Russia’s direct involvement in prosecuting its war against Ukraine is proven, as far as most in the West are concerned. But the Russian public is still oblivious to what's going on, accepting official denials, more than a year after the fighting began.
Among the latest allegations in a long and strong chain of evidence: Ukraine’s top military prosecutor Anatoly Matios pinned the blame for the strife in eastern Ukraine squarely on the chief of Russia’s General Staff, saying the entire war in Ukraine was a plot hatched and executed by Valery Gerasimov.
“The ideologist behind the war of aggression and the military conflict in eastern Ukraine is …based on all the collected evidence, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Gerasimov,” Matios told journalists at a briefing in Kyiv on Aug. 5.
But getting the truth to the Russian public, bypassing the Kremlin and Russia’s state-controlled media, is seen as a way to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to admit the involvement.
Razumkov Center’s military expert Mykola Sunhurovskyi said, however, breaking through Putin’s “organized chaos” and detachment from reality will be difficult.
“Comfort is a huge factor here, because the Russian public would never want to admit that their leaders are mass murderers. And the Russian government is never going to just say ‘Sorry, we’ve been lying to you this whole time,’” Sunhurovskyi said.
Even as two Russian servicemen who have consistently identified themselves as GRU military intelligence officers sent to Ukraine on assignment speak from their jail cells in Kyiv, Russian state media describes them as simply “Russian citizens.”
One of them, Captain Yevgeny Yerofeyev, said on Aug. 2 that many other Russians were in Ukrainian custody, “including servicemen.”
“It’s just that they are only talking and writing about us. But in reality there are many,” he told Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has maintained that the two captured GRU officers, both of whom were captured while fighting in eastern Ukraine, resigned prior to their arrival. They have denied this.
Joining Alexandrov and Yerofeyev in the ranks is Russian army major Vladimir Starkov. After he’d been detained by Ukrainian authorities in Donetsk Oblast in late July, he told them that he’d been sent to eastern Ukraine to act as a military adviser for the separatists.
Yet the Russian propaganda machine seems to have done the trick in convincing the Russian public that there is no war in Ukraine.
A poll conducted by Russia’s Levada Center in late February provides a glimpse into the “organized chaos” Sunhurovskyi describes.
Fifty-three percent of respondents said they did not believe Russian troops were in Ukraine, compared to 25 percent who did. Forty-five percent said they would view the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine positively, compared to 35 percent who took a negative stance.
The overwhelming majority of respondents – 60 percent – said they did not believe a war was under way between Russia and Ukraine.
It is precisely the Russian public’s ignorance that allows Putin’s policies to flourish, Sunhurovskyi said.
He compared the current situation in Russia to the regime under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, noting that it took years for people to truly realize what had been happening.
“First there was Stalin, now there is Putin,” he said.
According to analyst Vitaly Bala of the Situations Modeling Agency think tank, Russia’s use of old Soviet tricks like “maskirovka” – denial and deception – is what has allowed them to wage the war so effectively without ever having to admit involvement.
By consistently portraying the crisis as an “internal conflict,” he said, Russia can rely on plausible deniability even in the face of overwhelming evidence that Russian troops are on the ground in eastern Ukraine.
“The main goal right now for Russia is to legitimize the separatist republics so that they can continue to use them as proxies, while at the same time pretending (Moscow is) in no way involved,” he said.
The fact that much of the international community continues to dance around the issue is what “allows Russia to brazenly lie,” Bala said.
“They describe Russian mercenaries as ‘separatists’ or ‘Russian-backed’ instead of just calling them what they are: Russian mercenaries,” he said.
“There is no end in sight. This is a war but no one is willing to call it that,” he said.
Staff writer Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected]
