Notably though, Russia kept its official conscription figures fairly normal, which was a good sign for peace, but now apparently they are doing behind the scenes conscription, including on the spot conscription at road blocks. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In the separatist "republics" they have been forcibly conscripting all military-age males right from the start of the invasion. Many men there are in hiding, afraid to go outside even to buy food. Recruitment patrols grab anyone they can find and take them straight to the barracks. I haven't heard about such things in Russia proper though.

Well. Maybe. But they surely must have heard that NATO will intervene if they use chemical weapons, or at least, this is what they've stated. — Manuel

Nah, NATO will not intervene over an alleged use of chemical weapons (which Russia will, of course, deny or blame on Ukrainians themselves). They've been careful this time about not setting any red lines. Even Biden, loose cannon that he is, has consistently been saying that US would not intervene under any circumstances whatsoever. "Dire consequences" is as far as anyone would commit, which would likely amount to nothing more dire than a nonbinding UN resolution.

WMD news:

• Eduard Basurin, press secretary of the DNR (the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic) military command, said that "chemical troops" will need to be deployed in order to "smoke out" Mariupol defenders.
• Ramsan Kadyrov, the Chechen strongman, said in his latest video that tactical nukes should be dropped on Kiev and Kharkov if Ukraine does not surrender.

Kadyrov's troops have been taking part in the siege of Mariupol (or so he claims), and for the last several weeks he has been regularly posting videos announcing an imminent fall of Mariupol. There's no reason to take him seriously in this case either. In Russia he is allowed to say and do pretty much anything he wants, and his security forces have also been involved in assassinations abroad. But he has no say over the use of nukes, or for that matter over the general conduct of the war.

But DNR stooge's casual reference to "chemical troops" should be taken seriously. I can see Russia using chem weapons via its proxy forces, which would give it a modicum of plausible deniability.

The second time I checked, it was behind a paywall, so I just wanted to spare you the hassle. — neomac

Ah I see, for some reason I was able to see it - perhaps because I use NoScript.

You know we can just follow the link, right? You don't need to copy-paste the entire thing here.

Yes, this looks like a typical presentation of the official stance, geared more towards the foreign reader.

If you want to see something even more candid and unrestrained, read this article that was published about a week ago by the Russian state news agency RIA: What Russia Should Do with Ukraine (offsite English translation). It is a true fascist manifesto.

Crimea never would've become a part of Russia if the US hadn't been meddling in the internal affairs of Ukraine for decades already. — Benkei

Hypotheticals are difficult as you yourself implied, but simply use your head here, Benkei. I know you have one. — ssu

I've been wondering about this phenomenon: Benkei, etc. are not even Americans, and yet they are as parochial as Americans are often said to be. Parochial about someone else's country! How pathetic is that? In their closed minds nothing exists, save for or because of the United States. Nothing else is worth talking about. Ukraine? Russia? Who the fuck cares! The US (and, of course, NATO and capitalism) is what this is all about. Or at least all that they can think about.

Then I realized what this reminded me of: antisemitism and other such obsessive bigotries and conspiracy theories. Now at least it makes some sort of psychological sense. Those Jews (Masons, gays, Americans) are the root of all evil. They openly and secretly manipulate events for the purposes of world domination or apocalyptic destruction.

I'm wondering if the harsh sanctions may have been a mistake. If it just closes Russia off to the rest of the world, that's unfortunate. — frank

They are. No doubt about it to my mind. Perhaps isolate sanctions to oligarchs and Putin, try to make these bite, other sanctions only hurt the population. — Manuel

In the past, Western sanctions against Russia attempted to spare the majority of the population by targeting mostly individuals and selected military-industrial entities. That didn't seem to have any effect. Now sanctions are explicitly aimed at the entire nation. Such total sanctions are really a war by other means, and just like in the conventional hot war, the entire nation suffers. The thinking behind such sanctions is that, even if they don't directly motivate the rulers, they may build up pressure from below. (What they don't take into account is that public discontent is more likely to be directed at those who impose the sanctions, as seems to be happening in Russia.) At a minimum, they will degrade the country's ability to make trouble abroad - but that can only happen in the long run. Sanctions won't stop an ongoing war.

