The elites of the European Union who are running the show seem to have a contemptuous view of their fellow citizens. Russian media must be banned from the air waves lest the poor simpletons who call themselves Europeans be led astray by the Kremlin!
I submit that the people could not care less about the entire fuss over Ukraine at the ideological level of democracy versus autocracy, or civilization over barbarism. They care about their fuel bills, about rising costs at the supermarket check-out. Full stop.
This indifference to the military and economic warfare being led from Brussels is sad, though it may yet be reversed and shift towards street protests in the coming months. Not because of Russian propaganda, which is surely now nipped in the bud, but because the pain being inflicted on the population by the economic kamikaze political leadership through sanctions on Russia becomes unbearable here.
Meanwhile, I offer some further thoughts bearing on my essay of two days ago about the New Iron Curtain.
First, to anyone with half a brain and a bit of mental concentration, the contradictions in Kiev-Collective West news (read propaganda) are glaring and self-defeating without an adversary in the ring.
I noted more than a month ago such contradictions in a BBC report from Kharkov on supposedly savage Russian artillery fire against residential buildings A well-coiffed and dressed female reporter in the foreground pointed to a partially burned out high rise building a hundred meters or so behind her, saying: ‘just imagine, four people died here under Russian artillery fire!’ Four people died in the destruction of a multistory apartment building? A better interpretation is that the building was empty except for Ukrainian military supplies or sheltered heavy weapons, as the Russians said at the time.
Over this past weekend, a similar bit of nonsense was reported by Euronews and other Western media with respect to a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in downtown Kiev. Four of the nine stories were destroyed, but only one or two casualties were reported by the Ukrainians. Was this not a building from which the civilian residents had been chased out and a weapons production line had been installed, as the Russians claimed?
Now today’s featured headline report on the morning edition of Euronews speaks of a Russian air launched rocket attack on a shopping center in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, Poltava oblast. The smoldering remains, the twisted iron frame are shown on our screens. Zelensky claims that more than a thousand civilians had been sheltering there. Yet the reported deaths were a dozen or so. Does this make any sense if you put your mind to it? The simple answer is ‘no.’ That is to say, you see through the propaganda without even hearing the Russian explanation of what happened: namely that just 90 meters away was a factory renovating Ukrainian tanks and other military vehicles that was also being used to store newly arrived Western armaments; it was the primary target of the Russian bombs. Secondary explosions there set off fires in what was an abandoned shopping mall.
In closing, I am obliged to correct my remarks about the accessibility of the Russian point of view on www.smotrim.ru: I have now discovered that the live broadcasts , as opposed to the shows already aired and stored on the site, can be viewed without difficulty. This means there is no need to find exotic hi-tech solutions that some readers have proposed in the Comments section.
I also note that the Russians are seeking and finding alternative ways of presenting their point of view on youtube, from which the official Russian channels have been banned. Yesterday I received a link to a Russian language news program in which I appeared in vignette interviews. The production company is called “Mir” and is an offshoot of the Community of Independent States ( CIS), the organization of a dozen or so former Soviet republics. Formally, legally it is not a Russian entity and so it slips past the youtube censors. I assume that the cat and mouse game of the Information War will continue to evolve.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022
Gilbert Doctorow 
the smotrim link does not function here in Berlin and I assume the rest of Germany.
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http://www.smotrim.ru is accessible from Québec (and boy, will my spouse enjoy the Елизавета serie, and maybe give her l’envie d’apprendre le russe! Merci pour la découverte)
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Thanks for this elucidative and consistent-with-indicators-and-context report.
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Kremenchuk is on the Dnieper and not in Donbas as you claim.
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Thanks. The correction has been entered in latest of several updates to the text. FT today mentions Zelensky’s assertion that there must be a vast number of casualties. Meanwhile, Russian news on Sixty Minutes shows the crowd outside the “shopping center” – all men, mostly carrying submachine guns; and no cars in the car park. Speaks for itself
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Shopping center was closed since march.Multiple proofs available on twitter, pure Bojo FO false flag between g7 and Nato meetings like butcha…it is always the very same scenario(in Syria also).
https://tass.com/politics/1472895
Russia announcing more false flag in preparation in Odessa, of course the usual ‘fake chemical one’.
