ANATOMY OF PROPAGANDA: TOP 3 EVENTS OF THE WEEK
24/04/2023, 10:00
Russian propaganda has been trying for the whole week to dispel the concerns of Russians about the fact that the war with Ukraine is the ‘fate’ of ordinary people. The media actively covered how a man resembling Putin allegedly visited the Kherson region, and the son of Dmitry Peskov "heroically served" in the PMC "Wagner". And to make the war fun, ‘court singer’ Shaman presented a new patriotic hit called "We".
Russian media spreads a video in which a man visually resembling Vladimir Putin lands in a field from a helicopter and then communicates with a group of senior officers in unidentified locations. This video is presented as "confirmation" of Putin's visit to the headquarters of the "Dnepr" military group in the Kherson direction. Putin's pathological fear for his life is incompatible with visits to the front line. This staged video is aimed at demonstrating the courage of the declining Russian dictator and his awareness of the details of the "ATO" (Russian right-wing radicals regularly accuse Putin of being disconnected from the actual situation on the front line).
Russian propaganda is trying to portray Peskov's son as a "hero of the ATO". Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that the son of the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov, participated in a "special military operation" as a part of the artillery units of the group under fake documents. Nikolai Peskov himself, in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, stated that he got a medal "For Courage". Nikolai Peskov became famous in the fall of 2022 when, in a telephone conversation with a prankster pretending to be a military commissar after the announcement of mobilization, he refused to go to the military enlistment office.
Voice of the "ATO" Yaroslav Dronov, who performs songs under the stage name SHAMAN, presented a new "patriotic" video for the song "We". Dronov's creativity caused confusion even in Russia. The release of the video, which is clearly in the Nazi aesthetic, coincided with the birthday of Adolf Hitler on April 20, and in content strongly echoes the NSDAP anthem "Horst Wessel Song".
