ANATOMY OF PROPAGANDA: TOP 3 EVENTS OF THE WEEK
23/10/2023, 13:00
Putin's visit to China became a crucial international event for Kremlin. Russia is imposing the message about the current president's irreplaceability. Russian Ministry of Defense justifies the destroyed helicopters at the airfields.
During the Vladimir Putin's visit to China, Russia expressed its will to consider China's proposals as the basis for resolving the war with Ukraine. Putin stated this in an interview with the Chinese Media Corporation ahead of his trip and during a press conference following the negotiations with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Putin's words reveal obvious deceit, as China's 12-point "peace plan," although generally positively received by Ukraine, is a rather vague declaration and lacks specific implementation mechanisms.
The Kremlin actively promotes the thesis of Putin's indispensability. Dmitry Peskov stated that there are currently no competitors to Putin in the political environment. Peskov's statement was followed by a similar one by Ramzan Kadyrov, who proposed cancelling the presidential elections in March 2024 due to the military operation in Ukraine. Kremlin political technologists are playing out a scenario in which Putin allegedly does not fight for power but benevolently agrees to extend his presidential responsibilities.
Russian propaganda keeps declaring about the exaggerated losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in order to hide the obvious failures of the Russian army. Thus, the media and social networks widely covered the missile strike by the Ukrainian defence forces on the Russian helicopters at the airfields of Luhansk and Berdiansk on the night of October 17th. The Kremlin's response was a statement by the Russian Ministry of Defense about the "extremely effective work of air defence systems," which allegedly shot down seven (!) Ukrainian combat aircraft in just one day. If we count all the Ukrainian aircraft that according to the Russian Ministry of Defense has been shot down, their number far exceeds the aircraft fleet of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
