columns
Kremlin pearls propaganda Show clip cut – propaganda censorship itself
Dmitry Kiselyov’s broadcast was censored by the Kremlin’s own propaganda
© Rosega Shot 1 / Rear
In an effort to destroy the Wagner myth, Kremlin propaganda went so far as to have it censor itself. Instead of denigrating Prigozhin, his employer, Vladimir Putin, discredited him. However, the light dawned on the preachers too late.
The Kremlin’s propaganda machinery worked for a long time to help build the myth of the Wagner Ensemble. Now both the supposed mercenary group and its leader Yevgeny Prigoshine will be erased from history. While Wagner’s advertising posters are being taken down in the country, propaganda is destroying the self-made myth. Last Sunday, Dmitry Kiselyov presented the new path that should lead to this goal. The boundless greed and inflated ambitions of Yevgeny Prigozhin – it is said that these were the reasons for the Wagner uprising.
However, trying to tarnish Prigozhin’s image, the propaganda got so far that it had to censor itself. A segment was cut from Kiselyov’s radio two days after it was broadcast. The publicists only realized the error when it was already too late and the corresponding snippet had already made a circle halfway around the world.
Lots of billions for Wagner
“Big money drove Prigozhin crazy,” Kiselev began his sermon. “And the feeling of permissible tyranny that has been felt since ages in Syria and Africa, and which has increased since the capture of Solidar and Artemovsk (the Russian name for Bakhmut),” said the director of the media company, Rossiya Sevodnya. , which operates news portals and radio stations in 30 languages under the brand “Sputnik”, attracts its audience.
“To understand the full extent of ambitions, it is enough to name two numbers,” the promoter continued to the focal point. “The private military organization Wagner, founded by Prigozhin, received a little more than 858 billion rubles under state treaties. And this is almost a trillion,” Kiselyov spat out every word in his own way. The equivalent of about 8.8 billion euros.
“Under other contracts, Concorde Prigozhin Holding provided services worth 845 billion rubles. This does not mean that it earned a lot. But it shows the standards of work and the standards of ambition,” Kiselyov concluded.
The sums, which the average Russian cannot even imagine in his keen imagination, should leave no doubt about Prigozhin’s indescribable greed for money. It is stupid that Kiselyov did not make Prigozhin look bad with these words, but his employer Vladimir Putin.
Blatant advertising error
In an effort to heighten the drama, Kiselev called the numbers extravagant. However, these were more than ten times higher than the numbers Putin had provided shortly before. He is alleged to have spent 86 billion rubles, roughly 910 million euros, financing Wagner mercenaries between May 2022 and May 2023. In addition, Concorde Catering, founded by Prigozhin, received about 80 billion rubles for supply contracts with the Russian military in the same period. Putin claimed.
Putin’s admission of financing Wagner’s mercenaries is in itself a sensation. Because he openly admits that he has constantly violated the Russian constitution. This prohibits any form of mercenary work. The Wagner organization is illegal under Russian law.
However, propaganda also rushed to this recognition, which once and for all destroyed the myth that Wagner’s troops were a private army. But this logical conclusion eluded both the Kremlin president and his propaganda system, who are desperately trying to limit the damage. Everyone is still talking about a “private military organization”. But how can something be private if it is funded by the Kremlin? How can the state fund an organization if it is illegal? How can a power funded by the Kremlin rebel against the Kremlin? Why do Putin’s numbers and propaganda vary so widely?
Kremlin propaganda in its element: censorship
Questions no one in the Kremlin might have asked themselves when they were working on the new propaganda strategy. Questions that put Putin in a bad light. So propaganda did what it did best: censor. And censoring himself, the corresponding extract of the total 1.7 trillion rubles that flowed into the Wagner troupe was simply expelled from the state. On the page of the channel Russia 1 There is now a new version: Kiselev now goes directly to the fate of traitors in past centuries, instead of talking about how the Kremlin poured more money into the traitorous Prigozhin than into Russia’s health care system.
But even in 2023, the Kremlin propaganda hasn’t caught up with the lesson yet: The Internet never forgets. Unlike Prigozhin, the original post will never go away.