Editor’s Note: This feature separates Ukraine’s friends from its enemies. The Order of Yaroslav the Wise has been given since 1995 for distinguished service to the nation. It is named after the Kyivan Rus leader from 1019-1054, when the medieval empire reached its zenith. The Order of Lenin was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union, whose demise Russian President Vladimir Putin mourns. It is named after Vladimir Lenin, whose corpse still rots on the Kremlin’s Red Square, 100 years after the October Revolution he led.
Ukraine’s Friend of the Week: Julia Davis
“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!”
These lines of Scottish bard Robert Burns’ famous poem “To A Louse,” usually rendered in English as “Oh, would some power give us the gift to see ourselves as others see us!” remind us not only that others might not share our own view of ourselves, but that our own opinions about ourselves could also be far from reality.
However, the bard, who lived in the 18th century, never encountered Kremlin television propaganda. Its media spinmeisters are adept at twisting the Russian public’s views. But rather than being more true to life, the picture of outsiders that Russian television viewers are presented with is distorted by the lens of Kremlin propaganda, and often ends up being unrecognizable.
The bard would not have approved.
Luckily for us , we have been given the gift of Russia expert Julia Davis, who watches Russian television so the rest of us don’t have to, and reports on how Russian broadcasters see us.
Davis, who posts reports practically daily on Twitter under the @JuliaDavisNews handle, is a Ukrainian-born U.S. citizen (a native speaker of Russian and Ukrainian), and an expert in Russian propaganda. An investigative journalist, she is a featured expert at the Atlantic Council, and creator of website RussianMediaMonitor.com, where all her tweeted reports can be found. She is also a writer, director and producer in the film industry.
Davis’s reports have been citied in leading Western news media (though many times information she has provided has gone unattributed.)
The image of Ukraine and the West given on Russian television sometimes makes for hard viewing.
Every night on Russian television shows, Ukrainians are slandered as being fascists, out to conquer “Russians” in the Donbas, crucifying children and shelling civilians as they go. Westerners who criticize the Kremlin are not airing legitimate grievances, but are raving Russophobes. Rebels opposing the brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad are all “terrorists.” British police investigating the suspected poisoning by Russia of a former spy with a nerve agent are “provocateurs,” and the world anti-chemical weapons organization is “biased” against Russia. NATO, rather than being a defensive alliance, is a dangerous aggressor hell bent on surrounding and invading Russia, and Europe is being overrun with gay people, Muslims and refugees. The European Union is on the verge of collapse. Up is down, black is white, and two plus two equals five.
The general public in the West is insulated from this insanity by the formidable barrier of the Russian language, but it is useful to know that the Russian public is being told about the outside world in order to better understand the attitudes and opinions of ordinary Russians. One has to know what lies are being told about oneself in order to know how to counter them.
On many occasions it is thanks to Davis that we first get to know what spin the Kremlin is putting on events for the Russian public, and as propaganda always contains an element of truth, we can also gain hints about the Kremlin’s true views on matters.
Davis is thus Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for her tireless efforts to inform the rest of the world about the falsehoods the Kremlin feeds Russians every night on television, and the grains of truth hidden among them.
Thanks to her, we’re able to see how the Russians see us – or rather how the Kremlin wants Russians to see us.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Rand Paul
Russia invaded and occupied parts of Georgia in August 2008: Fact.
Russia invaded and occupied Ukraine’s Crimea in February-March 2014: Fact.
Russia has sent troops, weapons, ammunition and equipment into the Donbas and fomented a war there: Fact.
Russia has encouraged and supported the rise of right wing populism in the West: Fact.
Russia has interfered in referendums and elections in the West via social media, spreading fake news, setting up fake websites to foster divisions in the electorate, hacking websites to steal information: Fact.
Russian hacking groups have been accused of launching cyberattacks in Estonia, France, and Ukraine, and are believed by U.S. intelligence to be preparing such attacks against the United States: Fact.
U.S. Senator Rand Paul went to Moscow on Aug. 6 to meet with members of Russia’s rubber-stamp legislature and other senior Kremlin officials to promote “dialogue” between the United States and Russia: Fact.
Wait. What?
Why on earth is a U.S. senator going on a one-man mission to fix U.S.-Russian relations after U.S. intelligence has warned that not only did the Kremlin interfere in the U.S. presidential elections in 2018, but that it is also preparing to interfere in the U.S. mid-term elections in November?
The answer is that Paul, a Republican representing Kentucky, is not a man of principle, but a political hack who puts his career before his country. In 2014, after the Kremlin started its military occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea, Paul wrote that the United States should isolate Russia “if it insists on acting like a rogue nation.”
But by 2017 Paul had abandoned this position, even though the Kremlin has not ended its occupation of Crimea, nor halted its war on Ukraine in the Donbas.
In the interim it has intervened in Syria, aiding its murderous client dictator Bashar al-Assad in carrying out barbaric attacks on his country’s civilian population, including the use of chemical weapons.
It has also deployed a chemical weapon in the UK, in a botched assassination attempt on of former Russian spy that resulted in the death of a British woman, the authorities there say. On top of that, the Kremlin has continued its attempts to influence votes in the West and is honing its skills in cyber warfare, according to the intelligence services of several countries.
The Kremlin is delighted to host Paul, and broadcast his calls for dialogue and the easing of sanctions on Russia. Kremlin officials also took the opportunity to ask Paul to intervene on behalf of a jailed Russian suspected spy, Maria Butina. And Paul’s mere presence in Moscow counters the impression that the Kremlin is isolated and shunned by the civilized world.
The reason Paul has flipped his position on Russia 180 degrees is that U.S. President Donald J. Trump is in office. Trump, of course, appears to be a firm supporter of Russia and an admirer of the sinister Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin. So Paul, as a craven toady, has since taken up position as Trump’s “wingman on Russia,” as the New York Times puts it.
Thus, the senator was only one of two to vote against the extension of sanctions against Russia in June 2017 (the other was Bernie Sanders). Paul also blocked a resolution drawn up by Sanders that would have backed the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian election interference and demanded President Trump speak with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Kremlin during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Paul is Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the Order of Lenin for his unwarranted friendless to Ukraine’s Kremlin enemies.
He represents everything that’s wrong with Western politics at this time: politicians putting partisanship ahead of principle, whilst pandering to populism.
The political malaise that is affecting the democratic world at this moment will not ease until the malign influence of the Kremlin is countered.
The voting public in the United States could help reduce that influence by throwing Paul and his ilk out of office at the next available opportunity: Fact.
