Putin Launches Broad New Attack against Non-Russian Languages

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 20 – Vladimir Putin wants to make the number of hours of Russian-language instruction in Russian schools inviolable, something that will mean non-Russian parents will be able to secure instruction in their native languages only by sacrificing other programs and thus putting the future academic and professional careers of their children at risk.

 

            Such an approach, announced by the Kremlin leader yesterday at a joint session of the Council of Inter-National Relations and the Council on the Russian Language, can be expected to find enthusiastic support from Russian nationalists and be viewed as “ethnically neutral” by many observers abroad.

 

            But its consequences for non-Russians are likely to be severe, reducing still further the number of languages in which their children can receive instruction in their native languages and the number of hours devoted to them and sparking outrage and protests among many of these groups who view the defense of their language as a key part of the defense of their nation.

 

            Putin said many things his defenders will use to deny what the obvious thrust of his words. Thus, he told the group every nation had the right to its own language, that violating that will lead to problems, and that moves forward must not harm Russian or non-Russian languages (nazaccent.ru/content/16073-putin-problema-v-obuchenii-nacionalnym-yazykam.html).

 

            But no one should be misled. First, the Kremlin leader explicitly said “the state must constantly raise the quality of instruction of Russian for pupils regardless of their place of residence or specialization” and that Russian must become a separate self-standing category subject rather than being part, as it is now, of a “language and literature” one (stoletie.ru/na_pervuiu_polosu/vladimir_putin_jedinstvo_strany_napramuju_zavisit_ot_znanija_russkogo_jazyka_509.htm).

 

            If that happens, it would mean that non-Russian children could only gain access to more hours of instruction in their native language by cutting hours on other, non-language subjects, something that was never true even in the harshest Soviet times. As Putin noted, “the education ministry will ensure that the number of hours in Russia will nowhere be reduced.”

 

            Two of Putin’s other comments provide additional evidence of where he is going. On the one hand, he insists that 96 percent of all Russian Federation residents speak Russian, a figure that includes many who speak another language as their first and would like to have more instruction in that language.

 

            And on the other, Putin pointed to the situation in Russian occupied Crimea where he said three languages – Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar – have equal rights, an assertion with which no independent observer of what is occurring there with the attacks on Ukrainian and especially Crimean Tatar languages would concur.

 

            At present, Putin continued, instruction in Russian Federation schools is conducted in 30 languages, although he did not mention that in most of the non-Russian 29 this instruction is severely restricted in hours and to the lower grades; and he said that courses were available in 89 languages, including many foreign languages.

 

            Putin’s Russian first approach was also underscored by his expressions of concern about lexical borrowings in Russian, something that many Russian nationalists are especially upset about. As in his other comments, Putin sought to portray himself as concerned about this but at the same time unprepared to be draconian as yet in doing anything ab out it.

 

            One detail of yesterday’s meeting is especially important. It was supposed to take place on February 6 but was delayed because of the visit to Moscow of French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel who had come to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

 

            A Putin aide suggested that the delay gave “specialists” additional time to “better prepare for the meeting.” That may be true, but what is certainly the case is that it gave those pushing for the expanded use of Russian and the imposition of new limits on non-Russian to express their views and in a very public manner.

 

            Last week, for example, Russian activists in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Buryatia and Komi complained in an open letter to Putin that pupils in their republics were not being allowed to study Russian as their native language and called on him to do something to protect the Russian nation (kazan.mk.ru/articles/2015/05/14/putina-prosyat-spasti-russkiy-yazyk-v-nacionalnykh-respublikakh-rossii.html).

 

            And Russian commentators like Mikhail Delyagin of the Moscow Institute for the Problems of Globalization had time to claim that forcing Russian speaking children to study local languages in the national republics was promoting ethnic friction. Naturally, he said nothing about non-Russians being forced to study Russian (sibpower.com/novosti-regionov/ruskii-mir-dolzhen-byt-nairusneishim.html).

 

            Such statements, of course, allow Putin and his entourage to present themselves as responding to the popular will; and Russian nationalists are already celebrating what the Kremlin leader has done as “a serious step in the defense of Russian” and proposing additional steps as well (ruskline.ru/news_rl/2015/05/20/eto_sereznyj_shag_v_storonu_zawity_russkogo_yazyka/).

 

            Non-Russians are likely to respond in the coming days and weeks, and their views about what Putin is about are likely to be very different than those of the Russian president and his Russian nationalist supporters.