Do sanctions generally work? That's a tough question. Studies of past sanctions claim to show that sanctions have achieved some objectives in a minority of cases, but also that they were more likely to succeed when objectives were modest, such as changing some trade policies. But discerning the impact of sanctions on decision making can be difficult. If Putin did not order the invasion, would that be credited to the threat of sanctions? Not likely, given that most people did not expect a large-scale invasion to happen anyway (despite warnings from Western intelligence). In Putin's case they would probably be right though: he cares little about such things.

In deciding to impose sanctions, there is a significant factor of moral outrage and moral signalling, perhaps more significant than any pragmatic calculations. We want to punish the bastards. The latest escalation of sanctioning activity is a good illustration of that point, as it followed on the heels of gruesome imagery coming from journalists who got direct access to freed areas around Kiev. Images of a dozen dead civilians lying in the street produced a stronger reaction than credible reports of hundreds of people dying from indirect fire in Mariupol and elsewhere. Let alone the estimated 95% of Afghan population that are not getting enough to eat, partly as a result of Western governments' action or inaction.

I don't think all roads save one were cut off. And I think the trains have been moving also. — ssu

Evacuation trains have been leaving Kiev every day since at least early March. But never mind facts, let's listen to some bullshitter obsessed with proving a point :roll:

They're depressingly subservient. It seems they have totally bought into the fact that Putin is an absolute ruler. — Wayfarer

Well, you have to assume that there is a negative selection at work here: how else could these people climb up the power hierarchy and stay there? There are no heroes among them, to be sure. (Although a few at least jumped ship, but that's not an option for everyone.)

Speaking of consolidating power, these two articles by the Russian journalist Farida Rustamova are interesting. She has talked to her contacts among the Russian power elite about the war, first in the first week after the invasion ("They’re carefully enunciating the word clusterf*ck"), and then again weeks later (“Now we're going to f*ck them all.”).

(Given that most of her sources are anonymous and there is little independent confirmation for any of this, you can only trust her integrity. But she has written for respected media outlets before independent media was completely shut down in Russia.)

What she describes in the first article is that apparently, the full-scale invasion was a complete surprise to all, and the first reaction to it was shock, incomprehension and fear. But then the mood changes. There is the expected rally-around-the-flag effect, as well as a realization that, like it or not, this is a new reality to which they will have to adapt.

Over the past week, I’ve spoken with several people close to Putin, as well as with about a dozen civil servants of various levels and state company employees. I had two goals. First of all, to understand the mood among the Russian elites and people close to them after the imposition of unprecedented sanctions on Russia. Secondly, to find out whether anyone is trying to convince President Putin to stop the bloodshed — and why Roman Abramovich ended up playing the role of mediator/diplomat.

In short, it can be said that, over the past month, Putin’s dream of a consolidation among the Russian elite has come true. These people understand that their lives are now tied only to Russia, and that that’s where they’ll need to build them. The differences and the influence of various circles and clans have been erased by the fact that, for the most part, people have lost their past positions and resources. The possible conclusion of a peace treaty is unlikely to change the mood of the Russian elites. "We’ve passed the point of no return,” says a source close to the Kremlin. “Everyone understands that there will be peace, but that this peace won't return the life we had before.” — Farida Rustamova

I am sorry I started this. You have shown that are quite capable of holding both sides of this imaginary argument that you are having with yourself, so you don't need me here. I'll continue to ignore you as I did before.

but to argue they haven't achieved anything militarily and the Ukrainians have in some way "won" just doesn't make any sense. — boethius

You are projecting. I never asserted anything of the sort.

Russia has invaded Ukraine, it is fighting a war entirely on Ukrainian soil and holding some Ukrainian territory (which it wasn't already holding before the war). That is a military achievement, in a narrow sense. (What, in the long run, Russia is to gain from all this is another question.) But why, in arguing this obvious point (against whom?), do you find it necessary to give ridiculous rationalizations even for the campaign's obvious failings? Do you think this somehow makes your argument stronger?

Yes, I know you've dumped a lot of bullshit commentary in this thread. I stopped paying attention a long time ago - I just chanced on that delusional passage because it was quoted by someone else.

Sure, the evident military setbacks and losses are really all part of a cunning plan... I understand when it's Russian generals saying this - because what else could they say? - but it still boggles me why someone apparently disinterested would use such desperate arguments just to shore up his positions in a debate.

