Russian opposition to Putin war makes the TV screens
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Guests have actually gone as far as asking for Putin to stop the war.
Russian state television has broadcast calls for Vladimir Putin, the country’s president, to stop his war in Ukraine during a programme in which pundits openly likened the invasion to “Afghanistan, but even worse”.
Vladimir Soloviyev, usually one of the Kremlin’s most reliable chief propagandists, had to interrupt guests on his prime time television talk show to stop their criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking during a broadcast on Russia 1, Karen Shakhnazarov, a filmmaker and state pundit, said the conflict in Ukraine risked isolating Russia.
He told Mr Soloviyev: “I have a hard time imagining taking cities such as Kyiv. I can’t imagine how that would look.”
To be sure, the pundits and Mr. Solovyev are blaming the United States for Russia’s predicament. But some of the criticism directed at Putin is unheard of.
The host frowned at the apparent departure from the officially approved line of thinking and deferred to the commander-in-chief. However, the next expert agreed with Shakhnazarov. Semyon Bagdasarov, a Russian Middle East expert, grimly said: “We didn’t even feel the impact of the sanctions just yet… We need to be ready for total isolation. I’m not panicking, just calling things by their proper name.”
Soloviev angrily sniped: “Gotcha. We should just lay down and die.”
State TV pundit and filmmaker Shakhnazarov believes it’s even possible that the Ukraine fiasco could lead to civil war.
This threatens the change of public opinion in Russia, the destabilization of our power structures… with the possibility of a full destabilization of the country and a civil war. This apocalyptic scenario is based on the script written by the Americans. They benefit through us dragging out the military operation. We need to end it somehow. If we achieved the demilitarization and freed the Donbas, that is sufficient…
That public opinion in Russia has been molded largely through the lens of state TV. So it must come as a shock to the Russian people to hear people who were confidently predicting an easy victory talking gloom and doom.
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For those in Russia who think the US is behind Putin's war they are delusional. Biden is not that clever even if he wanted Russia to go to war with Ukraine. Biden's main contribution to the war has been to restrict the production of US oil and gas. By limiting the supply the price rose dramatically and gave Putin the money to go to war. That was a blunder and not a plan.
See, also this from the Washington Post:
In Putin’s Russia, ‘fake news’ now means real news
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