Russia propaganda machine gains on U.S.
Russia has reorganized and intensified its international propaganda machine so effectively over the past decade that some Western lawmakers and diplomats say Washington now is badly losing a global messaging war to the increasingly modernized blitz of anti-U.S. content from Moscow-backed news operations, wrote Guy Taylor for The Washington Times . Since 2005, the global satellite network Russia Today — recently renamed RT — has grown into a worldwide operation…
“The problem with “Walter Cronkite and the rest of them,” the American correspondents in Moscow, my grandmother used to tell me, was that all they ever did was regurgitate the Soviet media. The only exception was, she said, The New York Times’ Harrison Salisbury, who seemed to find sources and stories outside Pravda. My grandmother worked as the censor for foreign correspondents stationed in Moscow. She was never allowed to…
From China in Asia to Russia in Europe and the Middle East, and ISIS just about everywhere, 2015 has seen the flourishing of conflicts that exist in a gray zone, one which is not quite open war but more than regular competition, which is attuned to globalization, which liberal democracies are ill-equipped to deal with, and which may well be the way power is exercised and conflict conducted in the…
Rais Suleymanov, a Tatar who has sharply criticized Kazan for supposedly assisting the rise of radical Islam in the Middle Volga and for failing to break with Turkey after the shooting down of a Russian plane that violated Turkish airspace, was detained for violating the Russian law governing the publication of extremist materials. He was arrested and then by the action of a Kazan court ordered to be held for…
The ANA-MPA will launch a new international ‘news journey’ in collaboration with the Russian news agency Sputnik on New Year’s Day, with two new websites offering news and information in Greek and Russian to mark the ‘Greece-Russia 2016’ Tribute Year in the two countries. The website will offer news coverage, reports, interviews, analyses and articles on the economy, science, culture, sports and all areas concerning bilateral relations. The Greek-language website…
In response to a Russian court sentencing blogger Vadim Tyumentsev to five years imprisonment after convicting him of “extremism” for posting videos on social media and YouTube alleging corruption by local officials and criticizing Russian intervention in Ukraine, Freedom House issued the following statement: “Russia’s imprisonment of Vadim Tyumentsev evokes nationalism and fear to justify blanket intolerance of dissent,” said Mark P. Lagon, president. “The Russian government seems determined to…
December 30, 2015 - 09:37
News
Russian website Ukraina.ru wrote that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced his intention to introduce new travel documents which would end visa-free entry into Russia for Ukrainians. However, the travel-related changes Ukraine is contemplating involve complying with European Union requirements so that Ukrainians will be able to travel freely to the EU and, in terms of document changes, producing a plastic version of the old paper internal passport/identity card. The Russian…
December 29, 2015 - 23:53
News
Pro-Kremlin websites published an article saying the Ukrainian parliament has adopted laws that will force Ukrainians to pay for a range of services that were previously free such as entry to libraries, museums and other cultural institutions and that parents would in future have to pay the full cost of kindergarten pupils’ meals. A piece headlined “The Ukrainian State has been Destroyed. It Happened last Night” appeared December 25, 2015,…
December 26, 2015 - 21:43
News
Russia’s popular Lenta.ru website used a headline which had Ukraine’s UN representative Volodymyr Yelchenko apparently dismissing Ukraine’s chances of ever regaining sovereignty over Crimea. The Lenta.ru piece cited an interview Yelchenko gave to website Yevropeyska Pravda in which he was asked whether Ukraine’s membership for the next two years as a permanent member of the UN Security Council would allow Kyiv to reassert control over Crimea and Donbas, the areas…
December 26, 2015 - 21:14
News
The website Golos Pravdy published a news story arguing that the Ukrainian president, not the Kremlin, was responsible for destroying Ukraine, citing an imaginary Ukrainian political scientist as the source. The Golos Pravdy article was also re-posted by the Kyiv Echo website. The article entitled “Ukraine’s biggest enemy systematically destroying the country is not in the Kremlin but on Bankova Street [seat of the Ukrainian presidential administration]” contends that Ukraine’s…
