The exchange takes place on the set of the show sixty minutes, a talk show on the Rossia 1 channel. Analyst Mikhail Khodaryonok, a regular guest, was cut off by star presenter Olga Skabayeva for being alarmist about the rout of Russian troops near Kupiansk , east of Kharkiv. But the ex-colonel, one of the few divergent voices tolerated in Moscow in recent months, speaks again: “It was of paramount importance for the logistics of our troops in the region”, he insists. in the video footage spotted by American journalist Julia Davis.
The success of the Ukrainian forces in recent days undermines the rhetoric of warmongers on Russian television. On the pro-Kremlin channels, the fiasco of the withdrawal of Vladimir Putin’s army is evoked with chosen words, so as not to expose oneself to a trial for lack of patriotism.
In Rossia 1’s other flagship talk show, Vladimir Soloviev, one of the Kremlin’s main media outlets, talks about a “difficult and serious situation”. One of his guests, the writer Zakhar Prilepin, known to have fought among the separatists of Donbass, is upset by the fact that in the area of ”Kharkiv, no one has built a defense, because no one thought we would have problems here”. Then he denounces a strategic approach that turns its back on local populations: “We cannot conquer territories and take care of them later”.
Would Prilepin begin to have moods? “If your country is at war… You have to support it, you can’t do anything about it, legally,” he slips. Before wondering if he should have said that “aloud”.
Other voices push the reproaches further, like Boris Nadezhdin, on the NTV channel. “We have reached the point where we must understand that it is impossible to beat Ukraine with the current means and these colonial methods of war, with contractors, mercenaries, without mobilization”, affirms this former deputy. “Do you suggest a general mobilization?” Asks the presenter, Andrey Norkin. “I suggest peace negotiations to stop the war and to move on to political agreements,” Nadezhdin replied.
“Where is our victory?”
Difficult, in any case, for the “turbo-patriots”, the nickname given in Russia to these fervent Putinists very present on the screens, to deny that the war in Ukraine is not going as they hoped. In Soloviev’s programme, we can see an academic who was nevertheless loyal to the Putin regime, Vitaly Tretyakov, fearing that “social tensions are rising, not because of the masses who oppose the military operation, but because they might wonder why she’s not more active? Where’s our victory? Where’s the advancement?”
The video then shows Soloviev coldly reminding his guests that “Stalin demanded that those who panicked be shot.” Atmosphere… In a message to his followers on Telegram messaging, the presenter also called for the officers who should have defended the Russian positions near Kharkiv to be put “by the firing squad”.
“The Stalin model is constantly in the minds of these propagandists, who demand that the country be totally mobilized against the war, notes the historian Françoise Thom, author of Understanding Putinism (Ed. Desclée de Brouwer, 2018). Their one-upmanship has always been encouraged, but we now have the impression that the regime is embarrassed by the excesses of the turbo-patriots, they are moreover hated on the side of the Russian army, which considers that they do not know the trenches and the reality of war.”
In another edition of Solovyov’s talk show, one of his most virulent guests, Margarita Simonian, boss of the RT news channels, calls for reprisals against “civilian infrastructure: power stations, nuclear power stations, stations” . A military expert then worries about such a punishment against the Ukrainians: “What do you think this blackout will cause? When they are hungry and cold? ‘friends there? asks Alexey Leonkov. Vladimir Solovyov cut short his reasoning: “First we will free our compatriots from Nazism, then we will feed them and warm them up”.
Fueling the rumours, the star presenter of Rossia 1 appeared bruised in the face last week in the video recording of his radio show – he refused to give the origin of his injuries. In April, Russian authorities claimed he had survived an assassination attempt. In any case, he will not have the leisure to go and rest in one of the three properties on the shores of Lake Como. His real estate in Italy, where he is banned from staying, was frozen shortly after the Russian invasion.