 

‘Putin, Kadyrov and Co.’ Now Can Kill Anyone and Hide Their Role, Eidman Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 20 – The investigation of the murder of Boris Nemtsov shows that the first-ever “killer agency” capable of handling the entire course of a killing, from the selection of a victim to the disposition of the case in such a way that those behind it will not be held responsible, has been organized in Russia, according to Igor Eidman.

 

            And that means, the Moscow commentator says, that “as long as the Putin-Kadyrov killer agency continues to exist” – something that tensions between Moscow and Grozny may ultimately destroy – “new murders of those it finds unsuitable can take place at any time” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=555B0779C9897).

 

            According to Eidman, “certain senior bureaucrats and leaders of the law enforcement organs in Moscow and in Grozny participate in the work of this agency to one degree or another.” They tend to choose Chechens of low rank and importance as the executors because public opinion can be whipped up against them and those who order the killings protected.

 

            But what makes the Putin-Kadyrov murder agency especially effective is its ability to assign as investigator of any particular murder “its own man” who will make sure that the investigation goes so far and no further and imposes punishment only on low level lackeys who can be sacrificed to protect those above them.

 

            Moreover, this “killer agency” involves “a limited circle of people,” and consequently, “all its murders are similar to one another, suspicions fall on one and the same people, and one and the same ‘law enforcers’ conduct the investigation,” Eidman points out; and for those paying attention, that gives the game away.

 

            “The similarity between the murders of Boris Nemtsov and Ruslan Yamadayev are obvious,” he notes. In both cases, they took place in especially well-guarded places with observation cameras in operation. In both, suspicion immediately fell on the Chechens, and in both, those who ordered the crimes have not been identified.

 

            Sometimes this model reaches a kind of absurdity: in these two murders, for example, even the name of the suspects – Dadayev – was the same, reflecting the assumption of those who planned the murder that blaming a Chechen will always be sufficient to end any serious public pressure to track down the real killers.

 

            According to Eidman, Vladislav Surkov is a key member of this “agency.”  Nemtsov was his “personal enemy” because the murdered Russian politician had worked to have Surkov declared persona non grata in the West, and in fact “Surkov (Dudayev) is the only person equally closely connected with Putin and Kadyrov.”

 

            Surkov thus may be “the coordinator of the Kremlin and Kadyrov parts of the killer agency, including its role in the Nemtsov case.” Sometimes this agency targets those like Yamadayev who threaten Kadyrov, and sometimes it targets those like Nemtsov who threaten Putin.

 

            In the latter case, Eidman says, Putin is the one who wanted Nemtsov dead and “Kadyrov is simply the executor,” while in the former, Yamadayev was a personal problem for Kadaryov. For Kadyrov was concerned, “Nemtsov was only a Moscow babbler opposition figure,” but for Putin, “Nemtsov like Litvinenko was a national traitor” who had to be destroyed.

 

            The murders of Litvinenko and Nemtsov were such high profile actions that they “could not be carried out without the evil will of the Russian president. The difference between them is only that in Litvinenko’s case, the Russian special services didn’t make use of the Kadyrov smoke screen.”

 

            Now, however, Eidman concludes, “the Putin killer agency works more cleverly.” It always has Chechens who can be named as the executors, and consequently, this criminal agency of a criminal state is likely to target and kill even more of its opponents in the future – and get away with it if Russians and others do not hold it to account.

 

Ukraine Must Follow Western Rather than Russian Approach to Islam, Yakubovich Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 20 – Ukraine is still living with the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) system the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union imposed on the faithful, but if Ukraine’s Muslims are to escape the limitations and dangers these institutions entail, they must adopt the more open approach to Islamic communities found in Europe and the US.

 

            The MSD system, Mikhail Yakubovich says, not only ignores the highly decentralized, democratic and intellectual bases of the faith and insists on a ritual-centered understanding of religious life but also ethnicizes and ghettoizes the faithful rather than securing their integration into the broader community (islamsng.com/ukr/interviews/9074).

 

            The Russian MSD system, which traces its roots to the Orenburg Mohammedan Spiritual Assembly established in the 18^th century, was and remains a device by which the political authorities control the Islamic faithful from the top down and seek to restrict Islam to the observance of a limited number of rituals.

 

            It has no canonical basis in Islam, but worse, it bureaucratizes, ethnicizes and politicizes the faith and restricts its development of an intellectual system, thus putting these formal structures and those who control them at far greater risk from outside and often more radical Muslims who reject such a limited vision of the Islamic community.