On an unrelated note, the new narrative is hilarious. All the stalling out and counter attacks are actually part of a grand strategy.
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh and here of course is a useful idiot echoing the generals' line with his trenchant "analysis":

It's not "convoluted" to point out they achieved those core goals ... which manoeuvres elsewhere in the country, in particular pressure on the capital, help achieve by spreading forces and supply lines thin (and making it easier to map and blowup said supply lines). — boethius

Yeah, losing face is probably the biggest problem now. They can't go home humiliated, or to state it another way, they will not. — Manuel

They will declare a glorious victory regardless of what happens. Remember, as far as Russian authorities are concerned, Russia did not even go to war with Ukraine. Russia is conducting a "special military operation," which is proceeding strictly according to the plan (whatever that plan may be). Anyone saying otherwise will be persecuted.

A large segment of Russian population is living in a world that has very little to do with reality. They believe what they are told on TV. Even people whose close relatives are right now dodging Russian bombs in besieged cities refuse to believe them. Others don't dare show their dissent. Those who do are arrested, fined, jailed, fired from their jobs, pressured to leave the country.

When you can flat-out deny or assert anything and get away with it, why should you be concerned with reality?

"How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?"

There are also reports - which again, taken with lots of salt - which say that Russia expected this thing to last about 2 weeks. Now, this may all be fake. — Manuel

This article was published on Russian state news agency RIA just days after the war started, then quickly pulled down. (The original can still be found on wayback machine and on Sputnik news site, and an English translation was published on a Pakistani site at about the same time.) Apparently, the article was prepared in anticipation of a quick conclusion of the "special operation" and distributed to friendly news organizations in advance. It is a delirious and nauseating celebration of Russian takeover in Ukraine that includes passages like this:

Returning Ukraine, that is, turning it back to Russia, would be more and more difficult with every decade – recoding*, de-Rus-sification of Russians and inciting Ukrainian Little Russians against Russians would gain momentum. Now this problem is gone – Ukraine has returned to Russia.

(My emphasis)

* The translation is rather poor. "Recoding" here means "brainwashing."

Well, that was unresponsive. Seems like all you got from my post was that I am a "propaganda denier." Fine, carry on.

Yes, they do propaganda and we do propaganda too. — Baden

start babbling about any other bad thing — Baden

Funny how that works, isn't it?

So, you keep asking, what about our propaganda ("our" being the collective West, I assume). Well, unlike a lot of other whataboutism in this thread, this is somewhat relevant to the topic. So, what about it?

I assume that people have some idea of what propaganda is like in Russia. Without getting into details, the most important thing about Russian propaganda is that it dominates public discourse inside the country (and is surprisingly influential outside, but let's put that to the side). It is univocal, institutionalized and pervasive. There is no public accountability for truth. Dissenting voices are suppressed.

When you say that "we do propaganda too," do you see something similar in the West? I would assume not. (And please, let's not debase ourselves with hysterical exaggerations and silly conspiracy theories when arguing the point.) So in what way is Western propaganda similar to Russian propaganda? What would you even qualify as propaganda?

There is government discourse: statements, speeches, press releases, etc. There is discourse originating from from various political, business, activist interests. There are influential media. But taken collectively, they are far from univocal, and individually, none of them have the power to dominate the public discourse.

Yeah, looking back over the past year, it almost looks like the authorities knew all along that all that tosh about human rights and freedoms would soon become irrelevant. With everything else that's going on, there's no more need for even halfhearted pretenses.

As soon as Russia was kicked out of the Council of Europe ("you can't fire me - I quit!") Dmitry Medvedev (who many thought to be softer and more liberal than Putin) gleefully declared that now Russia was finally free to reinstitute capital punishment.


I don't know who you are jumping up and down for, but if it's on my account, then don't bother. Go back to bickering with whoever cares.

On an unrelated note, the new narrative is hilarious. All the stalling out and counter attacks are actually part of a grand strategy.
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Some, uh, experts seem to go along with this narrative:




On a related note, I think that some of the commenters (and I don't entirely absolve myself) tend to hold official Russian rhetoric to a standard of truthfulness, rationality and consistency to which it does not hold itself. For example, some say that after repeatedly and forcefully stating their objectives in this war, the Russian side cannot afford to back down and leave with much less - something that they could have achieved sooner and easier, with far fewer losses. Most of all, because that would threaten its standing at home. This analysis does not appreciate just how little bearing facts and common sense have on what Russian officials and propagandists are saying, and how abruptly they can switch their talking points. (How much any of this matters to the Russian populace is a different and more complicated question.)

