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Dmitry Tymchuk’s Military Blog: Summary – August 8, 2014

Dmitry Tymchuk’s Military Blog: Summary – August 8, 2014

Brothers and sisters!

Here’s the Summary for August 8, 2014 (for previous summary, please see Summary for August 7).

The bad news:

1. If Putin gives the command to his occupiers to enter Ukraine under the guise of “peacekeepers” (and such a probability is rather high), then initially it will be an option for a Russian military escort of Moscow’s so-called “humanitarian aid” for Donbas, which will be brought in through the border corridor controlled by the insurgents. Accordingly, the “aid” will exclusively target the residents of districts controlled by pro-Russian terrorists only.

The intention is clear: if at least one Russian “peacekeeper” dies, the Kremlin will start yelling about the “junta’s” shooting at the humanitarian mission, which may be a cause for open aggression by Russia. If Ukraine does not react to this provocation, it might become an excuse to introduce a fully-fledged “peacekeeping contingent” to participate in bringing Donbas under control.

The political measures to disrupt this plan have already been undertaken–in particular, the Kyiv has officially made it clear that any “peacekeepers” from Russia will be considered direct military aggression by Moscow. Meanwhile, the West has fully supported such an assessment.

We are waiting for [further] developments–or better, the lack thereof. The wasteheaps of Donbas, although not the paradise island of Kauai’s Glass Beach, are still hardly worth profaning them with the fraternal graves of Putin’s fighters.

2. Today we received data from the military doctors. They confirmed that during the ATO, no more than seven Ukrainian servicemen died during transport [from the battlefield to a medical facility] (earlier, as of August 5th, the National Security and Defense Council [NSDC] talked about five deceased during transit, i.e. the data are approximately the same).

[I am] infinitely sorry for every one of our soldiers and officers who died on the battlefield or from their wounds. But it is impossible to understand the speculation on these deaths.

We checked the information about those who died in transport because a few days ago–not anonymous social networks users–but certain Ukrainian politicians, reported [there were] hundreds of such deaths. Where they get their information from is unknown. As is the reason as to why they spread this around, causing panic.

3. Russia’s Investigative Committee filed a petition for the arrest of five servicemen from the Ukrainian 72nd Brigade, and of course the Russian court arrested them. Russian investigators say that our military used “phosphorous” ammunition.

It is necessary to carefully consider the official announcement of the Russian Investigative Committee, “…It is unlikely that the detained Ukrainian servicemen, who, in the nationalist frenzy, were heading out for a punitive operation could imagine that sooner or later they would have to answer for all their crimes. And now, instead of gallant marches in their honor on Maidan, as they probably imagined, instead of the promised awards, a banal court awaits them…”

Good people, and the investigator says this? This is the lawyer’s [speaking] style? I read [it], and I see the nonsense of a loudmouth and propagandist or a prostituting journalist from a little yellow rag, but not an officer of the Law.

The fact of the matter is that Putin not just turned the Russian Themis into his personal whore. All of Russia today is a cheap farce that has a “Freak show” performance as its permanent fixture.

read more

Dmitry Tymchuk, Coordinator, Information Resistance
Translated and edited by Voices of Ukraine

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    Economist Edward Lucas Attacks Russia's RT and Sputnik for "manufacturing lies" and those working there as "freaks and propagandists"

    Feature by BBC Monitoring on 9 February

    Russian state media have hit back strongly at British journalist Edward Lucas after he criticized them at the recent Munich Security Conference and suggested that journalists working for them should be ostracized. One top TV presenter went as far as to brand Lucas a "village idiot".

    At a panel discussion at the annual Munich Security Conference on 6 February, Lucas, a senior editor at The Economist and author of The New Cold War, accused the Kremlin's international media operations, RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Sputnik (rebranded successor to the Voice of Russia) of "manufacturing lies".

    He said the people working for them were "freaks and propagandists", who should be the target of a campaign of ostracism, according to records of the discussion published by RT and Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.[1]

    "If anyone puts a CV on my desk and on that CV I see they worked for RT or Sputnik or one of these things, that CV is going into the bin," Lucas said. He added that people in the West were wrong to see working for the Kremlin's international media as a "first stage on the career ladder". "It's not, it's the last stage," he told the Munich conference.

