While western sources tally away, RT avoids counting Russian troops in Ukraine
Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine. They’re fighting separatists -- and soldiers from Russia, says the West. RT’s not saying. Photo credit: RT.
By Arielle Dreher
Colleagues of slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov this week released the Ukraine report he’d been working on before his murder in February, and RT posted this short item about it.
One of Nemtsov’s key allegations is that at least 220 Russian soldiers have been killed while fighting in eastern Ukraine since last August. In response, RT offered a variation of its usual boilerplate.
Russia has been accused of sending its soldiers and military hardware to assist the anti-government fighters in eastern Ukraine almost since the start of the conflict. The repeated accusations came from Kiev, Washington and their European allies, but were not backed by any solid proof.
RT seemed to doubt the involvment of Russian troops in Ukraine well before the Nemtsov report, in response to Western claims (i.e., the U.S. military and NATO) that the number of Russian troops operating in the conflict zones of eastern Ukraine is around 12,000 and growing since March. The Kremlin, as it has since the conflict began, steadfastly denies it’s sending troops into Ukraine. RT takes a somewhat passive approach to the numbers: it seems to back the Kremlin claim by largely remaining silent on the issue -- or using language like this week’s, that there isn’t “any solid proof.”
The question of Russian troops in Ukraine is a key one in the debate over western sanctions, applied against Russia by the U.S. and the European Union.
Reporting by the independent Russian paper Novaya Gazeta and others has confirmed that some Russians are fighting in eastern Ukraine -- though the most clearcut evidence has identified Russian volunteers joining the separatists, not active duty troops deployed by Moscow. Maria Turchenkova, a Russian photojournalist who has worked in eastern Ukraine for the past year, told RT Watch that the volunteers she and other reporters have verified include men who might have served in the Russian military previously, but have come as private individuals to fight with Ukrainian separatists.
Much harder for journalists to verify, Turchenkova said, are reports on the presence of active duty Russian soldiers. Turchenkova said she photographed one convoy of tanks and troops in Russian military uniforms in November, but has not witnessed Russian troop presence since.
“Russian special forces are doing operations, but no one can trace that because they come [into Ukraine] and they leave” quickly, she said.
We can’t promise definitive answers on the question of Russian troop presence in Ukraine. But for those who are puzzling over the huge gap between the RT-Kremlin statements and the West’s analyses, here is a chronological list of how the Russian troops conversation has gone thus far.
1. November 2014: NATO Throws the First Stone
At a NATO meeting in November, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called for Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine. This appears to be the first unequivocal public statement by NATO that Russia had troops in Ukraine (previous statements referred to “Russia’s military intervention” without being specific about troops), although Stoltenberg offered no numbers.
In an interview a few days later with Moscow’s Ekho Moskvy radio station, Stoltenberg was asked what proof he had. He cited surveillance by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has monitors along the Russian-Ukrainian border, and reports from NGOs of funerals being held for Russian soldiers who lost their lives in Ukraine. “It adds very much up to the picture I am telling you: that there [are] Russian soldiers inside of Ukraine,” he said.
Searches on RT did not reveal coverage of the Stoltenberg press conference or his interview with Ekho Moskvy. The channel’s website did run a couple of articles about NATO and Ukraine around that time, one highlighting a proposal by the Russian State Duma speaker to kick the US out of NATO and one stating that Germany’s Foreign Minister opposed Ukraine joining NATO.
2. February 2015: Russian Journalists Report Volunteer Deaths
An article in the Russian paper Kommersant was based on interviews with four Russian soldiers -- identified as Michael, Alex, Artyom, and Dima -- who said they had been fighting in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Reporter Ilya Barabanov said the soldiers had each signed a letter of resignation from the Russian military before leaving for Donbas -- making them, technically, “volunteers.” “If any of these guys were to be very unlucky in the Debaltseve offensive, that ‘unlucky volunteer’ would certainly have nothing to do with any [Russian] military unit or brigade,” explained Barabanov.
According to Barabanov, the volunteers enter Ukraine in small groups. “They complete a mission and pull back,” he wrote, allowing local Ukrainian insurgents to “move into the seized towns, the commandants’ offices and checkpoints -- ready to meet the journalists” and pretend that they had run the military operation by themselves.
We couldn’t find any stories on rt.com about the Kommersant article.
3. March 2015: Another Russian Media Report
On March 2, the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta ran an interview by journalist Elena Kostyuchenko with a 20-year-old Russian soldier, Dorji Batomunkuev, who said he was injured near Debaltseve, in eastern Ukraine, in February. (The Guardian ran the story in English a few weeks later).
At one point the reporter asks the soldier about Putin. “I don’t have anything against him,” he says. “He’s a very interesting person, of course, and crafty: he’s sending troops, but not sending them. ‘There are no troops there,’ he tells the world. But then he says to us, ‘Jump to it!’”