For people on the outside, the depth of denial, absurdity and cynicism in the official rhetoric may be difficult to fathom, but here is just one example. One of the principle justifications for the war (which cannot be called a war) was and remains the "genocide" of the Russian people in the separatist Donbass. Apparently, the public is more receptive to this narrative than to others, and so propagandists put it front and center (for example, when talking about the not-war to schoolchildren). But contrary to what one might expect, this narrative was almost entirely absent from the public sphere until about two weeks before the invasion, when suddenly it was being blasted out of every TV set. Neither actual numbers nor the record of news stories and official statements over the past several years bear it out. And yet it appears that this jarring switch went unnoticed by many. In true Orwellian fashion, a sizable number of people (according to some surveys) now believe that a genocide has been ongoing all these years.

I am not going to make any predictions, but my point in all this is that there are more live possibilities here than some prognosticators admit. It is entirely possible that at the end (if there is an end) the Russians will declare that their goal was always whatever it is that they will have decided to settle on, and that will be it. The record showing otherwise won't matter in the slightest.

My understanding from what I've read is that Putin won't agree to a ceasefire until he's negotiating from a position of strength, which he hasn't yet achieved. One metric for achieving that would be to cut the Ukranian forces off from the sea. Another, would be to take some of the major cities. If that is true and the Ukranians are provided with more weapons and encouraged not to back down to Russian demands where does that leave us?

It seems to me the worst case scenario for Ukraine is a continued war of attrition that they're not losing quickly but can't win either and lose slowly until Putin achieves his military position of strength. And so they continue fighting while their cities are reduced to rubble; their citizens lose access to food, water and electricity; civilian casualties mount; and the cost of reconstruction both in terms of time and money skyrockets. And seeing as NATO has explicitly ruled out intervening militarily, which of the following do you think is the more likely outcome? — Baden

I don't see Ukrainians needing encouragement or persuasion - they are the ones doing all the persuading. And they are the ones doing all the fighting. So it is not for you to decide what is best for them, as if they were children who can't make responsible decisions about their own well-being. If they ask for help, you either give it to them or fuck off.

Obviously Putin does have his supporters, no doubt.

But one should notice that Putin's Russia is authoritarian, and spontaneity is usually controlled "spontaneity". Letting people to be spontaneous is not the correct way in Russia. — ssu

https://t.me/insiderUKR/26783

Here you can see a selection of announcements sent out to employees and college students, as well as calls for paid "extras".

On Friday there will be a rally in Luzhniki to celebrate an anniversary of the integration of Crimea into RF. Attendance is STRICTLY MANDATORY

Attention! Urgent update! We just received a direction that only persons of Slavic appearance are requested for the demonstration - no migrants.

(This is how "non-Slavic" people are often referred to in Russia, regardless of where they are actually from.)

Need extras for a concert on 18.03 at 14:00, 2 hours, Luzhniki Stadium (...) 300 rubles
Payment transferred next day to your bank card

This is a typical thing that happens before every government-organized "Puting" (as people call them - a play on "meeting," or rally).

What likely isn't fake news is that Russia has lost many generals (perhaps four or five) and high ranking commanders in the war. This does tell about that the operation hasn't gone well and that in a hierarchial organization like the Russian army, lower commanders taking initiative isn't supported, hence the generals have to come and lead from the front. It also tells about a highly working SIGINT of the Ukrainians that they can find the location of the generals and then use artillery at them. That the West has it's finger on this, can be likely.

In a documentary of the Russo-Georgian war these's footage of the 58th Army commander doing exactly this: before the drive to South Ossetia, a the general spoke a huge crowd of various officers and soldiers just how the lead formations will move Tskhinvali. — ssu

Today the head of Ukrainian border guards issued a mock thank you to a Russian TV propagandist who unwittingly helped Ukrainian military locate and sink a Russian warship in the port of Berdyansk.

With that as a given, I think I can also understand Isaac's disgust for one great power encouraging some relatively powerless nation or people to take on some other great power, and offering them support to do so, in essence convincing them to be complicit in their own inevitable or continued pummeling. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, I mean, those primitive people over there have no agency of their own, do they? They are nothing but pawns of the powerful. They couldn't have risen up against a corrupt and oppressive regime without Nulland engineering the whole thing. They wouldn't even dream of resisting an invasion by a force that threatens their existence as a people without great powers "convincing" them to fight.

I haven't heard that proverb before:
"Do what you ought, come what may".

