Sources of Information

[DaffyVina]

7:28
WATCH: How Russian TV has reported 100 days of war

BBC Monitoring
Video by Tse Yin Lee and Suniti Singh

Video content
Video caption: Ukraine war: How Russian TV has reported the 100 days of conflictUkraine war: How Russian TV has reported the 100 days of conflict
TV viewers in Russia see only the Kremlin's version of events in Ukraine.

From initially being told nothing of the plans to invade, to repeated claims about the need to "denazify" Ukraine, Russians are being fed a different narrative to the rest of the world.
Take a look at how Moscow's coverage has changed in the 100 days since the war began.

"If you're watching the TV in Russia, the war in Ukraine looks like a very different event."
Video of Dmitry Peskov saying Russia has never attacked anyone.
"Since it started, TV channels in Russia have devoted much of their airtime to reporting and commentary on it.
High profile presenters actively support the "special military operation". (video of several Russian TV news presenters)

When the Russian army had to withdraw from a number of fronts to refocus on the east, reporting also refocused on those areas, with little or no mention of any retreat or change of scope."
The lack of a quick victory has been explained in a number of ways."
Video RT Editor in Chief saying "we pity everyone there. That's the first thing. The second thing is that we realise that lots of people there are on our side, who are hostages."

Reporter, "Another explanation is that Russia's battle has become an existential one against the whole of the West, not just Ukraine."
(video of news presenters talking as if the entire West, or London based government, are planning to fight to defeat Russia.)

Reporter: "Russia draws on memories of fighting in World War 2 to justify its war."
(video of news presenter saying, "I view Mariupol as a little Stalingrad.")

Reporter: "Even Ukraine's victory at Eurovision, was cast in the same light."
(video of presenter saying, "Europe voted for fascism.")

Reporter: "Presenters make hyperbolic claims about the enemy..."
(video of presenter, "satanists, ghouls, the darkness,")
"and Russia's nuclear might."
(video of presenter, "another option is to plunge Britain into the depths of the sea using Russia's unmanned, underwater vehicle Poseiden. Such a barage alone also carries an extreme dose of radiation.")

Reporter, "Realistic assessments of the situation are rare, and tend to only come from former military figures."
(Video of older gentleman saying, "But first I should say you shouldn't take information sedatives. The situation for us will clearly get worse.")

Reporter, "State TV wields enormous influence in Russia. Its rhetoric is very nationalist in tone, and reporting on Ukraine often verges on hate speech. But this has been the case for a number of years. And with new laws limiting what people can say about the war, TV channels are likely to continue swaying how Russian's think."
(backdrop to reporter shows research from the Levada-Centre, April 2022
Main sources of news:
TV 70%
Social networks 30%
Internet media 30%
Friends & family 18%)

[DaffyVina]

Putin and Peter the Great: Russian leader likens himself to 18th Century tsar
By Sarah Rainsford
Eastern Europe correspondent
Published1 day ago

Portrait of Peter the Great
IMAGE SOURCE,UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
Image caption, Russia's President Vladimir Putin has openly compared himself to Peter the Great

Vladimir Putin's admiration for Peter the Great is well known but he now seems to have ideas of "Great"-ness himself.

He has openly compared himself to the Russian tsar, equating Russia's invasion of Ukraine today with Peter's expansionist wars some three centuries ago, and making his strongest acknowledgment yet that his own war is a land grab.

Mr Putin's apparent empire-building ambitions bode ill for Ukraine and have irked other neighbours, including Estonia, which called his comments "completely unacceptable."

Russia's president was meeting young scientists and entrepreneurs when he made the remarks. Before talking IT and tech development he talked politics and power: the new battle he sees for geopolitical dominance. In that, he told his select audience that Peter the Great was a role model.

"You might think he was fighting with Sweden, seizing their lands," Mr Putin said, referring to the Northern Wars which Peter launched at the turn of the 18th Century as he forged a new Russian Empire.

"But he seized nothing; he reclaimed it!" he said, arguing that Slavs had lived in the area for centuries.

"It seems it has fallen to us, too, to reclaim and strengthen," Mr Putin concluded, with a near-smirk that left no doubt he was referring to Ukraine and his aims there.

Peter's rule, he suggested, was proof that expanding Russia had strengthened it.

Russian President Vladimir Putin at the meeting in Moscow on 9 June
IMAGE SOURCE,EPA
Image caption, Putin spoke of Peter the Great as a role model during the meeting

Mr Putin has taken to citing Russia's past a lot lately, always carefully curated to suit his present-day cause. Several months before he attacked Ukraine, he produced a giant essay in which he essentially argued away the country's historical right to exist.

