Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 31 – The major
military exercise Vladimir Putin announced earlier and that has sparked
concerns that it is a preparation for a new military move against Ukraine
concludes today (topwar.ru/99985-sosredotachivayuschayasya-rossiya.html),
raising new questions about what the Kremlin leader intends and will do next.
One new indication is provided by
the fact that Moscow has sent into the Russian-occupied portion of the Donbass
a group of journalists from Zvezda television, a network that has regularly
promoted Russia’s war against Ukraine (charter97.org/ru/news/2016/8/31/220132/
and facebook.com/dmitry.tymchuk/posts/945669515561704).
In normal military operations, the
journalists come only after the troops; but in Putin’s “hybrid” war which has
made propaganda a centerpiece of his operations, the reverse has often been
true; and that makes this new report by Dmitry Tymchuk worrisome, albeit not
definitive as to what the Kremlin will do next.
Indeed, as Russian commentator
Vataly Shchigeltsky points out, what Putin is doing may have far more to do
with domestic Russian conditions than with any plans to attack. As he writes, “there
is no war but there are all the conditions of wartime,” something that generates
patriotic fervor and support for the leader (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=57C54A1B48C5A).
“Talk about a possible war in the
near future seems empty,” he says. “There is no reason to attack Russia, a
country which is rapidly being destroyed by the hands of its very own ‘elite.’
And it is senseless for Russia to go on the attack,” given its defeats and the
price it is paying for them.
But the Russian elite has a
compelling reason to gin up wartime emotions: It is only way it can “extend”
its rule by justifying in the minds of its own members and the Russian
population at large the self-imposed isolation of the country from the outside
world, “following the behests of Antonio Salazar,” the Portuguese fascist
leader.
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