The next day, RT reported that OSCE monitors said heavy artillery was being withdrawn in eastern Ukraine, but it attributed all actions to local “militias,” with no mention of any form of Russian support, including troops.
4. March 2015 (Part 2): A U.S. Army official Says 12,000 Russian Troops are in Ukraine
One day after the Novaya Gazeta report, the U.S. Army’s Europe Commander, Ben Hodges, put a specific number on NATO’s claims: 12,000 Russian soldiers were operating in Ukraine, he said. Reuters reported that Hodges said another 50,000 troops were positioned on the Russian side of the border.
A day later, in response to questions from journalists, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response was, in effect: What Russian troops in Ukraine? Putin confirmed that Russia was enhancing military facilities in Crimea but said “we will not have to do anything of the kind in eastern Ukraine.”
RT reported on a separate Putin presser where he said “at least cities aren’t being destroyed” in eastern Ukraine. RT cited the UN Human Rights Office’s total number of 6,000 people killed in the Ukrainian conflict in the past year, but there was no mention of Russian troops.
5. March-April 2015: The Numbers from the Royal United Service Institute
A March briefing paper from the Royal United Service Institute seems to be the most definitive Western effort to quantify a Russian presence. At the end of February, according to the institute, there were an estimated 9,000 Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, and another1,500 or 2,000 have deployed since.
The Institute is an independent, UK-based think tank that specializes in defense and security research. Those who are “distrustful of the Pentagon or Western intelligence agencies” still find RUSI numbers trustworthy, the BBC reported.
While RT has never said independently that there are no Russian troops in Ukraine, its stories take what Russian government officials are saying at face value, while dismissing western allegations as not “providing any evidence to substantiate the claim,” as one RT formulation put it. They rarely comment on larger news stories surrounding conflicts like Russian troops--and now Nemstov’s report.
Much of RT’s coverage over the last week has dealt with Russia’s 70th V-Day celebration. Readers saw plenty of posts on rt.com geared at inspiring Russian patriotism. But it wouldn’t be like RT to stop there. No, RT used V-Day as a means to kick dirt at Kiev, at least a little bit.
In an interview with UCLA professor Arch Getty aptly headlined “WWII victory doesn’t bring Russia, Ukraine together as Kiev turned war criminals into heroes,” RT asks Getty if the memory of the former Soviet states’ victory is enough to ease tension between the two countries.
AG: It certainly should, but it is not, and it won’t because Ukraine as a new nation, a new state more than anybody else has to create a useable past, a useable history. And they have done so in the most glaring kinds of ways that the Ukrainian Prime Minister, [Arseny] Yatsenyuk has said that WWII was about the Soviet Union invading Germany. War criminals in Ukraine, Bandera, people who killed Jews and many others are being touted as national heroes there for current political needs of the Ukrainian leadership. I’m afraid these celebrations are not going to do that simply because of the attitudes that are being taken.
Two takeaways here:
1. This quote comes at the very end of the interview. And it definitely relates directly to that headline about WWII victory not bringing Kiev and Moscow together. But: There’s lots more here -- Getty’s analysis on American-Russian relations, for example. Yet RT chose to package the whole thing around the Ukrainian angle.
2. As is the RT way, there’s no attempt to present any other views. Getty has the first, the second -- and the very last word on Ukraine. Others need not apply.
Scandal, conflicts and protests: some of RTs most common tags
By Chava Gourarie
I noticed that RT often labeled their articles, even pretty standard news stories, with the tag ‘scandal.’
For example, RT reported that Paula Slier, a journalist with RT, left Ukraine because another journalist called on Ukrainian authorities to arrest her, triggering an online flurry that RT says included violent threats against Slier. The tags for the post were scandal, mass media, security, Ukraine, war and violence.
Photo of RT correspondent Paul Slier, from facebook.com/paula.slier
Three other articles on the same day were tagged scandal: A Florida county finds 97 percent of police-involved shootings justified, a US Air Force general resigns after a comment about drunken Indians, and the Missouri town of Ferguson is paying a lawyer $1,335 an hour to help implement reforms demanded by the Department of Justice. Links to the articles here. here, and here.
Those are pretty scandalous. In fact, RT traffics in scandals. Sure, what makes the news in most media is often scandalous. But a brief read of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s story on the pricey lawyer, versus RT’s version, demonstrates how the same story can be presented as a juicy tale of intrigue -- or a straight news story about people looking out for their own interests.
RT opens like this: “Ferguson, Missouri has secretly hired a distinguished trial lawyer.”
And here’s the lede from the Post-Dispatch: “In the days following a Department of Justice report accusing Ferguson’s police and municipal court of widespread abuses, the city made a series of conciliatory moves.” One move was hiring “the nation’s most distinguished and highest-paid trial lawyer.” Then the story presents various points of view on the wisdom of that decision, whether it perhaps showed “they were gearing up for a fight”.