When Russia invaded its neighbour on 24 February, Putin falsely claimed it was a "special operation" limited to the eastern Donbas region to "de-Nazify" Ukraine and reduce the supposed threat to Russia.

But even as he was uttering those words, his troops were moving on Kyiv and bombing land even further west. More than 100 days later, a fifth of Ukrainian territory is under Russian military control, with puppet administrations who talk of referenda on joining Russia.

And now Putin feels bold enough to admit that his "operation" is in fact an occupation.

He also seems to believe the West will ultimately accept the reality his troops are fighting to create on the ground.

At the time, "not one European country" recognised Russia's claim to the land where Peter created St Petersburg as Russia's bold new capital, Mr Putin said. Now they all do.

His comments have also rattled the Baltic countries. The Estonian foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador to condemn his reference to Peter the Great's assault on Narva, now in Estonia, as Russia "reclaiming and strengthening" its territory.

Peter the Great in disguise
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
Image caption, Peter travelled incognito through Europe to get inspiration for modernising Russia

Putin's use of history is selective.

Peter the Great, though a ruthless autocrat, was a huge admirer of Western ideas, science and culture, famously building St Petersburg as a "window on Europe" and travelling that continent thirsty for knowledge to help drag Russia towards modernity.

Putin's increasingly repressive rule slowly closed that window on the West; the war on Ukraine has slammed it shut. The idea of the Russian leader touring Holland or Greenwich in search of ideas and inspiration, as the Tsar once did, now seems impossible.

As Putin lectured the young entrepreneurs on an 18th Century tsar, a series of words flashed up behind them: 'future', 'confident', 'victory'.

Russia is determined to project defiance in the face of Western condemnation and sanctions and Putin himself certainly appeared relaxed rather than beleaguered.

But perhaps there is another lesson from the history books.

Peter the Great did eventually conquer land from the Baltics to the Black Sea. But Russia was fighting its Great Northern War for 21 years.

[DaffyVina]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... tion-camps

Ukrainians who fled to Georgia reveal details of Russia’s ‘filtration camps’

Refugees tell of being forced to strip or witnessing beatings as they seek to enter Russia

[DaffyVina]

From the BBC:
Ukraine war: Evidence shows widespread use of cluster munitions in Kharkiv
By Joel Gunter
in Kharkiv, Ukraine
Published34 minutes ago


Image caption, Distinctive marks from a cluster munition in the roof of a car next to a playground in Kharkiv (Joel Gunter/BBC)

Russia has killed hundreds of civilians in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv using indiscriminate shelling and widely-banned cluster munitions, according to new research by Amnesty International.

Amnesty said it had found evidence of Russian forces repeatedly using 9N210/9N235 cluster bombs, as well as "scatterable" munitions - rockets that eject smaller mines that explode later at timed intervals.

The BBC visited five separate impact sites in residential neighbourhoods in Kharkiv and saw evidence of a distinctive, symmetrical spalling effect associated with cluster munitions. We showed images from the sites to three weapons experts, who all said the impacts were consistent with the controversial weapons.

"Those impacts are from cluster munitions, it's a classic signature," said Mark Hizney, a senior researcher in the arms division of Human Rights Watch, a campaign group. "And in one image you can see a remnant of a stabiliser fin from one of the submunitions," he said.

CCTV footage passed to the BBC by a resident at one of the sites showed successive clustered detonations - "a very strong indicator of submunitions from a cluster weapon," said Hamish de Bretton Gordon, a former British Army colonel and Cambridge University weapons expert.


Image caption, The spalling pattern created by cluster bomb impacts, seen in a Kharkiv residential neighbourhood (Joel Gunter/BBC)

Cluster munitions are controversial because they detonate in the air and release a cluster of smaller bombs which fall indiscriminately over a wide area, potentially putting civilians at risk.

The smaller bombs also often fail to detonate on impact, posing a threat for years to come. More than 120 countries have signed a treaty prohibiting the use of the weapons - though neither Russia or Ukraine are signatories.

At the site of one apparent cluster munition strike in Kharkiv, around a housing estate and playground in the Industrialnyi neighbourhood, the spalling effect was visible around three separate impacts on three sides of a playground.

Ivan Litvynyenko's wife Oksana was badly wounded in the strike and later died.

Litvynyenko, 40, told the BBC the couple was walking through the playground with their five-year-old daughter when the munitions hit. Their 14-year-old son was inside their apartment.

"Suddenly I saw a flash and I heard the first explosion," Litvynyenko said. "I grabbed my daughter and pressed her to a tree. My wife was about five metres away and she just dropped."


