In complete violation of international law and modern morality, Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin has been waging an unprovoked aggression on Ukraine for more than two weeks. Apparently he and his military personnel were amazed at the courageous resistance of Ukraine’s military and the country’s civilian population. In desperation, Putin has now decided to pursue the same assassination tactics in Chechnya, Syria and Georgia – unbridled and indiscriminate bombing of cities, where residential areas and civilians living there are legitimate targets.
As we have seen before in places like Grozny, Aleppo and Gori, Putin’s bloody tactics will result in the deaths of thousands of civilians.
The Human Rights Court of the Council of Europe has issued a clear warning to the Russian Federation that its military must immediately stop invading populated areas by non-combatants. Following that lead, the director of the International Criminal Court in The Hague has announced that it will investigate allegations of war crimes committed by Russian military forces in Ukraine.
It is already clear to any conscientious objector that Putin is a war criminal, his ruthless and utterly unscrupulous attack on a sovereign European state has shocked the world. The new sanctions imposed by the free, democratic world are not justified.
Putin’s only real response, so far, is to try and fight a ham-handed misleading propaganda campaign aimed at spreading lies and confusion, mostly to his native audience and to Western conspiracy theorists, many of whom are longtime Kremlin supporters. Spots for residents.
Truth is always the first casualty of war. In Russia, two of the latest independent media outlets still reporting objectively on Russia’s aggression in Ukraine have now been removed. Radio station, Ekho Moskvy, One of Russia’s oldest, has always been openly critical of Putin. With its TV counterpart, dozhd, Both were stopped by Putin’s friends for “deliberately spreading false information.”
Russian authorities had previously ruled that all media outlets in the country could not use words such as “fight”, “attack” or “attack” under any circumstances. Penalties for violating the new restrictions include 15 years in prison.
As a result, Putin’s Russia news is now being broadcast live. The missile attack on Kiev’s TV station tower – and the city’s Holocaust memorial – was aimed at spreading uncensored news to Ukrainians in the first week of the war.
The European Union has since banned the Kremlin’s English-language mouthpiece, RT (Previous Russia Today), and Sputnik To stop their poisonous and harmful misleading propaganda, a move echoed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The European Journalists’ Association has also campaigned for a ban, although we would otherwise support the protection of media freedom. Should a channel like RT be broadcast freely in Europe as a tool of Putin’s war propaganda when critical and independent media outlets in Russia are silenced and their journalists imprisoned, beaten and even killed?
Putin has brought all Russian media under his thumb and severely curtailed the activities of Western news agencies that were previously relatively independent in Russia.
Should we accept it? No.
Over the past two years, the RT has provided a platform to thwart conspirators, ranging from anti-vaccine, nationalist and anti-democratic populists. There can be no neutrality in the media war. More than 200 Russian academics have spoken out against Putin’s attack in an open letter.
Pro-Kremlin Russian artists such as Soprano Anna Netrebko and conductor Valery Gargiyev have already decided which way to go. Putin’s favorite conductor, nicknamed Gargiyev, was fired from several orchestras and operas in Italy and Germany. Netrebko, who refused to take sides, although he attended a charity event with leaders from the separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, decided to take time off the stage.
The extent to which the Russian media manipulates its own population is regularly shown on the country’s state television. Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began, and in line with the crippling sanctions imposed on Russia by the civilized world, a pro-Putin television presenter publicly threatened to use nuclear weapons against the West, saying that it was a world without space. He was no longer fit to live in Russia.
The great American journalist, Edward R. Muro’s message is not exactly the same. Good night and good luck.
