A day before the start of the European Parliament elections, Putin got the opportunity to reach the ears of European voters and once again acted as a top agitator to support his allies and increase the division between the political elites of the West and their population.
To imagine Hitler’s Great Press Conference for the world media, primarily the Euro-Atlantic media, for example, in June 1943, with deep reflections on Germany’s desire for peace, is possible only in a dystopian novel.
But the press conference of the illegitimate Russian dictator, who has an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court in The Hague, who acted as a destroyer of the world order established after World War II, who is responsible for daily terrible crimes against humanity, became possible in the third year of the war against Ukraine.
On the premises of “Lakhta Centre” in the office of “Gazprom” in St. Petersburg, on 5 June, after several years of interruptions in holding similar events against the background of the flags of the Russian Empire and the USSR, the illegitimate Russian dictator, through representatives of 16 countries representing the world’s leading news agencies, for three and a half hours, had the opportunity to brainwash, implement Russian IPSO, and influence the decisions of voters on the eve of important elections.
Moreover, none of the participants managed to ask even one least pressing question.
To give a long-time representative of the special services access to the ears of millions of people from countries that he calls unfriendly and not ask a single potent question is, in the words of Talleyrand, “a mistake more terrible than a crime.”
To arrange a warm bath, which was supposed to wash away the image of the dictator primarily in the eyes of the world public, to intensify the split between the Western elites and the voters, to blur the truth and the objective picture of reality in conditions when Putin is waging a total subversive war against the positions of the West and within the West itself – this is for sure one of the most successful informational and psychological operations that the aging dictator managed during his entire reign.
What can you ask the head of state, who always tells lies, in a very trusting tone, demonstrating his confidence and invincibility, and in such a barrenly flattering way? It is difficult to understand.
Even Indian and Brazilian journalists, the leaders of whose countries take a very slippery position regarding Russian aggression, refused to be extras in this one-man play with predicted negative consequences for the audience. Just as the Egyptian side referred to the impossibility of participating in this circus due to the injury of their journalist (as if he was the only one in the entire country). Instead, some of the large Western agencies did not hesitate to bring a barrel of continuously gushing rubbish to the ears of their compatriots. It is difficult to say what caused such a mistake, the famous Russian corruption or other motives, but after Tucker Carlson’s laudatory interview, it became the second major breach in the information security system of the West, which is already exposed to daily blows from Russia (cyber attacks, the spread of fakes and networks of influence).
And Putin used this opportunity. A day before the elections to the European Parliament, which can significantly affect the change of European politics, Putin lamented that European leaders have lost their independence and are not able to protect their national interests, which leads to the deterioration of the economic situation, and therefore the well-being of ordinary Europeans. To please their masters from across the ocean, European leaders refuse, they say, cheap Russian gas and ordinary people suffer. Which, according to Putin, can change everything. This is the obvious intention, to create a split between European elites and societies, to take advantage of the existing troubles. Putin adopted the same policy when commenting on relations with the United States. For example, the USA (read the elites) is destroying itself, and this can be changed by changing the mood of society.
Germany, they say, has never been independent at all, and in its government, no one protects national interests, there is no full sovereignty. And Putin once again appeals to German voters. But to Italy, which did not give the appropriate permission, they say, well done and is the first in line to normalize relations.
Another important IPSO in Putin’s presentation concerned Ukraine directly. They said that nobody in the USA is interested in Ukraine, the USA is only interested in its own greatness. In Ukraine, the Americans will keep Zelensky at most until next spring, forcing him to lower the mobilization age to 18 and leave. According to Putin, Ukraine is suffering terrible losses, at least three times greater than Russian losses, which amount to approximately 50,000 per month. Unfortunately, at the press conference, there was not a single journalist with mathematical abilities who would have calculated that the mythical Putin calculations amount to almost one and a half million people in more than two years (that is, they exceed almost half the total number of people involved in the Defence Forces). Or vice versa, who would ask whether monthly Russian losses, according to Putin’s testimony, amount to almost 17,000 soldiers (which is approximately equal to neutral calculations), so he doesn’t feel sorry for those almost 400,000 (according to his own maths) of his citizens, whom he incompetently killed in the war for landing in Donbas.
The leading and prominent ears of the news agencies (almost all of whom, by no means coincidentally, had experience working in Moscow, know the Russian language and love Russian culture) were fed yet another portion of chutzpah, that it was not Putin, they say, but the West that started the war. About how, for almost eight years, he did not recognize the “republics” that “opposed the coup d’état and were bombed by the Kyiv regime.” And no one asked why the “liberation” of Donbas turned into the complete and total destruction of its cities and citizens on his part, why, in “liberating” Donbas, Putin launched a large-scale invasion with an attempt to capture Kyiv and with the first practice of nuclear terrorism in world history (an attack and the seizure of nuclear facilities in various parts of Ukraine outside Donbas). No one asked why, in implementing the “goals of the SVO”, Putin primarily destroyed educational institutions (almost 20% of which were affected), medical infrastructure (over 40% destroyed) and civilian life support systems.
Putin once again threatened that he would respond to the permission to use Western weapons on his territory, but not in the spirit of Medvedev, who every time promises nuclear Armageddon, but by planning in the future to transfer to third powers the right to use his weapons. Alluding not only to the Houthis and Iranian proxies in the Middle East, but to a wide network of partners whose hands are destabilizing the situation in Africa, Asia, the Pacific region, and Latin America.
Putin, like Hitler, on the eve of the attack on Poland, exaltedly, without mincing words, assured that he was not going to attack NATO countries. Even this did not make them ask the relevant questions, reminding him how he assured everyone that he would not attack Ukraine.
In general, Putin tried once again to sell the image of a macho who was not affected by sanctions, a wise leader who is ready to compromise and, as it seems, worries about the problems of the population of Western countries more than his own. Only devilish undiplomatic statements about “dumb as a table” representatives of the West, who carry delusions, have lost their minds, betrayed Putin’s true attitude towards the countries that he has identified as enemies and against which he conducts undisguised aggression.
Well, he could not resist the traditional mention of Bandera, who, sitting in a German concentration camp from the first days of the German-Soviet war due to the refusal to withdraw the proclamation of the Act of Restoration of the Independence of Ukraine on 30 June, is still a “Nazi”, but in his new German partners – the party “Alternative for Germany”, he does not see Nazism.
In general, this press conference looked like a one-goal game with a large number of their players in a foreign team.
The West seems to have forgotten Clausewitz’s maxim: not to allow the enemy to destroy the unity between the political leadership and the nation, especially in the conditions of a war that, although not declared, is in full swing.
Also, it seems, the West has forgotten an important Homeric parable from his “Odyssey”. Sailing past the island of the Sirens, who lure sailors with their sweet song and cause them a cruel death, Odysseus made his sailors fill their ears with wax and tie himself to the mast. The meaning of this parable is simple: you can’t give the enemy unhindered access to the ears of your citizens, and you can’t allow yourself to respond to his flattery. Odysseus survived. The descendants of his European civilization must survive. Because Scylla and Charybdis are waiting for the song from the island of the Sirens…
