60 minutes, the flagship program of Russian public broadcaster Rossia 1, begins like any other newscast, with a catchy jingle and 3D animation. For nearly two hours, twice a day, a duo of presenters, Olga Skabeïeva and Evgueny Popov, come back to the news of the day. The show is one of the hotbeds of Russian television propaganda, the “zomboyachik“, the “box for making zombies”, as opponents of Vladimir Putin say, so much the brainwashing is institutionalized there. Since the beginning of the “special military operation”, only the war in Ukraine is treated there, under The tone is martial and sarcastic towards hated Westerners, serious and respectful when it comes to the Russian army or Putin.
On Tuesday evening the 12th, for example, a long sequence is devoted to the attitude of European leaders. Boris Johnson visiting Kyiv? “However, he has other things to do, given the price of gasoline in his country,” sneers Popov. United States ? “They make fun of Europe, as they make fun of Ukraine. Only Manhattan matters to them,” he asserts again, accompanied by a snort of approval from Skabeïeva. The fact that the European Union continues to buy Russian gas? The proof of his “hypocrisy” and his weakness. Westerners, seen by Russian propaganda, are both decadent and Nazi, pathetic and devious, calculating and panicking in the face of Russian power.
The Boutcha massacre becomes “an abominable provocation”
The tone is quite different when it comes to talking about Vladimir Putin, whose recent speech at the Vostochny cosmodrome structures the whole show. The Russian president is quoted extensively, without the shadow of an oratorical precaution. “Europeans are only vassals of the United States,” Putin said. “That’s exactly it,” continues Skabeïeva, before giving the floor to a guest, a member of the Russian parliament, who has come to denounce the triumph in Europe of “Orwellian double thought” and the Western desire to “transform Ukraine into Banderastan “, from the name of Stepan Bandera, Ukrainian nationalist and collaborator of the Nazis during the Second World War, whose harmful shadow the Kremlin sees everywhere in Ukraine. No one contradicts him: on the set, presenters and guests nod their heads sagely.
If accusations of war crimes against Russia are mentioned, it is to better turn them around. The Boutcha massacre has become, in the tone of absolute certainty, “an abominable provocation”. Just as, a few weeks ago, the bombardment of the Mariupol maternity hospital was presented without the slightest shame as a staging. The logic is simple: the Russian army does not target civilians, so any strike against them can only be a masquerade organized by the “ukronazis”, “the kyiv regime”, “banderists”, “neo-Nazis of Azov regiment” which “use the civilians of Mariupol as human shields”, under the orders “of American officers hidden in the catacombs of the city”.
“We don’t know the whole truth”
Russian propaganda goes even further: not only is Russia not guilty of the slightest war crime, but “American scientists have carried out chemical weapons tests on patients in psychiatric hospitals in Ukraine”, claimed this Thursday, April 14, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, widely reported by the official media. Last week, the continuous news channel Rossia 24 claimed to have listed no less than 30 American “biological laboratories” on Ukrainian territory. The previous week, it was the possibility of a Ukrainian nuclear strike on Russia that agitated the official media.
The effect is formidable: by going, from one week to the next, always further in the lie, the Russian propagandists take for granted their lies of the previous week and gradually impose a narrative. It does not matter that this jumble of delusional theories does not hold water. The rabid nationalists are just waiting to be convinced. For the others, the majority of the population, the important thing is perhaps not so much to convince them of the veracity of a particular version, as to make them doubt everything. They will find there the justification of their passivity, and will be able to continue to say “it is not so obvious” or “we do not know the whole truth”, true unofficial motto of the “box to manufacture zombies” of the Kremlin.