The Russia Report
Issue 100
From the editor: Russian propaganda TV gives hints about reality
US journalist Julia Davis, who was born and raised in Kyiv, is one of Russian state TV’s most avid viewers. For years she has made it her mission to bring clips and analysis of Vladimir Putin’s propaganda channels to Western audiences to expose the kind of lies that are being told to the Russian people, and she now has more than 275,000 followers on her @JuliaDavisNews Twitter account. In a Zoom conversation with me this week she told me why she is so passionate about her work and what she has discovered from it.
Julia Davis watches Russian TV to expose its “outrageous lies” that are told “shamelessly”
Julia, who is 47 now, lived in Kyiv until she was 22. She has a master’s degree in aviation and spacecraft engineering from the National Technical University of Ukraine. While studying she had a part-time job at a film studio, where she met her future husband, BJ Davis, who was a line producer working on the film Americanski Blues at the time. After moving to the United States with him Julia became a Customs and Border Protection Officer and was involved in a dramatic whistleblower retaliation saga after reporting security breaches in the processing of immigrants to the FBI. She then went into the film industry with her husband, doing stunts, producing and writing before switching to journalism.
As a child in the Soviet Union Julia spoke Russian and Ukrainian at home. “At school it was a different story, they discouraged that, people that spoke Ukrainian were treated as though they were the villagers, or somehow second-class citizens, and teachers hearing Ukrainian being spoken would actually tell us to ‘speak the human language’, meaning Russian,” she said. “It was a common understanding that if you wanted to advance in life you would have to be great at everything Russian - Russian language, Russian literature. Ukrainian was more of an optional add-on language… It was unpleasant, but the Soviet Union school system was built in such a way where cruelty was common, so I guess we just developed thick skin… it definitely left a mark as something that stays in the brain.”
Stalin’s man-made famine in Ukraine, the Holodomor, was referred to at school as something Russians and Ukrainians suffered from equally, Davis said. But she witness the demise of the Soviet Union and Ukraine achieving independence before she left the country. “Ukrainians were always very freedom-minded people, and it’s just something that Putin still can’t understand about the Ukrainians, that even if they’re temporarily subjugated and dominated, invaded, it’s never going to be anything that they will be at peace with,” she said. “The world is witnessing right now with such amazement - it’s really not a revelation to the Ukrainians - they are willing to die to avoid living like the Russians do, to avoid losing their freedom, which they value more than life itself, and I think that is the most powerful message to the Russians, actually.”
When Russia illegally annexed Crimea and invaded Donbasss in 2014 Davis was frustrated by RT broadcasting Putin’s narrative on US cable networks. She found that many Americans believed that Russian speakers in Ukraine would welcome Putin’s occupation, although in fact the language Ukrainians speak has nothing to do with their political views. RT was “grotesquely twisting” the truth, she said. “Our media seemed oblivious to it. So when I saw these narratives slipping in here and absolutely nothing contradicting them I started compiling a series of Russian lies about Ukraine to show the public here that all they do is lie and they should not be taken credibly, because for many years our media would try to assume that they’re acting in good faith and they’re just journalists doing their jobs, when in reality it’s just a different version of North Korean-style propaganda – that they lie and they are utterly shameless about it.”
Watching the hate-filled TV doesn’t have a negative psychological effect on Davis but makes her more determined to expose the outrageous lies, she told me. “Also on rare occasions when they forget that there are other people listening and they are genuinely concerned about what’s happening in their society, although they would never dare openly say that Putin did it to them, they always try to blame someone else. Growing up in the Soviet Union we weren’t free to have any political opinions, so people would generally put on the tea kettle in the kitchen, and when it starts making loud noise and gets close to whistling, people would talk in hushed tones in the kitchen near the kettle, that way no one else could hear, and essentially I see myself listening in to their kitchen conversations, and a lot of times they will inadvertently reveal some very interesting perspectives, and at the very minimum they show which direction the Kremlin is guiding them to move on.”
Davis says leading Russian TV propagandists such as Dmitri Kiselev, Vladimir Soloviev and Margarita Simonyan have been active participants in Russia’s war in Ukraine by constantly calling Ukrainians Nazis, and deserve to be held responsible – although even they may not have known in advance that Putin was going to launch a full-scale invasion. “Even the head of RT [Simonyan], who’s pretty close to him, also assumed initially it would just be east Ukraine, so yeah, he really kept it pretty close to the vest… Most of the time when they’re trying to advance a certain agenda they will tell their propagandists to go ahead and prepare the soil for it, so to speak, soften the ground. And they have been doing it for eight years for him. But it seemed to me like they were still kind of stunned when it happened… they themselves were caught with their pants down.”
Russian TV today is worse than the Soviet Union’s, Davis thinks, because in the 1980s everyone knew the Kremlin was lying but trusted Western sources such as Voice of America, which she listened to secretly with her father to find out what was really happening. “What they have done now under Putin’s control of the media, is they are totally discouraging people from even trying to learn the truth, because they’re openly saying, we are the propagandists, and that’s OK, because so are they, and they are propagandists for that regime, which is our enemy, so why would you listen to their propaganda? That’s why they’re not embarrassed when they’re caught lying… that’s why the head of RT repeatedly refers to Putin as her boss. So they are openly acting as soldiers for their own regime and telling their people, hey, if you’re not with us, then you’re with them.”
