Pearls of Kremlin propaganda: RT boss talks death in war beautifully

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Pearls of Kremlin propaganda
Better to die than rot in the village – how the RT boss makes war palatable to the Russians

The Kremlin is running out of soldiers. The propaganda is intended to ensure a new influx of volunteers. But the propagandists can think of nothing else but to downplay death. RT boss Margarita Simonjan has now excelled in this discipline.

Developments at the front and the headless Russian warfare have plunged the Kremlin’s propaganda into a kind of desperate paralysis in recent weeks. Not even May 9, the holiest date in Putin’s system, was able to give the propaganda machine new impetus this year. The Victory Day parade in Moscow failed miserably. The Russian capital shrouded itself in grave silence instead of jubilation, while Putin had very young cadets march through Red Square – accompanied by a single WWII-era tank.

There was not a trace of the most terrible and powerful weapons in the world, which the Kremlin boasts, either at the parade or at the front. The war has been going on for more than a year and nobody has seen the miracle weapons in question. So the propaganda has no choice but to keep making excuses for this strange circumstance.

Margarita Simonian’s new excuse

Margarita Simonyan, the head of the propaganda station RT, has mastered this discipline like no other. She presented her latest excuse on a stage that was unusual for her, on the political talk show “Own Truth” on NTW.

As a rule, Simonjan hardly makes it out of the studio of her Hetz partner Vladimir Solovyov. This time, however, she “sold her truth” in host Roman Bobajan’s studio. Apparently, their slogans should get even more space on Russian state TV than they already have.

Michael Bohm wanted to know why Putin isn’t acting when all his “red lines” have long since been crossed. Bohm is allowed to play the American whipping boy in every propaganda show and is introduced as a journalist. “Who from the Russian leadership ever said what exactly those red lines represent?” was Simonyan’s reply.

“When did Putin say that this or that is a red line? I’ll tell you: he never said that. Neither he nor the defense minister ever said that.” They would only have explained that there are these red lines. “But we can only speculate as to what lies behind this formulation,” said the woman, whose office has a special yellow telephone – the encrypted line directly to the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin’s “red lines”.

Simonyan apparently relies on the short memory of her audience. In fact, Putin has defined his “red lines” several times in recent months. An example: At the beginning of the war, it was Western arms deliveries to Ukraine. In the summer of 2022, after new deliveries of weapons from the West, the Kremlin said the “red lines” would be crossed, forcing Russia to escalate. However, nothing happened.

A little later, the supply of western armored personnel carriers and main battle tanks was raised to the red line. Last January it was exceeded by more than a dozen states. Dozens of Western tanks and infantry fighting vehicles are now arriving in Ukraine every week. And what does Putin do? Nothing.

Putin’s red lines lose their validity as soon as they are crossed. This did not escape Simonian either. So she glorifies the red lines into a big secret known only to the great leader in the Kremlin. She has already resorted to this tactic when it came to the ominous goals that Putin is pursuing in Ukraine. “The goals change with the possibilities,” postulated Simonyan. One should not ask the “commander in chief and the government to name concrete goals if they can change.”

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The siren song of Kremlin propaganda

In Simonian’s mind, neither Putin’s goals nor his red lines are something that should interest the Russian people. They should go to war for him in silence and be blinded by his promises. “There are great conditions for contract soldiers,” enthused the propagandist. “Many people in the provinces will never earn the money that people get there. Never, never, in any job. For the majority, that’s a fact,” she explained bluntly. Measured against wages in Russia, the wages of contract soldiers are very “decent”.

There are enough volunteers who would rather go to war than waste away in the villages “where there is no work and no opportunity to show oneself.” It’s better “to go there and come back as a hero.” Of course, this is associated with a risk for one’s own life. “But life is inherently risky. Every time you get behind the wheel, you risk your life. Every time we hit the road, we risk our lives. Every time we’re under standing with these huge lamps, we are risking our lives,” Simonyan explained with regard to the equipment of the TV studio. “There is no doubt that the risk of life in war is higher. But on the other hand, the mortality rate in the big battles is lower than the corona mortality rate.”

Simonyan does it in one breath. to expose the desolate situation in the Russian provinces, to make war the only perspective for the rural population and to equate their appearances in the TV studio with deployment at the front. It doesn’t matter to her whether the Russians bleed to death on the battlefields or die of Corona – as long as the spotlight shines and doesn’t fall on her head. The number of casualties among Russian soldiers is now estimated at 200,000.

Simonyan isn’t the first to try to make dying palatable to the Russians. Here you can read more about it:

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Pearls of Kremlin propaganda
“What makes the Russians different from everyone else?” – “You can die like nobody else”

12/31/2022

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