{"id":60771,"date":"2018-03-17T06:23:55","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T06:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=60771"},"modified":"2018-03-17T06:23:55","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T06:23:55","slug":"vote-else-crimeas-propaganda-machine-fans-fear-closing-days-putins-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/vote-else-crimeas-propaganda-machine-fans-fear-closing-days-putins-campaign.html","title":{"rendered":"Vote \u2014 or else: Crimea’s propaganda machine fans fear in closing days of Putin’s campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vote \u2014 or else: Crimea’s propaganda machine fans fear in closing days of Putin’s campaign<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

On the eve of Russia\u2019s presidential election, government television here has been airing segments showing Crimeans what they would face if not for Russian President Vladimir Putin: rocket fire, grieving women and same-sex weddings.<\/span><\/p>\n

On a political show, the host warns that the West will use any sign of Russian weakness due to low turnout to carry out plans to exterminate the Russian people.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur role is a military one,\u201d says Yekaterina Kozyr, the head of this annexed territory\u2019s fast-expanding government broadcaster. \u201cThere is a war going on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2014, as Putin\u2019s capture of this Black Sea peninsula unfolded, Russian troops wearing uniforms without identifying markings seized the dilapidated Crimean headquarters of the Ukrainian state television broadcaster. Four years later, the building gleams, freshly sheathed in gray metal siding. Inside the new modern studios, a staff more than double the Ukraine-era size is fanning fears of annihilation to boost Putin ahead of Sunday\u2019s vote.<\/span><\/p>\n

For all the buzz about Kremlin efforts to influence the Internet, control of the television airwaves remains central to Putin\u2019s power. Nowhere is this clearer than in Crimea, where a propaganda machine that Russia spent millions of dollars to build over the past four years is now fully deployed to drum up votes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though Putin is assured of a blowout victory, analysts say, the Kremlin is seeking turnout as a stamp of legitimacy for his fourth six-year presidential term. In Crimea, a place central to Putin\u2019s domestic image as a fearless protector of Russian interests, officials see turnout as especially symbolic. They are determined to see it exceed the turnout in Crimea\u2019s internationally unrecognized referendum to join Russia in 2014, which pro-Russian authorities put at more than 80 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCrimeans understand that we must contribute no fewer people in the election than we did in the referendum in 2014,\u201d said Grigory Ioffe, chairman of the territory\u2019s Civic Chamber. \u201cPublic opinion in the West will be counting this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For Crimea\u2019s state media, that means war \u2014 war against Western \u201cspies\u201d who they claim would like to use an underwhelming Putin election victory to foment unrest. Kozyr describes her staff, who were trained by state media specialists from Moscow, as \u201cinformational special forces.\u201d Dmitry Taran, host of a show called \u201cInformation Warfare,\u201d says he is both \u201can information specialist and a military man.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s necessary to create maximum turnout,\u201d Taran said in an interview. \u201cVote for whoever you want but turn out \u2014 in order to shut up all the international intelligence services that are sitting and waiting for the 19th,\u201d he said, referring to the day after the election.<\/span><\/p>\n

[Is Russia dangerous, cold and run by a dictator? Here\u2019s what Russians said.]<\/span><\/p>\n

The message on Crimean television is, if anything, darker and more conspiratorial than the regular fare on Russia\u2019s national TV. That may be because daily life in Crimea is harder than in mainland Russia. International sanctions mean that even Russian companies are wary of doing business here, and the lack of a road connection to the rest of Russia leads to higher prices and more-limited goods.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Crimea\u2019s new state media, politics in Crimea isn\u2019t about material well-being. It\u2019s about life or death. Kozyr, the Crimean government broadcasting head, said it\u2019s her job to remind the locals of that.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the pro-Western revolution in Ukraine in 2014, which included radical nationalists, Russian media warned of imminent violence against Russian speakers and Crimea\u2019s more than 2 million residents.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes a splash of cold water is good, to remind people of what we avoided,\u201d Kozyr said, \u201cif it hadn\u2019t been for the voluntary decision of Vladimir Putin to save 2.5 million lives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

