As the Party amps up the relentless campaign to march Oceania off to war with Eastasia, there’s no shortage of propaganda and Memory-Holing from the Minitrue.
The narrative is as clear as a Two Minutes of Hate: the world stands with the brave, freedom-loving democracy of Ukraine, against the vicious, Russian ogre.
But, what exactly are we being told to “stand with”?
Because the Ukraine is neither free nor a democracy. In fact, the Ukraine was ranked 98th of 165 countries, about as free as Burkina Faso, Liberia, Jordan, and other such bastions of liberty. Its “Political Rights” score, according to Freedom House, is 26, compared to New Zealand’s 40 and Australia’s 39. Its “Democracy percentage” 39.29.
But, didn’t new president Vlodomy Zelensky change all that?
In a move hailed by pro-Western Ukrainians, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy unplugged three television networks overnight that he said spread Kremlin-funded “propaganda” and served as a bullhorn of an increasingly popular pro-Moscow party […]
At the dawn of his presidency in 2019, Zelenskyy pledged to “never, ever shut down any TV networks”, and key members of his Servant of the People party frequented the studios of the three television stations he would order off the air.
Although Zelenksy (the number of “y”s seems to fluctuate, depending on the source) decisively won the election triggered by the violent overthrow of the former, pro-Russian government, he certainly wasn’t without critics.
At least, until he silenced them.
The trio shut down are part of a dozen TV networks in Ukraine owned by several regional oligarchs. The networks produced plenty of exclusive content, covered the entire spectrum of Ukraine’s political life and refrained from directly praising the Kremlin.
But their anchors often called the central government’s conflict with Russia-backed separatists in the southeastern region of Donbass a “civil war”, said that Crimea’s population overwhelmingly supported their peninsula’s annexation by Moscow in 2014, and called for the restoration of peace and trade with Moscow.
The networks are owned by an opposition politician, although it is alleged that the “real owner” is pro-Kremlin politician Viktor Medvedchuk, whose daughter was baptised by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Medvedchuk was placed under house arrest in 2021.
Purely coincidentally, no doubt, Medvedchuk’s Opposition Platform for Life (OPFL), with the second-largest faction in Ukraine’s lower house, had been gaining ground on Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.
The OPFL is gaining clout as Zelenskyy’s supporters increasingly gravitate towards the party, observers say.
“Zelenskyy, as a prominent television personality, strikes at his competitor in the field he understands best,” researcher Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany’s Bremen University told Al Jazeera.
The OPFL has indeed become slightly more popular than Zelenskyy’s party […] According to a survey released on Thursday by the Rating pollster, 18.9 percent of Ukrainians support the OPFL, while the Servant of the People party lags just behind, with 18.6 percent support […]
The networks widely covered his steps to settle the separatist conflict. But in recent months, they began to harshly criticise Zelenskyy’s policies as his ratings plummeted.
Of course, this was all a year ago. No doubt the war has somewhat altered the scales of popularity. Nevertheless, the closures show a slightly different side to the narrative the West is being fed.
In an interesting little twist, remember Vice President Joe Biden bragging about how he’d influenced the Ukrainian government?
Zelenskyy’s decision seems like an attempt to win points with US President Joe Biden, who called him one day before the ban, on Monday, for the first time after his election.
Biden oversaw Ukraine between 2009 and 2017 while serving as vice president under Barack Obama, and visited Kyiv six times.
Al Jazeera
But that was last year. Zelensky is the new Churchill, now.
A Ukrainian peace negotiator has been shot dead ahead of the latest round of talks to end the war amid claims he was a Russian spy.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said Denis Kireev, 45, was a spy and former banker who was killed during an operation to ‘defend the nation’.
After his death, the government hailed him as a ‘hero’ but MPs claimed he was shot and killed by Ukraine’s security service after resisting arrest on suspicion of ‘treason’.
Daily Mail
Naturally, each side is blaming the other. Who to believe? Who knows.
Which brings us to the essential point: this is not about being “pro-Russia”. Press freedom and democracy are not exactly by-words in Putin’s Russia, either.
The point is that the media-political narrative of “Good Guy” Ukraine versus “Bad Guy” Russia is clearly bullshit. It’s increasingly sounding as if it’s being used to soften us up to jump into yet another war on the other side of the world, where’s there’re no “good guys”.
“Stand with” Ukraine all you want, if it makes you look virtuous on social media. Just don’t ask our sons and daughters to die for what is obviously just another despotic, authoritarian regime.