 

            As Yakubovich, the translator of the Koran into Ukrainian, points out, the leaders of the heads of the various MSDs depend on ethnic divisions to support themselves, are demonstratively loyal to the political authorities, and devote their attention to “the preservation of the ritual component of Islam” while giving much less attention to its intellectual core.

 

            And as far as ideology is concerned, he continues, “the majority of ‘spiritual administrations of the post-Soviet space lay stress on their ‘traditionalism’ in the face of new Muslim movements,” groups they often find it difficult to counter because of their own lack of intellectual preparation and thus fall back on administrative resources – their own and the state’s.

 

            Despite the fact that “many centralized spiritual administrations (especially in the Russian Federation) have invested heavily in the development of Islamic education, science, publishing and international cooperation, the crisis of religious authority in the post-Soviet space remains to this day one of the sharpest problems of these Muslim communities.”

 

            “To a certain extent,” Yakubovich says, these problems are very much in evidence in Ukraine too.  “For example,” he writes, “ethnocentric Islamic religious institutions which position themselves as ‘traditional’ have achieved relatively little Islamic education, the development of media or the establishment of a generation of Ukrainian Islamic scholars.”

 

            The lack of significant progress in training such religious authorities is especially critical in places like Ukraine where there is a compelling need for fetwas which always must reflect a specific time and place, something that means new ones are required when a society like Ukraine’s is undergoing rapid and radical change, Yakubovich says.

 

            For this to happen, he suggests, what is needed is “the experience of an organization of a somewhat different type, which presupposes not centralization under the leadership of a single person or group of persons but rather a combination of autonomous communities with common approaches to the interpretation of Islamic doctrine.”

 

            That is the path that Muslim parishes in the United States and Europe have followed, and it is the one Ukraine should follow as well. In it, the mullah or imam is a paid employee of his parish and thus is not beholden to or subject to the orders of others. And thus, he is in a position to block “radical ideas or the policy of isolation and ‘ghettoization.’”

 

            This approach, he argues, is especially important now because internally displaced persons from eastern Ukraine have settled in the central and western oblasts of the country and need to come up with structures that are both more flexible and less isolated from non-Muslims than those in the existing MSDs.

 

            If Ukraine’s Muslims do move in this direction, it will be another way in which Ukraine will be becoming part of Europe. Equally important, it will represent a challenge to the way in which Moscow has insisted on doing business with Muslims and is likely to give new energy to Muslims in the Russian Federation who also would like to do away with the state MSD system.

 

Russian Occupation Alienating Even Crimean Tatars Ready to Cooperate with Moscow, Amelina Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 19 – The Russian occupation authorities are now alienating even those few Crimean Tatars who had been ready to cooperate, an indictment of Moscow and the Sevastopol regime that is especially telling because it comes from Yana Amelina, an analyst who has gained notoriety for her often impassioned defense of Russian imperialism.

 

            Moreover, as she puts it in an article published today, she spent “much more time” trying to find a Russian outlet that would publish her conclusions than she did writing, an indication Amelina says forces her to “involuntarily” conclude these outlets want “a different assessment of what is taking place in Crimea regardless of whether it corresponds to reality” (caucasreview.com/2015/05/pochemu-krymskie-tatary-razocharovyvayutsya-v-obeshhaniyah-moskvy/).

 

            Amelina, secretary of the Caucasus Geopolitical Club, entitles her essay, “Why the Crimean Tatars are Disappointed in Moscow’s Promises,” and says that the decision by the occupation authorities not to allow the Crimean Tatars to mark the 71^st anniversary of the deportation and to declare that those who wanted to hold it were “radically inclined members of the Mejlis” was a counterproductive mistake.

 

            Nariman Dzhelalov, the first deputy head of the Mejlis, angrily but understandably says that “law-abiding citizens … in a way specified by Russian Federation laws who had submitted the necessary documents, received a rejection and publicly declared that they do not plan any illegal actions are called radicals.”

 

            Dilyaver Akiyev, secretary of the Mejlis agrees. He says the authorities are “discrediting Russia” by their actions, and he promises that he will seek to use all the legal recourses available to Russian citizens because this is “my constitutional right” and not as those authorities appear to believe a manifestation of “extremism.”

 

            Ilmi Umerov, deputy chairman of the Mejlis, says that the authorities simply do not understand that the May 18 meetings are “devoted to the memory about a crime against the Crimean Tatars. It is a meeting in memory of those who died or passed away abroad.” It is a mark of respect and something that “unites the entire people!”