Image caption, An impact site next to a playground where Ivan Litvynyenko's wife was hit by shrapnel. (Joel Gunter/BBC)

Oksana, 41, was hit by shrapnel that penetrated her back, chest and abdomen, puncturing her lungs and damaging her spine.

She was in intensive care for two months, until Sunday, when she died from complications from her injuries and diabetes, Litvynyenko said. "Doctors operated on her several times but her body could not survive it," he said, speaking just hours after her death.

Describing the strike, Litvynyenko said he saw a "series of explosions, lots of bombs one after another". Two other residents who were inside their apartments at the time of the strike told the BBC they heard successive detonations when the attack happened. "You could hear explosions over several minutes," said Danya Volynets, 26. "When we came outside I could see the burning cars. It looked like everything was on fire."

Tetiana Ahayeva, a 53-year-old nurse, was standing in front of her building when the munitions hit. "There was a sudden sound of firecrackers everywhere, lots of them, all over," she told Amnesty. "We dropped to the ground and tried to find cover. Our neighbour's son, a 16-year-old boy called Artem Shevchenko, was killed on the spot. He had a hole 1cm wide in his chest. His father had a shattered hip and a shrapnel wound in his leg."


Image caption, Oksana Litvynyenko with her daughter. Oksana was badly wounded in April and died on Sunday. (Family handout)

Doctors at a central Kharkiv hospital said that among the victims brought in after the playground strike they saw penetrating wounds to the abdomen, chest and back, and they collected metal fragments which matched the types of pellets found in 9N210/9N235 cluster munitions. According to Amnesty, the strike on the Industrialnyi neighbourhood killed at least nine civilians and wounded 35, detonating over an area of 700 square metres.

At another residential building, in Kharkiv's Haribaldi Street area, a munition landed in the entranceway to the building, killing two elderly women and gravely wounding another. The tell-tale spalling effect could be seen around the doorway and on the path nearby.

"There was a series of explosions one after another," said resident Nadia Kravchuk, 61. "I came out and saw a woman lying here face down and another other woman lying here, and next to them was Lena, who lost both her legs. She was crying out, 'I have lost my leg.'"

Tetiana Bielova and Olena Sorokina were sitting on a bench outside when a munition detonated nearby. They got up to enter the building but a second munition landed right in the entranceway, killing Bielova and another woman called Tetiana who was with them. Sorokina lost both her legs in the blast.


Image caption, Nadia Kravchuk looks down at damage from a munition that killed two of her neighbours (Joel Gunter/BBC)

In total, over two weeks' field research, Amnesty investigated 41 strikes in Kharkiv in which at least 62 civilians were killed and 196 wounded, the charity said. They found evidence of cluster munitions and unguided rockets killing people who were shopping, queuing for food aid, or simply walking down the street.

"These weapons should never be used," Donatella Rovera, Amnesty's senior crisis response adviser, told the BBC. "They cannot be pinpointed. They are area weapons. And they have a devastating effect and cause a lot of civilian death and injury."

Use of the weapons was "tantamount to deliberately targeting civilians," Rovera said. "Russia cannot claim it does not know the effect of these types of weapons," she said. "And the decision to use them shows absolute disregard for civilian life."

Russia has previously denied using cluster munitions in Ukraine and insisted that Russian forces have only struck military targets.

[DaffyVina]

Youtube Channel 1420

A Canadian news reporter looks at it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uefwbuEzeyw

The Channel itself: https://www.youtube.com/c/1420channel

[DaffyVina]

Russia-Ukraine war: Some of UK's top journalists barred from Russia
By Paul Kirby
BBC News
Published11 minutes ago


Image caption, BBC Director General Tim Davie, Orla Guerin and Clive Myrie were included in the ban

Russia has barred a number of top UK-based journalists and defence figures as part of a series of sanctions, in response to UK measures on an array of Russian public figures.

The BBC's Clive Myrie, Orla Guerin and Nick Robinson, who have reported from Ukraine, and Director General Tim Davie are on the list of 29 media figures.

So too are journalists from Sky TV, The Times, Guardian, Channel Four and ITV.

Russia has already banned hundreds of elected British MPs.

The foreign ministry in Moscow announced that work on expanding the list would continue.

"The British journalists included on the list are involved in deliberate dissemination of false and one-sided information about Russia and events in Ukraine and Donbas," Russia's foreign ministry said. "With their biased assessments they also contribute to fuelling Russophobia in British society."

Among the other high-profile journalists on the list are John Witherow, editor of The Times, Chris Evans of the Telegraph, Katharine Viner of the Guardian and Ted Verity of the Daily Mail.

