Vladimir Putin has imposed military-style censorship without formally declaring a state of emergency
thing viewers saw on March 3rd was a Soviet-era black-and-white recording of Tchaikovsky’s ballet, “Swan Lake”. A few minutes later TV Rain, Russia’s only remaining independent internet television channel, went dark.
The choice of “Swan Lake” was symbolic. It is what Soviet television channels showed on August 19th 1991, as theand the army attempted a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and declared a state of emergency in Russia. It was at that time that Ekho Moskvy, Russia’s main liberal radio station, was briefly taken off air and newspaper printing presses were stopped. Since then, Ekho Moskvy has been a staple of life for millions of Russians, who have tuned in for news, discussions and talk shows.
For the following three hours of this “news and current affairs” programme, the propagandists hammered out Mr Putin’s message, filling it with more lies, music, historic flashbacks, and stories of Russian volunteers heroically sacrificing their lives in their fight against fascism, just as they did during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Contradictions are drowned out by sheer volume.
On February 25th, the second day of the war, only 29% of those polled described Russia’s role as that of an aggressor, while 31% saw it as a liberator and 25% as a peacekeeper, with the remaining 15% undecided. By March 3rd the share who saw Russia as an aggressor had nearly doubled, to 53%, while the share who saw Russia as a peacekeeper or who were undecided had fallen by half.
Another reality that is hard to disguise is the economic consequences of Mr Putin’s “special operation”. As sanctions bite, Russian supermarkets have started to ration food sales, the rouble has depreciated by half and most international travel has become impossible. The disruption in supply chains is bringing some factories to a halt. A boycott by Boeing and Airbus is threatening to ground the entire Russian air fleet for lack of maintenance or spare parts.
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