 

            And Zair Smedlyaev, head of the Kurultay election commission, pointedly adds: “Those who today are in power are afraid of the people” and especially of the Crimean Tatars despite the fact that the people and the Crimean Tatars have obeyed the law and will continue to do so without fail.

 

            Umerov and Smedlyaev, Amelina notes, opposed the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and for that they can and should be criticized. “But as far as what concerns a meeting [on May 18], one can understand them,” given that they went about this in compliance with Russian law and showed no sign of violating it.

 

            “The impression is being created,” Amelina says, “that in Russian Crimea, although one does not want to believe it, they intend to continue the Kyiv policy of ignoring the interests of the Crimean Tatars,” despite Vladimir Putin’s April 2014 decree on the rehabilitation of repressed peoples and the acquisition of Russian citizenship by most Crimean Tatars.

 

            While it is of course true that the problems of the Crimean Tatars should be resolved only if that can be achieved without violating the views and rights of others, she continues, the Sebastopol authorities are dragging their feet and giving birth to “doubts about the sincerity of these [Russian] promises.”

 

            Recently, and this is “in no way a good sign,” Amelina says, “the position of the local authorities is eliciting open dissatisfaction not only among those in the Mejlis but also among the Crimean Tatar structures opposed to it which initially supported the return of the Crimea to the Russian Federation.

 

            As Vasvi Abduraimov, the head of the Milli Firka, told KrymMedia, the authorities decision to refuse to allow a meeting on May 18 represented “a colossal hit on the image of the Russian state” among Crimean Tatars.  The meeting should have been allowed because it is about a showing of respect to the Crimean Tatars and their past.

 

            This decision has also led to a sharpening of the rhetoric of the Mejlis which in recent months had taken a more “constructive” approach to dealing with the authorities. As a body, it has declared that the decision “does not withstand any legal or moral criticism, is a crude violation of generally recognized international norms and standards.”

 

            And as Amelina notes, “it would be strange if beyond the borders of Crimea,” outsiders did not make use of the decision to put pressure on Crimea” as they have done with meetings across Ukraine and with the declaration of “We are all Crimean Tatars now.”  “The media propaganda consequences of this for Russia are obvious.”

 

            Even more serious, Amelina says, the mistakes of the Crimean authorities are not exhausted by the decision to ban the meeting. They have been slow in resolving the land question, they have given out rehabilitation documents to only one of every six who have applied, and they have shut down Crimean Tatar media outlets.

 

            All these things are “viewed by a significant part of the Crimean Tatars as the non-fulfillment of promises” Moscow made and as “an attack on their rights,” something which is “giving rise to distrust in the local authorities and in Russia as a whole” and leading them to look to Kyiv, Ankara and Washington.

 

            According to the pro-Moscow Milli Firka analytic group and the Crimean Institute of Strategic Research, what this has means is that once again “the center for the administration of the processes of resolving the Crimean Tatar issue have been shifted to beyond the borders of Russia,” something that opens the way to destabilization on the peninsula.

 

            “It is possible,” Amelina says, “that this declaration is excessively alarmist. However, one won’t solve the problem of the integration of the Crimean Tatars into the Russian social-political space by means of banning a memorial meeting. Disappointment, especially when there is reason for it, is not an emotion on which one can build inter-ethnic peace.”

 

            “The achievement of real and not declarative stability in Crimea is possible only by taking into account the opinion of the Crimean Tatars and their complete participation in the life of the peninsula,” she continues. Continuing to label them “radically inclined” without evidence won’t contribute to that.

 

            Amelina’s words suggest that the situation in Crimea is far more explosive than Russian commentators have been willing to acknowledge, and they explain why she concludes by saying that what is necessary now is “a clear policy of the federal center concerning the Crimean Tatars” and Moscow’s insistence that its Crimean authorities carry it out.

Putin has Imposed His Values on Russian Society without Changing Himself, Kirillova Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 19 – Vladimir Putin has fundamentally transformed Russian society by imposing his own personal convictions on the country and convincing large numbers of Russians that everyone steals and is corrupt, freedom and democracy are covers for the organization of revolutions, and “objective truth does not exist in principle,” according to Kseniya Kirillova.

 

            Those three horrific ideas were very much part of Putin’s worldview from the very beginning, and thus it is not the case that he has changed as some commentators would like to insist in order to justify their earlier support for him but rather that the Kremlin leader has imposed them on Russian society and in part on people abroad.

 

            What makes this especially dangerous, the analyst suggests, is that Putin is having his own values reinforced rather than challenged and thus is likely to feel ever more validated and ever freer to push them, an outcome with disastrous consequences not only for Russian society but also for the world that for the time being must exist with him.