After Russia seized Crimea, the state spent more than $4 million at current exchange rates to build up the region\u2019s state broadcaster, and the regional government continues to provide multimillion-dollar annual subsidies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kozyr, a former morning show host who refers to past Ukrainian rule in Crimea as an occupation, said she received media-management training in St. Petersburg and advice from Moscow-based media specialists who flew to Crimea. Russian state TV engineers helped in outfitting the studio despite procurement difficulties because of Western sanctions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRussian television and the Russian media industry were far ahead of where Crimea was or where Ukraine is now,\u201d Crimean Information Minister Dmitry Polonsky said in an interview.<\/span><\/p>\n

[The Putin generation: Young Russians are Putin\u2019s biggest fans]<\/span><\/p>\n

In the converted Ukrainian state TV building, storage space that used to hold Soviet-era props now houses a 24-hour Crimean news channel. The new cameras are Japanese, and a coffee table for the morning show includes a built-in heater to keep the hosts\u2019 drinks warm. Two modern Mercedes TV trucks assembled in Moscow have replaced the Ukrainian channel\u2019s rusting Soviet-made van, and a third is on the way. There is now a children\u2019s department, and a family show that emphasizes patriotism and Russian history is in development.<\/span><\/p>\n

An independent channel catering to the minority Crimean Tatar population has been banished from the peninsula, replaced by a state-funded, pro-Kremlin version called Millet. The independent channel, ATR, now broadcasts from Kiev and has been urging Crimean Tatars still living on the peninsula not to vote in Sunday\u2019s election. Millet, meanwhile, has been airing a political talk show with a visual style very similar to ATR \u2014 but with the opposite message.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Ukraine kills its own peaceful citizens,\u201d a Millet announcer intoned this week, \u201cthe Russian Federation is building innovation cities, innovation centers, spaceports, unique transportation infrastructure, hospitals, schools and kindergartens.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ukraine is trying to fight back. Last year it erected a 500-foot television tower at the Crimean border to transmit Ukrainian TV signals into the peninsula and has provided government funding to ATR. ATR head Lenur Islyamov describes his operation as an \u201cinformational cannon\u201d shooting at Crimea. But he said the Russian media campaign is succeeding in creating a feeling of permanence around Russian authority in Crimea that seems to make a return to Ukraine impossible.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russia they wanted was different,\u201d Islyamov said of the Crimeans who supported the annexation. \u201cIn the end, they got nothing but propaganda.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

With no reliable public-opinion polling on the peninsula, the impact of Russia\u2019s media campaign is hard to quantify. Protests are suppressed by the authorities and kept off the television screen.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t show what\u2019s really happening in Crimea,\u201d said Sevil Aledinova, who used to work for Ukrainian state television in Crimea and now works in Kiev. \u201cThey don\u2019t show how human rights are being squeezed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[Occupied territory becomes home turf as Putin campaigns in Crimea]<\/span><\/p>\n

But when Putin came to Crimea on Wednesday for a campaign stop, the power of Russian state media was on display. Kozyr\u2019s broadcaster deployed both of its new trucks and nine cameras to cover Putin\u2019s rally in the port city of Sevastopol, beaming a live feed by satellite to state TV headquarters in Moscow.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the crowd of thousands, people repeated the tropes that have long been a staple of Russian nationwide state TV and are now amplified by the operation in Crimea.<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States wants to destroy Russia, they said. Anything the West sees as Russian aggression is simply Russia defending itself. Life under Russian rule may not be perfect, they said, but if Putin hadn\u2019t saved Crimea from the Ukrainian nationalists in 2014, unimaginable violence would have followed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t the ones who started this information war,\u201d said Polonsky, the Crimean information minister. \u201cWe always tell the truth.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/vote–or-else-crimeas-propaganda-machine-fans-fear-in-closing-days-of-putins-campaign\/2018\/03\/16\/0e0831d8-26d4-11e8-a227-fd2b009466bc_story.html?utm_term=.9777d0149e5d<\/span><\/p>\n

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