I think it is ambiguous. What does it mean, to and for you?
Does it reflect a particular philosopher's theory/practice? — Amity

I have seen this saying variously attributed to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Leo Tolstoy. It was also adopted as a favorite motto by the Soviet physicist and human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov. It means (for me) that you should do what your conscience tells you to do, even when you have little knowledge and control over the outcome.

Sorry, I don't have anything to contribute to this discussion. To be honest, I am skeptical of such advises: Putin/Russia/Europe/etc. ought to do this or that. OK, how do you imagine this is going to happen? Will Putin listen to your advice? Will Russia or Europe (what could that even mean?) Are you just advising the universe on how it should proceed going forward? (You may as well, for all the good it will do...) Or is this more like a prayer? But then why get into such specifics? Keep it simple: "Thy will be done..."

For personal advice, I like this proverb best: do what you ought, come what may. That's all that any one of us can aspire to.

Oh, how interesting.
I have only just met him as the 5th contributor to the Guardian article:
How to Solve a Problem: Like Putin
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/670017 — Amity

Thanks, I'll have a look.

Here is a NYT podcast with a transcript relevant to the topic: Jane Coaston and Peter Pomerantsev, who both know a good deal about propaganda, discuss propaganda in the context of Russia's war with Ukraine. At the beginning they try to define propaganda in general, and I think they do a decent job.

Propaganda is manipulative and aggressive. It does not respect its audience; it doesn't want people to think, evaluate and come to their own conclusions freely; it aims to instill a particular set of beliefs by any means necessary. It could be objected that the same characteristics can apply to other communication. This is true, but the difference here is in standards and expectations. When a conversation starts to resemble propaganda on one or both sides, we see that as a failing. But whatever your attitude towards propaganda (whether you think there can be good propaganda, as well as bad), this is no more and no less than what we expect of it.

(Personal anecdote: I briefly met Peter Pomerantsev in Prague when he was a still boy living there with his parents. I haven't had contact with him since then, though I've met his dad in London, a Russian-speaking poet and writer, originally from West Ukraine.)

Don't feed the trolls.

Here is an interview with a woman who got out of the besieged Mariupol two days ago. You can listen to it if you understand Russian, or read a translation of a partial transcript.

"I thought that life couldn't get any worse. But every day I discovered that it could get worse... When I left, there wasn't a single intact building left. Not a single undamaged road without bomb craters. Not a single unbroken window in the entire city of Mariupol... People carry out the dead and bury them close to home, because you have to stay close to the bomb shelter... Early on there were volunteers who collected corpses left outside at bus stops and benches and drove them to the morgue. But there is no more room in the morgue... The last four days it seemed like not five minutes would go by without sounds of bomb blasts... "

Nuland — boethius

Oh for fuck's sake :roll:

Don't bother tagging me, I am not reading your ignorant bullshit.

Russian state-controlled media is still pushing the "biolabs" story. I would be worried if it was about chemical weapons, because that could mean that they are preparing the ground for using such weapons themselves. But the bioweapons story that they are telling is so fantastical and ridiculous that I just can't see how it could segue into something more realistic, like sarin or even anthrax. It looks more like they are indulging Putin's old paranoid fantasy about diseases genetically engineered to target Russians.

https://t.me/zvezdanews/73170


Let's just hope that propaganda is all there is to this story. There are more than enough things to worry about already.

I am not actually sure what is going on in Ukraine. — Book273

Yeah, this seems to be a common theme here. I don't know anything, I don't believe anyone, I don't give a fuck, but I am going to bloviate at length anyway...

Russian army reserve is not like US army reserve - it is not just a branch of the military that you can join for a few years of service. In Russia every man who is qualified for military service is either on active duty or in reserve - up to the age of about 50. So imagine all those men with families, jobs and beer bellies being called up to fight in the "brotherly" nation of Ukraine!

They haven't called in reservists yet (by law, that can only be done in wartime, but then again, "law" is a very flexible thing in Russia), but they are actively recruiting. People are being called up under any pretext and asked to sign a contract. And of course, the infamous Wagner, a mercenary company with close ties to Russian military, are recruiting. They sent messages to all those who had previously applied but were rejected due to a criminal record or for other reasons, telling them that now there is no filter - anyone willing can go and taste salo in Ukraine (salt pork, colloquially known as a staple Ukrainian delicacy).

