Comrade Putin, there’s been a terrible mistake!

TV propagandists lead the charge against ‘cases of overzealousness’

At first, they were getting ready for a big celebration: mass enthusiasm, “let’s go into battle”, volunteers queueing up for the draft and departing to the frontlines to patriotic tunes. Then it became clear that something had gone wrong: there are not as many people volunteering to die in battle as the masterminds of the “special military operation”, the TV propagandists, had thought. Numerous cases of injustice and chaos surrounding this so-called “partial” mobilisation started trickling in on social media.

As we all know, if you can’t beat them, join them. This can apply to drunken benders, mayhem, partial mobilisation, the crackdown on overzealous draft officials — choose whatever you like best.

“Those on top finally started listening to the voices from below… Democracy has finally come to Russia. Though a military one,” writer Zakhar Prilepin pointed out on his Telegram channel.

Those “voices from below” came from an unexpected source: the federal TV. Here’s a conversation between Russia’s two main “military democrats”, head of RT Margarita Simonyan and propaganda talk show host Vladimir Solovyov, on Russian state TV.

Margarita Simonyan: Look, the Commander-in-Chief doesn’t even send conscripts there! Do you think that while he refuses to send conscripts there, he means to send hairdressers, women cardiologists, people with broken vertebrae, Pskov’s teacher of the year, an orchestra musician, and theatre artistic directors there? It’s absolutely clear that he meant something else entirely… Commanders, comrades, listen, now is not the time. You know, we need to always remember Battleship Potemkin — the crew went mad and berserk. And you can’t even blame them for going mad and berserk, because they did feed the sailors with maggoty meat. And how did that go? You are playing with people with firearms. It’s not that ragtag group of liberals fed by the West… It’s our people, our country that we have defended for all these years. You and me, too. As for me, I cannot stay silent in this situation and I won’t.

Vladimir Solovyov: Can we shoot them?

Margarita Simonyan: I’m against firing squads.

Vladimir Solovyov: And I’m all for them! I would take a couple of those military commissars, including that smartass in Novosibirsk… I’d drag him by the ear and send him to the frontline in Donbas. He’d serve as cannon fodder there. I’d give him a shovel, let him dig a trench for himself. He’ll do less harm there.

The outburst of Ivan Bezdomny, a proletarian poet from Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, comes to mind: “Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki! (a Soviet prison camp active in the 1920s-1930s — translator’s note)” Although the viewers probably do not have time for literary allusions right now. Many of them must have been frozen in shock: blasphemy! Right on their TV screen! And who said it? Simonyan and Solovyov themselves, the most passionate “bards” of the war (this is how they refer to the special operation, for some reason unafraid of fines or other punitive measures).

Has glasnost finally reached federal TV? Have the blind finally seen the light?

Well, first and foremost, the propagandists have never been blind. They blinded those who could see, that much is true. They are always ready to change their tune, readily relaying the new developments to their faithful flock.

And now, it’s time to tell the ignorant masses: our tsar is good, it’s the lords, that is, the military commissars, who are misbehaving!

There’s been a terrible mistake (dozens of thousands of horrible mistakes across the country), so let’s get to work, brothers! “Brothers! And also, mothers, wives, sisters and daughters… We’ve been working hard to fix the blunders of mobilisation all these days. Entire departments, myself included, have dropped our regular work. We’re trying to achieve justice for everyone. We hope very, very, VERY MUCH that common sense will prevail and that partial mobilisation will become more transparent, lawful and orderly as soon as possible,” Margarita Simonyan wrote on her Telegram channel.

Simonyan’s colleagues from other federal media happily followed her lead. Olga Skabeeva, a talk show host on government-funded TV channel Rossiya-1, expressed outrage over “local cases of overzealousness”. Artem Sheynin addressed the commanders who are not giving a proper welcome to the newly mobilised soldiers on his show on Channel One: “Mobilisation is a very emotional moment for the entire country, without a doubt. People are living through these emotions differently… Some people come to the draft offices. Some are travelling to their military units in a good mood, singing songs, playing the harmonica… The fact that they weren’t given food on the way is not so bad, although it’s a mess. But when they bring the mobilised men to a military unit and no one comes out to see them for hours, sometimes 10 or 12 hours…

And so, without stoking tension, I want to address the officers of those military units that the mobilised men are already arriving at. If you give them the five minutes of attention that they need, they’ll understand everything. They’re not going to routine military training; they’re going to defend their Motherland. And this attitude towards them only helps the enemy in a sense. The enemy is working hard to escalate the tensions and emotions on social media. You can find five minutes to talk to these people, you absolutely can, even if you have no time at all. If you don’t have enough people — mobilise us there, we’ll come out and talk to them… This is our common goal. And I will say everything I know about this mess here. You can get offended or not.”

There is a catastrophic lack of footage showing people going to their military units “in a good mood, singing songs and playing the harmonica”. The TV crews take the videos off social media and put them on repeat in news broadcasts. The background text stays the same: “Partial mobilisation is underway across the country. Applause and embraces — this is how people see off the mobilised men in Krasnodar, Dagestan, etc. Just like in any big venture, there are some blunders… The All-Russia People’s Front has set up a permanent task force to protect the rights of the mobilised across the country.” At the end of the news story, there is usually a short interview with a newly mobilised soldier: “The Motherland’s calling, so I must go.”

The protests in a number of Russian regions, anti-war rallies, pickets and kilometres-long traffic jams on the borders do not make the news, for the most part.

They are sometimes mentioned on patriotic talk shows as an example of blatant anti-patriotism and treason: they’re running away, so let them. The air in our dear country will be cleaner without them here.

Meanwhile, Margarita Simonyan, the founder of the movement for a just partial mobilisation and the main fighter for the truth, voiced this radical call on the YouTube channel of her husband Tigran Keosayan: “It’s time to stop lying. Everywhere in our country: in banks, ministries, draft offices, factories, schools, universities, media organisation. It’s time to stop lying! Lying always leads to incorrect decisions, and incorrect decisions always lead to losses. Some of them lead to irreversible losses. So that we don’t regret it in the future, it’s time to stop lying!!!”

“They’ll end up being the mouthpieces of post-Putin perestroika at this rate,” reporter Aleksandr Plyushchev quipped on his Telegram channel. Former presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak was more succinct: “Fuck, Orwell, stop it.”