Nevertheless, in the internet age Russians can’t help hearing about how Ukraine and the West are reacting to the war, and state TV is responding to that. “They lately started to show a lot more of what’s being said in the West because they know people are going to find it anyway, so they think they might as well address it and bash it,” Davis said. “So the information is getting through, as opposed to when this war just started, they mainly bombarded them with their own takes on things, but right now they will show what [US Secretary of Defence] Lloyd Austin is saying, or what [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Mark Milley is saying, what Biden says they will show – pretty good chunks of what is being said out there, so anyone who is capable of critical thinking might have second thoughts about, well, why are they all in one voice saying this and we’re being told that?” she continued. “Lately they’ve been talking about the possibility that there would be uprisings, that there would be riots and revolts, and that they need a character like Beria to be in charge, so that tell me that even those propagandists realise that people aren’t buying this story, and they are upset, and it might become something that might threaten the regime’s survival.”
Davis thinks that Ukraine will win the war. “What shape that will take and how long that will take is really impossible to predict, but the encouraging signs for me are the talks on the Russian side about their economy taking huge hits from the sanctions, and they haven’t even really felt their full impact just yet. They’re predicting before this year is over it’ll really crash down on them, and that impacts their military as well, so eventually that will impact their ability to keep waging this war… Ultimately I believe that Ukraine will prevail and terrible things will come to the Russian side for what Putin has done here, it’s irreparable what they have done to Ukraine, how many people they have massacred and still will massacre. That entire part of the world will never be the same. What exactly it will look like is anybody’s guess, but I believe Ukraine will triumph and be free.”
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Russia has little to celebrate on Victory Day
Vladimir Putin made no big announcement about the war in Ukraine during his speech on May 9, and the Victory Day parade in Moscow was even less spectacular than expected as the air portion was cancelled at the last minute. Russian embassies also organised some “immortal regiment” marches in different countries at which people hold up pictures of people who fought in World War II. In Madrid on May 8 police carried a woman draped in a Ukrainian flag holding a protest sign out of the crowd of Russia supporters who had turned on her. An estimated 125 people were detained across Russia on May 9 for various anti-war protests. Also this week the governors of five Russian regions – Kirov, Ryazan, Saratov, Tomsk and the Republic of Mari El – have resigned and been replaced.
The Eiffel Tower and Brandenburg Gate were lit up in blue and yellow on Victory Day, and Jill Biden and Justin Trudeau visited Ukraine to show support in advance of it. “No to war” was projected onto the front of the Russian embassy in London, and a line of women stood outside the Russian embassy in Prague with bags on their heads and their hands tied behind their backs, with fake blood running down their bare legs to represent the rape victims of the war. The Russian ambassador to Poland, Sergei Andreyev, was splashed in the face with red paint by a crowd chanting “Fascists!” when he tried to lay flowers at the Soviet military cemetery in Warsaw. Lithuania’s Seimas unanimously voted on Tuesday to recognise Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a genocide and Russia itself as a terrorist state.
Ukrainian troops have forced a Russian retreat in Kharkiv Oblast this week, and Russia suffered an additional setback when Ukrainians blew up a pontoon bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River in Luhansk Oblast, destroying dozens of Russian tanks and armoured vehicles along with it. Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia killed about 60 people who were sheltering in a school in Bilohorivka, Luhansk Oblast, on Saturday in a bombing. Yesterday footage emerged of Russian troops shooting two civilians in the back on the outskirts of Kyiv on March 19.
Wildfires rage across Russia
The deputy head of Uyar, Krasnoyarsk Krai, has been arrested on a charge of negligence after 233 homes in the town were destroyed by a wildfire. But wildfires have been out of control for weeks in several regions as the military forces and emergency services personnel are otherwise engaged in Ukraine. Wildfires consumed more than 17 million hectares in Russia last year and are likely worsening due to climate change.
St. Petersburg activist jailed for “spreading fakes”
A court in St. Petersburg has ordered activist Boris Romanov to be jailed ahead of trial on a charge of “spreading fakes about the Russian armed forces”, for which he could receive a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. Romanov has campaigned against buildings being demolished and the failure of local authorities to clear snow. He was detained at an anti-war protest together with several journalists on March 13. In court Romanov was accused of “wanting to change the constitutional order by force”. His lawyer argued that he should be allowed to await trial at home because he has a young daughter, but the prosecutor said that could give him an opportunity to “destroy evidence”.
Finland and Sweden to apply for NATO membership
Finland’s leaders have said that the country will apply for NATO membership, and Sweden is expected to follow suit in the coming days. In a joint statement Finland’s president and prime minister said, “NATO membership would strengthen Finland’s security. As a member of NATO, Finland would strengthen the entire defence alliance. Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay.” The moves are a direct response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia’s Foreign Ministry has threatened that the country would be “forced to take reciprocal steps… to address the resulting threats to its national security.”