Russian Ground Forces consist of only 280 000 troops. — ssu

That's the number of active duty troops as of 2020 per Wikipedia, but that would include both conscripts and professionals (Russia has both). By law, conscripts are not supposed to be deployed abroad, although there is evidence that the military are getting around this rule by any means possible. Still, there's been an outcry in Russia, and even an official acknowledgement that conscripts have been sent to Ukraine "by mistake." Some of these 18-19-year boys have only had a few months of basic training before being sent into battle!

Don’t know whether to put this here or in the Trump thread but oh well.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/exclusive-kremlin-putin-russia-ukraine-war-memo-tucker-carlson-fox/

Treasonous c***t. — Wayfarer

Fox and Tucker Carlson are well loved by Russian propaganda.

On Wednesday, Carlson claimed that the “Russian disinformation they’ve been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true.”

https://russian.rt.com/ussr/news/974175-nuland-karlson-biolaboratorii-ukraina

"Fox host Carlson: Nulland in effect confirmed the existence of secret labs in Ukraine"

There is a whole crackpot conspiracy subgenre of "perpetrator spilling the beans in public for no reason." Government officials supposedly confessing to blowing up WTC buildings, climate scientists admitting forging data, etc.

This bioweapons story is Pizzagate-level insanity. And yet adult people of adequate intelligence take it seriously, pour over Nulland Q&A for vague hints of confirmation... The mind boggles. But then we've seen it before: QAnon, 9/11 conspiracies, etc.

US's atrocious history of deception and subterfuge

This pretty much sums up the useful idiot position. US - bad. Therefore, any anti-US propaganda should be given extra credence, any US ally should be viewed with extra suspicion, and any US adversary - with extra deference.

So when Russian MOD claims that American biolabs in Ukraine have been developing bioweapons capable of selectively targeting Slavic ethnic groups, and that they have been studying bats, tics and birds as possible vectors of transmission of lethal diseases across the border, such claims ought to be taken very seriously indeed, and at the highest level.

Although I don't read most posts on this thread, I see that our useful idiot support group, having exhausted the neo-Nazi theme for now, has jumped onto the latest Russian propaganda talking point: Ukrainian bioweapons.

Perhaps not everyone realizes just how fantastical this conspiracy theory is (unsurprisingly, QAnon is all over it). One of the more specific claims from the Russian Ministry of Defense is that US biolabs in Ukraine are developing weapons that are capable of selectively targeting certain ethnic groups. And this story has a history.

A few years back people were scratching their heads and wondering about Putin's mental health when, out of the blue, he expressed his concerns about "someone" collecting "biological matter" of various ethnic groups in Russia. Gradually it emerged that Putin was heading into Dr. Strangelove territory with this theory: he believed that Americans were collecting Russians' precious bodily fluids in order to develop bioweapons for ethnic cleansing. No one knows where he picked up this nonsense, but it cropped up regularly over the years, and apparently this is what the propaganda decided to go with this time.

I think many understand what is happening, but then there are of course those who believe what is said. I think here the issue is that Putin is still holding to the idea of "special military operation" and the Russian media is showing Russian troops handing out food and blaming the Ukrainians (neo-nazis) to be shelling the civilians. That can sink in for a while. But too big casualty figures you cannot hide, it simply goes by word of mouth. If Americans don't trust their media, Russians don't trust it on a larger scale. At least those that can use their brains. — ssu

Among Russian elite and media personalities there was evident confusion and even dismay initially, but most regrouped and closed ranks, or else are keeping quiet. Some cautiously dissenting voices can occasionally be heard even in the official media. Karen Shakhnazarov is a director of a large film studio and an accomplished filmmaker. He's been a staunch Putin loyalist and a media fixture all these years. But the other day in a TV panel discussion he was heard saying: "We must admit that over the last 30 years they (Ukrainians) apparently managed to come together as a nation." (He blamed the traditionally more independent and nationalistic West Ukraine and their "Western curators" for that.) He admitted that not only Ukrainians are not welcoming Russian soldiers, but are fighting back, and that they are determined and united. He even called the war a "war" - a taboo word in Russian official discourse. (Of course, Shakhnazarov hastened to make clear that he fully supports the "special operation.")

More worrying is the recently intensified propaganda claiming that biological weapons were being developed in US-sponsored labs in Ukraine. Such claims have a history going back to before the war, but back then it was just one strain in a flood of fantastical and outrageous anti-Ukraine propaganda. Now it is being repeated so insistently - and amplified by the Chinese - that it looks very likely that Russia is preparing the ground for using chemical or biological weapons, like it did in Syria.