The Post-Dispatch story notes that the City fought to keep the engagement letter secret. They voted to release it after the newspaper said withhold the document was illegal under the state’s open record laws. It is not clear whether the City tried to keep the fact of Webb’s hire a secret.
Looking at the scandal tags made me curious to dig further, to see which tags RT uses most, and how often. I looked out 400 of 531 tags to see what it would say about the outlet. Here are the top 10 tags:
The three most common tags on RT stories are Russia, USA, and Politics. No big surprises there -- those are the bread-and-butter subjects of the channel and its website. Also in the top 10 were conflict, military, and protest. Pretty representative of RT’s topics.
The last of the top 10 was scandal, which unlike the other tags isn’t a topic, it’s a way to frame a story. Every time a story is labeled scandal, it’s a judgment call.
Other tags in the top 50 are: terrorism, police, clashes and security. But also less incendiary ones too--like economy, internet, finance and Ukraine.
RT loves partial quotes, and other editorial choices that drive us nuts
By Theresa Avila
A quick look at the homepage for rt.com gives some insight into the company’s editorial choices -- not just the stories they choose, but their style choices. Like their passion for partial quotes.
Here’s the latest headlines on RT’s homepage as of May 4, 2015.
The very best quotes stand alone, even when they are just a fragment of a sentence. But the problem with partial quotes is that they can be taken out of context. RT seems to have a habit of using partial quotes that are never quoted in their entirety in the article, which makes it hard to determine their legitimacy.
Or, at the very least, they end up sounding like someone’s telling us a story with lots of “air” quotes. It’s about as appealing as watching this guy:
Once you read rt.com’s top news stories as much as we do here at RT Watch, it becomes obvious exactly how much RT loves a partial quote to kick off a story. Bonus points if the partial quote hints at great misfortune or wrongdoing.
Check out the latest ledes on the top news stories on RT on Monday, May 4. Remember, these are all in a “single” day.
Sometimes a partial quote is great in the headline and in the first sentence of an article, right?
The problem with this partial quote is that the article’s authors never actually give the full quote so that readers can determine themselves what was originally said in the article.
The closest they come to it, in fact, is here:
“The soldiers were told by their commanders to fire at every person they identified in a combat zone, since the working assumption was that “every person in the field was an enemy,” Breaking the Silence claims.”
Turns out, RT’s wording neglects the fact that the report states soldiers were referring to specific combat zones. You can read the full article here
2. Here’s one of those phantom partial quotes -- it flashes past you twice, very quickly, then disappears.
RT uses the term “capacity crunch” here, but besides the headline and opening sentence, there’s no mention of that exact terminology used by any of the sources in the article.
Check it out for yourself here.
3. This one intrigues but never delivers the goods.
Think it’s about time that RT used a full quote here? Nope. Again we see RT using a catchy partial quote, but nowhere in the article is the full quote given for context. Read it here.
4. We’d love to know more about what Merkel said.
This last one with German Chancellor Merkel sneaks in a partial quote in the first paragraph.
And RT touches on that point again in the article, but it only uses the same partial quote again. C’mon RT! See the full article here.
5. Here’s another pet peeve: RT’s liberal use of the word “reportedly.” Check it out here and below:
We love this story. But it smacks a little bit of that old journalism joke, “too good to check.” Who reported this?
According to RT, it was the Iranian Students’ News Agency. It’s hard to know how much fact-checking goes on here.
So many questions, not enough answers. Read it here.
6. Hiding the main source.
Maybe this one was too good to fact-check, too? C’mon RT! You tell us, later in the story, that this is all according to AFP (Agence France-Presse) but you never link to your source.
Down with Twerking! RT finds parallel between jailed twerkers and Soviet censorship
By Chava Gourarie
Last week, RT was scandalized by some twerking teens in Orenberg. This week, RT has the story of three young women arrested for having the audacity to twerk in front of a World War II memorial in southern Russia.
#MeanwhileinRussia: Women jailed for twerking next to WWII memorial (VIDEO) http://t.co/Tle1arUXtz pic.twitter.com/HP6QXDFGsq
— RT (@RT_com)
April 25, 2015
Their sentence:
3 of the 6 women will serve 15 days in jail, 2 received fines, 1 released to her mother http://t.co/Tle1arUXtz pic.twitter.com/SpZjT4aLOL
— RT (@RT_com)
April 25, 2015
After the Orenberg twerking incident, when underage schoolchildren, dressed as bees, performed a dance that included twerking for their parents, “a federal investigation for ‘lewdness’ “ was opened, according to RT.
The BBC reported that the dance school that choreographed the bees has been closed.
