ES Vienna, April 20, 2022
The war rages on, with Russian troops now thrusting forward on a 300-mile front into the Donbas and Ukraine’s industrial heartland But according to UK intelligence, they are having a tougher time than anticipated. And in the huge sprawl of the Mariupol steelworks some 1000 civilians are still holed up along with soldiers and refusing to surrender.
Russian state media have played a nefarious role in Putin’s war on Ukraine, greatly helped by the “Putin understanders” exposed by the AEJ at the start of the war, and in America by the now-notorious fellow-traveller, Trumpist Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson, with his huge US following. He is the most fluent, popular, and mendacious of Putin’s supporters – and the subject of a leaked 12-page internal Kremlin memo urging that his Fox broadcasts be aired “as much as possible” on Russian state tv.
“Why do I care what’s going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?” Tucker Carlon demanded as early as 2019 – Russia’s onslaught having in reality begun in 2014. “I’m serious. And why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am.”
Before the war often doggedly provincial/ national, the western media have since then often played a serious educational role in bringing on stage historians of Ukraine, a country about which most people knew little or nothing. The war also inspired some prescient analysts and writers such as Yale professor Timothy Snyder – a man of quiet, understated authority – and some of the most courageous reporters of their generation.
And Putin’s adversaries in Ukraine have also discovered their own form of hybrid war, the use of AI to identify many of the soldiers who have inflicted such insane savagery on their country, and who may, one day, be forced to answer for what they have done.
LINKS
- PBS 01/04/22 Anne Applebaum- interview : “There is no liberal world order“ – on autocrats and western (esp US) acceptance of non-democracy
- Fox News 14/04/22: Carlson backs Elon Musk $47bn bid to buy 100% of Twitter – “Musk is challenging censorship” (see also: AEJ on Musk and Twitter bid)
- Daily Mirror, UK 18/04/22: Head of RT explains Russia is ‘waging war against NATO’ not Ukraine
- The Truth Seekers 15/04/22: Disentangling Tucker Carlson lies
- Economist 22/02/22 What is hybrid war and is Putin waging one in Ukraine?