Ukraine junta is using terror US UK methods à la al nusra, ISIS.
Kiev forces deploy artillery weapons in hospital of DPR city of Seversk — Russian military
Also, Ukrainian nationalists have placed snipers and set up firing points near two medical centers in the DPR city of Bakhmut. tass
Ukrainian militants plotting missile strike at Vysokopolye to provoke retaliation fire
Chief of Russia’s National Defense Management Center Mikhail Mizintsev said that the Ukrainian side plans to use drones to film fake videos of civilian casualties.
Ukraine is now a terrorist state or.. non state.
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For balance I give the BBC’s “Reality Check” article “Kremenchuk shopping centre attack claims fact-checked”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/61967480
Disappointing it doesn’t check the ‘facts’ claimed by Ukraine, but it’s better than most.
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“www.smotrim.ru: I have now discovered that the live broadcasts, as opposed to the shows already aired and stored on the site, can be viewed without difficulty.”
Not accessible in NYC. Webpage never loads. I assume that’s the case with the entire website, since some page ought to display even if there is not currently a live broadcast in progress.
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Here’s the error message that eventually appears on-screen:
“The connection has timed out
The server at http://www.smotrim.ru is taking too long to respond.”
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Similar to Raymond Lutz, it seems fine in Ontario. Now, I just need to learn Russian.
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⚡Russia to fully cut gas and oil supplies to all countries that abide by the illegal Western price cap on Russian energy.
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Ukrainian special service plots provocation to accuse Russian forces of chemical attack
According to the head of Russia’s National Defense Management Center Mikhail Mizintsev, to that end, SBU officers arrived to the Ukrainian Health Ministry’s Primorsky spa facility on June 18
https://tass.com/defense/1472907
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Brussels now official decision center target, finaly…
Russia threatens Western decision-making centers
Then the heads of state and government of NATO meet in Madrid and consider a Third World War against the Russian Federation, the Russian public space company, Roscosmos, published on its Telegram channel the coordinates of the decision-making centers of the West.
You can see the satellite photos of the White House and the Pentagon (United States), of the headquarters of NATO (Belgium) [photo], of the congress center where the NATO summit is held (Spain) , the Ministry of Defense (United Kingdom), the Reichstag and the Federal Chancellery (Germany), or even the Élysée Palace (France).
The site specifies the shooting coordinates:
⠀🇺🇸 38.897542, -77.036505
⠀⠀🇺🇸 38.870960, -77.055935
⠀⠀🇬🇧 51.503049, -0.127727
⠀⠀🇫🇷 48.870433, 2.316842
⠀⠀🇩🇪 52.519903, 13.368921
⠀⠀🇧🇪 50.879986, 4.425771
Dmitry Rogozin, the director of Roscosmos, is the former Russian ambassador to NATO.
Asked by reporters, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: “I will not guess what President Zelensky hopes for – no matter what he thinks, what he hopes for. He doesn’t make decisions. Decisions are made in Washington, and never at the presidential level. Well-known officials make decisions in the State Department, and probably even in the presidential administration.”
On good terms, hello!
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Link missing sorry, it is everywhere on twitter from Roscomos and all media.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article217472.html
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You’re wrong that most people don’t care about anything but higher prices. The minority who only care about inflation are just that, a minority. We very clearly see the ideological crisis and some of us can even accept that propaganda is a tool used to bolster and encourage our resolve.
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That half of a brain you refer to has been burned out by all the lying, cheating, two-timing, cold-hearted, two-timing, mean-spirited, home and world-wrecking “loserdom.” Another part of the brain will be lost when NATO moves into Kaliningrad. Another part will be toast when President Joe Biden bans the Russian Rouble. The other half of brain will be toast when the US, the UK, the EU, and NATO invade Russia — to save the world for democracy with Russia’s natural gas, oil, coal, minerals, and rare earths. By that time the people will be too burned out, too poor, too cold, too hungry, too homeless, too broke, and too broken to do anything about it. Already people don’t realize that “May you live in interesting times” is a curse.
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