukrainian regime’ is using to kill ‘us’ (again, news refuses to concede that the war is harming ordinary Russians, they are in fact discussing Ukrainian children, including in Starobilsk, who are in occupied Ukraine, an explicit acknowledgement that Russia does not fully accept those people as proper Russians).
A message for Britain: ‘Your weapons are killing old people and children’
Activists interviewed and the correspondent blamed King Charles and Boris Johnson specifically for dissuading the Ukrainians from seeking peace, and for encouraging the Americans to continue supplying arms (Russian news is still careful of criticising the United States).
One activist spat: ‘We shall never forget [what the British have done] and shall never forgive’.
Demonising other countries is bread and butter for Russian television, and there are clear lines drawn up that sources can easily follow. The claim that Johnson is to blame for the war and Kyiv’s refusal to bow to Moscow’s demands persists, and is likely to do so.
Even so, it is still incredible that Moscow has reverted to claiming that Britain is the mastermind behind all the world’s ills, driving Ukraine to war and even influencing the United States.
In the questions over who is to blame and what is to be done, again state news is silent about the impact to Russians of the war, almost certainly state policy to try to insulate Russians from the consequences of the invasion. State news, as noted above, tries to cover up news of drone strikes, and hardly ever mentions Ukraine when discussing them (attacks on Belarusians excluded). For Moscow, the war (for now) is only over there, you can ignore it if you so choose, or support it, as long as you do not oppose it openly. We suspect that this stance cannot last for much longer.
Especially as Kyiv has almost certainly a policy of undoing this compartmentalised thinking in Russia and the Kremlin’s willingness to allow some people to ignore the war. They cannot when the capital is covered in smoke, as it was today.
But news did not mention the Ukrainian mass attack on Moscow this morning. Absolutely nothing across Channel One’s bulletins.
Russia is extremely good at atomising its society and insulating people from news in other regions, so it is hard to know what people around the country saw or read about the attacks. But people in Moscow had to notice it. It is hard to know for how much longer the Kremlin can continue this Schrodinger’s war; something has to give.