Staunton, May 6 – Ordinary Russians
are being encouraged to think that a war with the West is imminent not only by
the casual acceptance of that outcome by commentators close to the Kremlin (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/05/russian-elites-increasingly-accept-idea.html)
but also by media outlets that reach a different and possibly larger audience
in Russia.
A clear example of this latter trend
is provided by an article in Pravda
yesterday that argues there are at least 12 signs of “an approaching war of the
West with Russia” and calls on its readers to supply more lest Russia be
unprepared as it was for Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 (pravda.ru/world/05-05-2018/1383260-0/).
Among these warning signs, Petr
Yermilin says, are the following: NATO exercises in the Baltic countries and
Poland, intensified NATO air activity near the Russian border, the heating up
of the conflict in the Donbass, the fighting in Syria, rising tensions between
Israel and the US with Iran, and the Skripal case.
In every case, of course, the Pravda writer ignores the extent to
which these supposedly warlike actions by the West are a response to real moves
by the Putin regime that no responsible government or alliance could fail to
make efforts to counter. But that is
perhaps not the most serious problem with Yermilin’s article.
He concludes it with the following
appeal: “If you know still more signs of war, add them to this article in your
commentaries. Before the attack of fascist Germany on the USSR, there were
sufficient signs” of what was coming although they were not always attended to.
“Today,” the KPRF commentator says, “Russia
in fact has a common state border with NATO countries and with those who pray for
the alliance. Observations and knowledge
about the facts [in these places] will permit us better to analyst how and when
the potential enemy will attack our country.”
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