The predictability of Russian TV propaganda along with its aptitude for enthusiastic and boundless lies is one of its generic features. You do not have to be an expert to divine the propagandists’ response to any event – not only related to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. A phrase of Russian movie ‘Election Day’ comes to mind: “Get used to me. If it is Israeli it is about militarist, if it is Soviet it is about champagne, if it is to launch it is about cosmonaut”. So everyone has got used to this long ago.

Since this text deals with the events of second fortnight of February, the trend of Russian channels about Ukraine was formed on the basis of ‘recurring’ Minsk agreement. One may easily suggest that the whole information flow will be based on the following points:

Putin is a peace-maker. This is for his hard line that the European leaders consented to the truce and a sort of calm was brought to Donbas;

The only party that fulfills the truce conditions absolutely and unconditionally is, obviously and exclusively, is the terrorists so called ‘DPR’ and ‘LPR’. They take advantage of truce for ‘peaceful construction and restauration of economics’ and dream of peace since almost all of them are former constructors, workers and landowners who had to learn fast to use ‘GRAD’, ‘SMERCH’ and ‘URAGAN’ rocket systems. They are not Russian militaries at all. As Dmitri Bykov wrote ‘there are no evidences that this is Russia’. Though there are no evidences for TV channels only. The Russian press, let alone the social networks, talks about the presence of Russian regular army almost at the top of its lungs, and this did not use to be so before. It is enough to mention the recent February reportage of Ilia Barabanov in ‘Kommersant’ or the interview with a Buryat tankman in ‘Novaya Gazeta’

Symptomatic extract from Barabanov:

“The logic of military actions in recent months is simple enough: military missions either by the self-declared republics or ‘some regions of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts’ (as defined in the Minsk Agreement) are performed by those who do know how to make war. They perform the assigned task and back off leaving the occupied villages and cities, commandant’s offices and road-blocks to local insurgents who would meet journalists ready to tell about their miner’s past. At one point one may actually believe that these are the locals only who went to struggle against the ‘junta’ but then somebody makes a bad break:

- There are Buryats over that waste bank.

- Buryats, who are they?

- Eeh… Donbass natives.

Everyone smiles, they understand everything. Last days before the final assault of Debaltsevo, in order not to show off ‘Buryats’, the access to Uglegorsk (the attack into the mousetrap was developed from Uglegorsk) was closed for journalists to the utmost. Couple days after the attack when Debaltsevo was finally ‘cleaned up’, the road blocks would be planted with miners and the doors would be open for journalists again.”

Well-known Russian patriot Egor Prosvirnin would write on his facebook:

“It is so sad to see the attempts of the military and patriotic community to disprove the Buryat’s interview in ‘Novaya Gazeta’. Friends, I am revealing a horrible secret to you: the whole world admitted the involvement of Russian military in the Ukrainian war since Ilovaisk (you just need to look at the map to understand everything). Mentioning Ilovaisk, Foreign Policy simply writes ‘Russian tanks’, NATO Secretary General states 6 000 servicemen, the Brookings report for expert society gives the figure of 9 000. The Russian campaign is not discussed by the West, it is beyond any doubt. Why they do not have satellite images and so on? Because conclusive evidences give carte blanche to war hawks of the USA and Europe, and the West will not have any escape button. Neither USA nor EU are ready to get absolutely involved in Ukraine so they reserve an opportunity of compromise without giving ‘nuclear’ accusations that can’t be revoked.

To stop arguments: have you ever thought that the Novorossiya’s artillery uses the echelons of shells during the combat actions? And these echelons have to come from somewhere? Yes.

All ‘disclaimers of blatant lie about Russian troops’ work for the internal audience only, the outside world does not listen to and does not try to hear that.”

It is still unknown what these ‘changes’ in traditional trends are about, anyway they have not got to the TV yet. Though when we are writing these words DOZHD announces the program about Russian ‘volunteers’ in Donbas, it could be that they will tell something new, but anyway this is DOZHD.

In its turn, ‘Ukrainian junta’ – as presented by Russian propaganda – shirks the performance of peace agreements, it does not withdraw or withdraws too slow the heavy armament, and undertakes force rotation. Meanwhile the very Ukraine, who would doubt, is suffering the disaster, hryvnia crash, people are buying boxes of sunflower oil, sacks of cereals, flour and sugar, the supply of provisions is running out. Ukraine is expecting food riots in the nearest future, as Moscow channels whip up tension.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian parliament coalition is close to the breakup, a certain Parubiy – a notorious extremist – left for the USA to ask for weapon. Given this, who would doubt that we (Russia) are struggling against America and not against khokhols.

Is there something new about the choice of these topics or the way they are covered by Russian channels? The answer is no. Was the propaganda heat scaled down after Minsk-2? The answer is negative again. The coverage of small fluctuations in this or that ‘Ukrainian’ issue is a low-yield activity. It has been so long ago.

Boris Nemtsov was murdered on the eve of the last day of February. So the detailed analysis how the Russian channels covered this will be presented in the next monitoring. Nevertheless, the first response was quite predictable. From the looney statement of Putin’s press-secretary Peskov ‘about the rating (of the murdered politician) slightly above an average citizen’ to the cynical attempts of LifeNews to fudge a dirty mundane story to discredit the deceased.