Correspondents Stuart Ramsay of Sky News, Shaun Walker and Luke Harding of the Guardian and Nick Beake and Paul Adams of the BBC are on the list, along with TV presenters Sophy Ridge and Cathy Newman, columnists Con Coughlin and Gideon Rachman and Russia academic Mark Galeotti.

Beyond the world of journalism there are senior figures in the armed forces, including Royal Navy chief Adm Sir Ben Key and Air Force chief Sir Michael Wigston. The head of Thales UK, Alex Cresswell, and several senior colleagues are barred from Russia as are a number of top figures from BAE Systems, including overall CEO Charles Woodburn.

[DaffyVina]

Речь Навального для Демократического саммита в Копенгагене
09.06.2022
Алексея Навального попросили написать приветственное слово для Демократического саммита в Копенгагене, посвященного информационным технологиям.

Ниже текст письма Алексея на русском и английском:

«Когда я получил предложение написать несколько приветственных слов для конференции о демократии и технологиях, то подумал, что сделаю это, потому что я правильный человек для такого. Информационные технологии играют большую роль в моей жизни. В положении о моей тюрьме так и записано: «Исправление заключенных через постоянный видеоконтроль и информационное воздействие».

Так что я — житель небольшой информационной антиутопии с камерами и электронными замками на каждом шагу. Ну только с поправкой на то, что это Россия, поэтому электронные замки, конечно, сломались, и двери продолжают открывать огромными металлическими ключами.

Я приветствую организаторов и участников Copenhagen Democracy Summit. Вам явно есть, что обсудить.

Абсолютная банальность — сказать, что новый информационный мир может быть как благом для демократии, так и огромным злом. Тем не менее это так. Всю свою деятельность наша организация построила на информационных технологиях и добивалась этим серьезных успехов, даже когда находилась фактически на нелегальном положении. И информационные же технологии активно используются сейчас Кремлем для арестов участников протестных митингов. Гордо заявляется, что все они будут распознаны даже со скрытыми лицами.

Интернет дает нам возможность обходить цензуру. И — одновременно — Google и Meta, отключившие рекламу в России, лишили оппозицию возможности вести антивоенные кампании, сделав грандиозный подарок Путину.

У всех нас много вопросов. Должны ли интернет-гиганты и дальше делать вид, что они «просто бизнес» и «нейтральные площадки». Можно ли и дальше заявлять, что пользователи соцсетей в США и Эритрее, в Дании и России должны действовать по одним правилам? Как интернет должен относиться к указаниям государств с учетом того, что Норвегия и Уганда имеют, кажется, несколько различное представление о роли интернета и демократии?

Все это очень сложно, очень противоречиво, и все это надо обсуждать. Не забывая о том, что за обсуждением надо вырабатывать и решения.

Мы любим технологии. Мы обожаем соцсети. Мы хотим жить в свободном информационном обществе. Так давайте придумаем, как не дать плохим парням использовать информационное общество, чтобы загонять свои народы и всех нас в темные века».

***

«When I got the invitation to write a few welcoming words for a conference on democracy and technology, I thought that I would accept it, because I am the right person for that. Information technology plays a big role in my life. It says so in my prison regulations: «correcting inmates through constant video monitoring and informational influence.»

So I am a resident of a little informational dystopia with cameras and electronic locks at every step. Well, adjusted for the fact that this is Russia, so the electronic locks are obviously broken and the doors continue to be opened with huge metal keys.

I salute the organizers and participants of the Copenhagen Democracy Summit. You clearly have a lot to discuss.

It would be downright banal to say that the new information world can be both a boon for democracy and a huge bane. Nevertheless, it is so. Our organization has built all its activities on information technology and has achieved serious success with it, even when it was practically outlawed. And information technology is being actively used by the Kremlin to arrest participants in protest rallies. It is proudly claimed that all of them will be recognized even with their faces covered.

The Internet gives us the ability to circumvent censorship. Yet, at the same time, Google and Meta, by shutting down their advertising in Russia, have deprived the opposition of the opportunity to conduct anti-war campaigns, giving a grandiose gift to Putin.

We all have a lot of questions. Should the Internet giants continue to pretend that they it's «just business» for them and act like «neutral platforms»? Should they continue to claim that social network users in the United States and Eritrea, in Denmark and Russia, should operate under the same rules? How should the internet treat government directives, given that Norway and Uganda seem to have slightly different ideas about the role of the internet and democracy?

It's all very complicated and very controversial, and it all needs to be discussed while keeping in mind that the discussion should also lead to solutions.