 

            In a commentary for Novy Region-2 today, Kirillova reviews the recent debate between Viktor Shenderovich and Nikolay Svanidze on the Ekho Moskvy portal. The former argues that Putin’s personal views have remained unchanged, while the latter talks about the evolution of his regime (nr2.com.ua/blogs/Ksenija_Kirillova/Skolko-bylo-Putinyh-i-ego-rezhimov-97022.html).

 

            Many Russian commentators and intellectuals are lining up on one side or the other, but “in fact,” Kirillova points out, “there is no contradiction between these two positions” because “’Putin’ and ‘Putin’s regime’ are somewhat different things” and should not be conflated as they often are.

 

            In democratic societies, the views of the leader affect some things but far from all whereas in authoritarian and even more totalitarian ones, “the personal qualities of a specific individual [leader] are reflected in society,” Kirillova argues, “and the level of this over the last 15 years in Russia has changed essentially.”

 

            What has happened is that “’Putin’s moral constant’ has gradually been transformed into ‘the moral constant’ of the majority of Russians” as a result of the  blurring of all moral absolutes, values, and guides” concerning corruption, democratic values, and the status of truth as such.

 

            Regarding corruption, the US-based analyst says, there is “a paradox” in that Putin’s Kremlin has not tried very hard to conceal the amount of theft and illegality it is engaged in but rather it has promoted the idea that everyone who can steal does including representatives of the liberal opposition.

 

             This effort has convinced the Russian population that “there is no sense in ‘changing one group of thieves for another,’ that theft for Russia is the norm, and that anyone who has power will invariably steal.”  That is why someone like Boris Nemtsov who didn’t was such a hated figure in Kremlin circles.

 

            Moreover, Putin and his regime have succeeded in convincing a majority of Russians that those in power now who steal for themselves are superior to those out of power who want to steal for others, Kirillova says.  That is why efforts to unmask Kremlin thievery have had so little resonance with the Russian population.

 

            “The immune system of the social organism,” she suggests, “has already become so infected with this virus that it is incapable and doesn’t even consider necessary of coming up with an anti-body. Russian publicists write big articles justifying corruption … and Russians are not able to believe that states exist where the level of corruption is quite low.”

 

            The same pattern with the same source and same methods, Kirillova continues, can be seen in the case of Russian attitudes toward democratic values.  “Putin has done everything to ensure” that Russians associate these not with what they are but with revolts, revolutions, crime, blood, death and anarchy.

 

            And most critically, it can be seen in the attitudes of Russians toward truth itself.  She cites the argument of Peter Pomerants who wrote in “The New York Times” last December that people like Putin with their Soviet way of thinking and their acceptance of duplicity as the basis of life have created a society in which everything is false but is accepted as if it weren’t.

 

            That produces extreme cynicism, and this cynicism is “useful for the state: when people cease to believe all institutions or lose values, it is easy to impose on them a conspiratorial worldview” and to get them to accept almost anything be it “Crimea is Ours” or “hybrid war” even though they know that these things are based on lies.

 

            According to Konstantin Borovoy, a Russian opposition politician, “70 percent of those who support Putin know he is lying. They know that Russia is conducting a war in the Donbas, they know that their fellow citizens shot down the Boeing, but they continue to support Putin” because they accept the notion that the Kremlin’s lies are “a means of war.”

 

             And in a further sign of the moral degradation of Russians thanks to Putin’s actions to bring them into correspondence with his own values, Borovoy says and Kirillova quotes him with approval, they are even prepared to accept the Stalinist notion that there are no Russian prisoners in Ukraine and that those who obviously exist deserve no pity.

 

 

Starovoitova and Novodvorskaya Embodied Russian Liberalism after Sakharov, Ikhlov Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, May 19 – Valeriya Novodvorskaya and Galina Starovoitova, the symbols of Russian liberalism after the death of Academician Andrey Sakharov, would have been 65 and 69 this week were they still alive. But tragically, Yevgeny Ikhlov writes, the two who shared a birthday passed from the scene when it became “completely clear that their mission had failed.”

 

            Starovoitova was killed when Russian political life had been transformed into something horrific, the Moscow commentator say, and Novodvorskaya died when “free and sovereign Russia had become ever more fascist and aggressive. They thus should be remembered not only for what they did but for what their deaths mean (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5559FF3621941).