This episode has a particular detail. The enthusiasm of media people to protect Putin from any suspicion immediately and so to cloud the victim’s name has turned up so fast and openly that, apparently, they had to be barked at to bring them to reason and adjust the approaches.

This situation is rather symptomatic since it shows that the performers do not even need special orders to maintain the propaganda heat. Together with the "brought-up" audience they are now a sort of "self-cocking machine of hatred”. Incidentally, many Russian liberals pointed it out as an indirect cause of the murder of Boris Nemtsov ...

Now the question is much more serious: if the Russian authority is able enough to control its propaganda industry, or it is doomed to become its hostage? Obviously, it's time to abandon the illusions being brought by experts (by us as well) the last few months that Putin just needs to clap in order to swing round the psychological state of the society at his discretion.

A fresh look at what is up with the Russians was brought by the article of Ilya Gerasimov with quite symptomatic title “ ‘The Word against the Word’: Is It Possible to Prevent the Cold Civil War in Russia to Get to the Hot Stage?". By the way, the article has been translated into Ukrainian by our colleague, Ukrainian historian Andriy Portnov, and it is of great interest to those who are interested in the actual situation in the Russian society.

We have considered the conclusions and observations Ilya Gerasimov primarily in the context of Russian propaganda and its effects on the morale of the Russians. A concept introduced by Michel Foucault - "regime of truth" is the determining factor in his reasoning. According to him:

“… Every society has its regime of truth, its ‘general policy’ of truth that is a system of arguments accepted and used as the true ones; the mechanisms and bodies allowing to distinguish true statements from false ones; the way that confirms the former and the latter; the technologies and procedures believed to be real to obtain the truth; the status of those who are entrusted to tell the things that operate as true.”

Then Foucault argues about the circular dependence of the regime of truth on power (power – political and discursive – imposes a certain idea about criteria of truth, the regime of truth makes the discursive basis for the power legitimacy).

The author believes that within the model ‘regime of truth’ “one can understand the principle impossibility of ‘objective’ talk about the war – the Great Patriotic or current war of RF against Ukraine. The most good-minded liberal media (like DOZHD) suppose that in order to have an objective coverage one has to give floor to both sides of the conflict. They give floor to a Ukrainian representative then to a separatist, but it does not result in 3-D (objective) image. A neutral viewer has an impression of confrontation ‘the word against the word’ (where one cannot understand why they should deliberately believe one side more and not the other), and expecting that the truth must be somewhere in the middle they are surprised to find themselves in the zone of Russian officious propaganda”. This is how the ‘regime of truth’ – that does not describe the content of truth but the very approach to establishing and proving – works.

This very support of a certain ‘regime of truth’ brackets the semiliterate provincial Black-Hundreders with the world-famous Russian culture figures – still being of astonishment for Ukrainian colleagues. This is also the case because their financial and social status is also determined by and rooted in the same ‘regime of truth’. Only in it their hacks may be rated and rewarded as ‘patriotic masterpiece’. In it, the delusive ‘theories’ of Dugin and speculations of Glaziev may become ‘ideological and economic systems’ influencing the life of a huge country.

Forgive us for heavy citing, but we would like to quote another part showing a sort of diagnosis of the present Russian society – being a propaganda victim and at the same time a propaganda reproduction mechanism – sometimes having even some ‘creative development’:

“Imagine a society of people not having their own opinion why the society exists, but having clear idea what the membership in such a society ‘must give’ them, what the formal signs of such a membership are. And this is not about conformism which is a secondary and not general sign deriving from the major one: the absence of subjectness that is the self-awareness of a proper member of a society having relations with other members. “It is not up to you or to us” to judge liar journalists because neither you nor we can tell why you and we need to exist in the same boundaries with Chechens, Buryats and Russians of Vladivostok; neither you nor we can tell what in our life depends on Crimea annexation to RF; neither you nor we know why Putin means Russia. But we do know that despite this total social apathy and aphasia (to be more exact, in reward for that) we are entitled to formal documented statuses of: a citizen of the great state and bearer of great culture, a holder of highest morals and a beneficiary of the powerful economy. You do not have to do anything: to work, read books, behave yourself. We do not exist as a community but formally we have the society, the economics, the geopolitical status. Though this exists only within a special regime of truth with the algorithm of the reality perception and answering to delicate questions.

For example: the greatness of our country is proven by furiously hostile response of the USA and Europe. Is this hostility caused by a chain of hostile acts of RF? But the RF was responding to expected furiously hostile actions of the USA and Europe (caused by the greatness of our country) – for example, probable location of NATO bases in Crimea. We are getting to a point clearly showing the impenetrability of boundaries of the chosen regime of truth to the outside logics and actual evidence.

How one can prove that there has never been any probability of location of NATO bases in Crimea in close vicinity to the RF Black See Fleet bases? Suppose, it is unlikely in 20 years, but in 50?

The RF invasion in Ukraine? – there are no appropriate evidences, but the main point is that there is no Ukraine, there is a battle of giants – the RF against the USA; given such a scale, 10-20 Russian Army battalions in Donbas cannot be considered as a considerable invasion army.

Falsified elections of State Duma and President? – there are no appropriate evidences, but rocking the boat plays into the hands of the country’s enemies and jeopardizes our – unmerited but guaranteed – formal statuses.”

The monitoring is carried out by NGO “Тelekrytyka” supported by the USAID funding provided through the ‘Internews Network’.