We love technology. We love social networks. We want to live in a free informational society. So let's figure out how to keep the bad guys from using the information society to drive their nations and all of us into the dark ages».

[DaffyVina]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... say-allies

Alexei Navalny has gone missing from Russian prison, say allies
Opposition leader’s lawyer was told at jail ‘there is no such convict here’, according to close ally Leonid Volkov

Navalny appearing via video link from prison at Moscow city court last month. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
Associated Press in Moscow
Tue 14 Jun 2022 17.00 BST

Allies of the imprisoned Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny have said he is missing from the prison where he was serving his time.

His close associates say he is probably being transferred to another prison. In Russia, prison transfers can take days, if not weeks, and are shrouded in secrecy.

“All this time that we don’t know where Alexei is, he is left alone with the system that has already once tried to kill him,” Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said on social media.

Navalny’s closest ally, Leonid Volkov, said on Telegram that the politician’s lawyer went to visit him in prison on Tuesday and was told that “there is no such convict here”. “Where Alexei is now and which prison he is being taken to, we don’t know,” Volkov said.

Navalny, the most determined political foe of Vladimir Putin, was arrested in January 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he had been recuperating from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin, and handed a two-and-a-half-year sentence for a parole violation.

In March Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud and contempt of court, charges he rejected as politically motivated and an attempt by the authorities to keep him behind bars for as long as possible.

The judge ordered him to serve the new sentence in a maximum-security prison. He was supposed to be transferred to one after he lost his appeal.

The new conviction followed a year-long Kremlin crackdown on Navalny’s supporters, other opposition activists and independent journalists in which authorities appear eager to stifle all dissent.

Navalny’s close associates have faced criminal charges and many have left the country, while his group’s political infrastructure – an anti-corruption foundation and a nationwide network of regional offices – has been destroyed after being labelled an extremist organisation.

Until now, Navalny has been at the IK-2 penal colony in the Vladimir region, about 60 miles east of the Russian capital. The facility in the town of Pokrov stands out among Russian penitentiaries for its especially strict inmate routines, which include standing at attention for hours.

Yarmysh cited rumours that Navalny was supposed to be transferred to IK-6, a maximum security colony in the same region, 90 miles east of IK-2, but noted that “neither Alexei’s attorneys nor his relatives were informed about his transfer”.

Navalny’s lawyer would not confirm these rumours in a phone conversation with the Associated Press, saying all she knew was that “he was taken away in an unknown direction”.

Russia’s secrecy about prisoner transfers has come under criticism from human rights advocates.

[DaffyVina]

Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov auctions Nobel medal for $103m
By George Wright
BBC News
Published4 hours ago

Dmitry Muratov poses with his 2021 Nobel Peace Prize at The Times Center on June 20, 2022 in New York City
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
Image caption, Dmitry Muratov was co-awarded the peace prize in 2021 for defending freedom of expression in Russia


The Russian editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta has auctioned off his Nobel Peace Prize medal for $103.5 million (£84 million).

Dmitry Muratov said all the money from sale will go to help refugees from the war in Ukraine.

Muratov was co-awarded the peace prize in 2021 for defending freedom of expression in Russia.

Novaya Gazeta suspended its operations in March, shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

This came after Moscow said anyone who described Russia's actions in Ukraine as a "war" would face heavy fines or closures. The Kremlin calls the conflict a "special military operation".

Heritage Auctions, which conducted the sale, has not revealed who the winning bidder was.

In April, Muratov was attacked with red paint laced with the solvent acetone aboard a train in Russia. The male attacker shouted, "Muratov, this is for our boys," he said.

Dmitry Muratov
IMAGE SOURCE,DMITRY MURATOV
Image caption, In April, Muratov was attacked on a train that was due to depart Moscow to the city of Samara

He was among a group of journalists who founded Novaya Gazeta in 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Since 2000, six journalists from the newspaper and collaborators have been killed in connection with their work, including investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

The sale of the gold medal in New York will benefit Unicef's humanitarian response for Ukraine's displaced children, Heritage Auctions said in a statement.

"The most important message today is for people to understand that there's a war going on and we need to help people who are suffering the most," Muratov said in a video released by Heritage Auctions.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize last year along with journalist Maria Ressa who co-founded the online news site Rappler in the Philippines.

Ressa and Muratov are both known for publishing investigations that have angered the leaders of their countries, and have become symbols of the fight for press freedom.

[DaffyVina]

A couple of articles I came across, vive la résistance

(use a VPN to access these if you need to)

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/pr ... 022-06-21/

https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-t ... 022-06-21/

I also cam across an old article I had not seen at the time:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... or-muchnik