RUSSIA

The catastrophic sinking of the Russian nuclear-powered Kursk submarine more than two decades ago was the result of a collision with a stricken NATO vessel in the Barents Sea, a former high-ranking navy chief has insisted.

The ‘Kursk’ sank on August 12, 2000 at a depth of 108 meters, claiming the lives of all 118 crew members and sparking the first major international crisis of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. An official investigation commissioned by the Russian government ruled two years later that the incident was the result of a torpedo explosion, which then triggered the detonation of ammunition on board.

ANDREI MARTYANOV—Today, America’s actions represent increasingly pronounced symptoms of a declining power, one which cannot face reality without going mad. And she is going mad, domestically, as well as internationally, and the only force which is capable of keeping this increasingly irrational and dangerous power from committing suicide while taking everyone else with her is the threat of a massive military defeat. Russia has this force to do so, and so far it works. But I do have my own question: do orderlies in the asylum get offended when overpowering the violent patient and restraining it to the bed, by the patient’s insults and resistance?

THE SAKER—According to the KP investigators, these guys have legal contracts and they pay Russian income taxes. So this is all very legal and quite pluralistic to boot: the only people who can seriously accuse the Russian government of trying to crack down on the opposition, pro-western political parties or anti-Putin ideas are folks who have absolutely no factual knowledge about Russia *at all*. Either that, or they are deliberately lying. And that includes the vast majority of the western political leaders (in the USA and in Europe) who are now scrambling to increase the budgets of the traditional western propaganda outfits such as VOA/RL/RFE or who want to create new propaganda outlets to “bring the democratic message to the Russian people”. In reality, the Russian people are fed a daily dose of western propaganda (aka “democratic message”) courtesy of the Kremlin, and that is something which the imbeciles in power in the West can’t even begin to imagine, nevermind deal with.

THE SAKER—What I tried to show in these articles is that, in total contrast with the “bad old Soviet propaganda,” the modern Russian counter-propaganda does the exact opposite of what most people in the West believe it does: far from suppressing western propaganda, the Kremlin tries its very best to make sure that as many Russians as possible become aware of what the West is saying about them, their country and their values.  The Kremlin even  PAYS anti-Russian pundits to go on Russian national TV!!!

Why?  Simply, because considering the nature of what the western media outlets, and even entire specialized entities, write and say about Russia, the best thing the Kremlin can do is to make darn sure that everybody in Russia becomes aware of it.

During the Cold War, the Soviets had a strict censorship system, entire segments of literature was banned, you could not take certain books across the border and radios like RFE/RL, the BBC or DW were jammed. Now the opposite is happening.