 

            Despite all their differences, the two began their political careers at almost exactly the same time. In February 1988, Starovoitova, a Moscow ethnographer, declared her support for the Armenians of Karabakh and became “a heroine of the Armenian people” much in the same way that General Grigorenko had become a hero of the Crimean Tatars.

 

            Less than three months later, Novodvorskaya, a Soviet dissident, pushed Sergey Grigoryants to create a poly-ideological opposition party, the Democratic Union, which, as Ikhlov points out, was “to become the incubator of a multi-party Russian democracy. Not surprisingly, the powers that be were not happy with either of them.

 

            Ikhlov concludes that Starovoitova and Novodvorskaya “symbolized the two poles of Russian liberalism and Russian Westernism.” Indeed, “after the death of Academician Sakharov, it was precisely they who carried forward the two banners of democratic intellectual militance. And they fell, without laying down their arms. Each in her own battle.”

 

The Top Five Russian Lies about Ukraine This Week – and Growing Challenges for Those Interested in the Truth

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – As he has done each week in recent times, Dmitry Bukovsky of Kyiv’s “Delovaya stolitsa” provides a useful checklist of the top five “propaganda myths, fakes and stupidities of the Kremlin” about Ukraine. But another commentator, Yevgeny Kuzmenko, notes that Moscow’s activities are making it ever more difficult for Ukrainians to learn the truth.

            Bukovsky’s “Top Five” this week include the following (dsnews.ua/politics/top-5-propagandistskih-mifov-feykov-i-glupostey-kremlya-14052015085500):

1. Russian-controlled media in Eastern Ukraine put out the story that already during Yanukovich’s time, the European Union ordered the construction of “filtration camps” to be used to separate out those separatists who should be shot and those who should simply be excluded from public life.  What is remarkable about this, the Kyiv journalist says, the projection of myths back into the pre-Maidan period.
2. Russian media reported that a group of Ukrainian “fascists” had beaten a Russian veteran of World War II in Kyiv, but it turns out that there was no Russian veteran in Kyiv and the beating which did took place and was reported occurred in a village in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod oblast (mianews.ru/2015/05/07/v-kieve-molodye-fashisty-izbili-veterana-velikoj-otechestvennoj-vojny/).
3. Russian media report accurately but in a way that undermines their own claims: By a vote of 74 out of 74, the Popular Assembly of the Donetsk Peoples Republic approved a law for preventing terrorism. The new legislation, the deputies said, took into consideration the actions of countries like Russia, Syria, Angola and Venezuela.
4. A Moscow television outlet reported that Ukrainian fans had gone on a rampage and destroyed the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv.  The only problems with that report is that there is no longer such a stadium and the fans did not riot but simply expressed their unhappiness with Ukraine’s loss in the European League final (ren.tv/novosti/2015-05-15/fanaty-dnepra-razgromili-stadion-olimpiyskiy-v-kieve).
5. A journalist from Vladimir Putin’s “favorite television channel, Lifenews,” said he had gone to Lviv while wearing a Georgian ribbon in order to congratulate veterans of the Great Fatherland War. He may very well have gone – the record is unclear – but his visit was clearly intended as a provocation rather than a way of honoring any veteran (lifenews.ru/news/153792).
   Bukovsky’s five this week are only a selection of those on view the past week and only a tiny fraction of all such misrepresentations of reality by Russian outlets concerning Ukraine. And that has prompted Kyiv commentator Kuzmenko to offer a guide to the perplexed who would like to get reliable information somehow (gordonua.com/publications/Putin-taki-ne-sdoh-ili-Kak-otlichit-sayty-feykov-ot-prilichnyh-izdaniy-81236.html).
               Everyone must begin by recognizing that “not everything that is published on websites about politics is journalism,” he says. Much of it now is pure propaganda and invention, the work of Putin, the FSB, hackers and a variety of others who exploit the web’s desire for the new an unexpected to advance their causes. 
              The situation has become so serious, he continues, that “quantity has now overwhelmed quality,” especially when stories begin with such phrases as “it is difficult to believe, but” – words that inevitably draw in the unwary.
              As a result, Kuzmenko says, those who use the Internet in particular need to follow certain rules: First, they need to apply to reports what they were taught as children “’don’t take candy from strangers.’” Second, they need to compare reports from more than one source and use only those which report variations.
             And third, and most important, he suggests, they must not assume there is any site, no matter how trustworthy it may have been, that will always contain only truth. In the new media world, that is too much to hope for; and those who forget that are likely to be victimized by those who wish them ill by destroying any faith that there is such a thing as objective truth.