    "Journalistic Joe McCarthy"

    Russian state media came back, all guns blazing, with Lucas even getting a whole slot to himself on state channel Rossiya 1's weekly current affairs news roundup Vesti Nedeli.[2]

    Outspoken host Dmitriy Kiselev, who is also director-general of Sputnik's parent company Rossiya Segodnya (which confusingly translates as Russia Today), hurled a whole fistful of epithets at Lucas – "odious British journalist", "hysterical Londoner" and even "village idiot" – while rubbishing his analysis of Russian politics and accusing The Economist of practising censorship.

    RT responded more primly, saying it was "absolutely outraged" by Lucas's "specious attacks", which, it said, were particularly "despicable" as several of its journalists were daily risking their lives to "report on stories nobody else dares to touch".[3]

    Sputnik also had Lucas in its sights, describing him in one article as a "journalistic Joe McCarthy" – a reference to the US senator who instigated a witch-hunt against Communist sympathizers in the 1950s.[4]

    Lucas himself appeared to revel in the backlash, responding to Kiselev in kind.

    "Better than a Pulitzer prize? i get prime-time abuse from vile Kremlin mouthpiece Kiselov," he tweeted.[5]

    He could also take comfort from the support of fellow Twitterati, who suggested he had got under RT's skin.

    US journalist Michael Weiss observed that Lucas had "figured out RT hacks' Achilles heel", while Times columnist Oliver Kamm said he had "badly wounded them".[6][7]

    Writer and Russia watcher Ben Judah also weighed in, saying Lucas had put the wind up RT. "Experts should refuse to appear on RT – or any other? disinformation channel", he added.[8]

    "Misinformation"

    RT and its supporters also entered the fray on Twitter.

    One of its contributors, Robert Bridge, accused Lucas of being "scared to hear another side of the story", while the channel itself suggested his attack on its journalists may have been provoked by recent criticism of The Economist on its show In The Now.[9][10]

    In The Now dismissed as "absurd" a claim by The Economist that Russian state TV "conceals" bad economic news from its viewers. It showed excerpts from top TV bulletins talking about the collapse of the rouble to prove the contrary. It also said that the story of the rouble's woes and the looming recession had been well covered in Russian newspapers. To suggest otherwise, it said, was to promote "misinformation".[11]

    It called its analysis of The Economist's coverage a "tutorial on how to write a propaganda article".

    But RT's criticism of The Economist was itself guilty of omission and distortion.

    For example, it made no mention of the fact that on the day in mid December when the rouble tumbled by some 10 per cent, Rossiya 1 main news had ignored this story altogether.

    Also, it illustrated its claim about the Russian press's economic coverage with screenshots not from leading newspapers but from news agencies and websites, one of them a little known business portal from the Volga republic of Tatarstan.

    The panel discussion at the Munich conference, which also featured NATO commander and US general Philip Breedlove and Norwegian Defence Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide, looked more broadly at the issue of hybrid warfare and the role played in it by different media organizations.

    According to a report by Judy Dempsey on the Carnegie Europe website, the participants said that one of the reasons why RT and its ilk have been able to make such an impact is the cutbacks at top Western international media, such as the BBC World Service and the Voice of America.[12]

    [1] http://rt.com/op-edge/230315-rt-responds-lucas-munich/

    [2] http://vesti7.ru/news?id=45745

    [3] See note 1

    [4] http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20150208/1017973545.html

    [5] https://twitter.com/edwardlucas/status/564531479263600642

    [6] https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/564468359048486912

    [7] https://twitter.com/OliverKamm/status/564408994853572609

    [8] https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/564541740863193091

    [9] https://twitter.com/Robert_Bridge/status/564665181549391873

    [10] https://twitter.com/INTHENOWRT/status/564758039371472896

    [11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H5X3WYm_3U

    [12] http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=58998

    Source: BBC Monitoring research 9 Feb 15

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