Though the recent articles make it seem like Russia disapproves of the American-inspired dance move, just last summer, RT was celebrating some Siberian twerkers.
Twerking Siberia: Russian dancers become YouTube sensation (VIDEOS) http://t.co/JAv1fR7kfc pic.twitter.com/83tGeYaRLi
— RT (@RT_com)
August 17, 2014
Has something changed in the interim?
RT suggests the Orenberg dance was judged particularly scandalous, because the teens were “underage.” As for other twerking incidents in Russia, "Parallels have also been drawn in the media with the Soviet era, when the authorities disapproved of boogie-woogie, the foxtrot and other ‘ideologically alien’ dances,” said RT.
Conservatives take the UK elections, leaving them in charge of ‘the democratic crater at the heart of British politics,’ according to RT
by Asthaa Chaturvedi
The United Kingdom election last week brought some unexpected results and many flurries of political analysis. Even before the results were in, RT was ready to declare UK politics a disaster zone; this story warns of “a black hole in the heart of British democracy” at one point, while elsewhere saying that “the democratic crater at the heart of British politics” is “dismantling the welfare state.”
RT doesn’t offer much in the way of hard numbers or concrete examples to bolster its hyperbolic abyss images. But for the record, here are three reasons why UK parties are failing their electorate, according to RT:
1. A corrupted and broken system is the top reason the parties no longer serve their constituents, says RT. The “tainted political funding system that allows gilded tycoons and firms to buy a system tailored to their interests has been sorely lacking.”
Who are the firms and gilded tycoons that RT is referring to? Hard to tell based on this piece.
2. RT also blasted UK’s tax system, saying the rich pay less than the poor, and the political parties have no concrete proposals for change. “The richest 10 percent pay 35 percent of the country’s tax take, yet the poorest 10 percent of Britons pay 43 percent,” the outlet reported, citing a recent study.
3. Problem number three: climate change. RT all but blames the global crisis of climate change on Britain, offering this scolding to its political parties:
Dwindling biodiversity across the planet, soil erosion, the prospect of resource scarcity and resource wars to come, the dangers of fracking and climate chaos, and the importance of transitioning to a low carbon economic model have been eclipsed by pro-business rhetoric bent on bolstering competition and attracting investment.
What’s all that mean? RT doesn’t really explain -- or mention the fact that when it comes to climate change offenders, Russia emits almost five times the amount of carbon dioxide that the United Kingdom does.
In its coverage of the election, RT used the opportunity to take aim at the West and its democracy, rather than inform the public. Didn’t someone once say, “a well informed public is the prerequisite for a democracy?”
An RT mashup: take one prank video, add one angry commentator, and voila -- you’ve made a point about U.S. incompetence on Ukraine
By Rosalind Adams
When the U.S. ambassador to NATO commented in a speech this month that he got much of his news about Ukraine from social media, RT went to work on a segment labeled “Fact Checking” aimed at making a case for American ineptitude in military intelligence.
The bizarre result was a biting broadcast, which opened with an RT news anchor describing a YouTube video (which likely was a hoax)that depicted images of Russian tanks projected on the White House. From there, noting that information found online should be treated with “a healthy dose of skepticism,” the anchor segued to the ambassador’s remarks.
Skepticism, he noted, was “precisely what some senior state officials lack when using social media as a source of information.”
For the record, Douglas Lute, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said “I read more on social media about what’s going on [in eastern Ukraine] than I get from formal intelligence networks.”He was speaking at a “Friends of Europe” forum in Brussels, where he noted the decline of intelligence networks in the post-Cold War era.
Lute’s remark seems pretty mild in context, shedding more light on the shifting politics since the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
But RT seized on just one part of the speech, and -- in case the anchor’s point wasn’t clear enough -- brought on a somewhat baffling commentator to hammer it home. “Lionel,” a one-named radio personality, appeared on the right side of the screen, wagging his finger at the audience and expressing fear that social media will condition society “to the fact that we go to this sites and these sources for news, but they’re not news. And, certainly, do not rise to the level of valid military intel.”
Here’s the really bizarre part: The production team over at RT chose to fill the left side of the screen, right next to Lionel, with the dubious YouTube video of Russian tanks projected on the White House.
RT Watch isn’t entirely sure what RT intended with the weird juxtaposition, but it seemed to suggest a false equivalence of the ambassador’s speech and the perpetrators of the prank video.
We’re wondering: will the news website turn its own standards of skepticism on itself?
RT expert compares NATO commander to “Dr. Strangelove”
RT screenshot showing where the naval exercises are being practiced in the Norwegian Sea.
By M. Chadwick Shank
NATO naval forces from 10 member countries are participating in a two-week anti-submarine exercise in the Norwegian Sea, which has caused RT to sound the alarm about NATO being on Russia’s doorstep.
NPR reported that the exercises, an annual affair, are larger than ever this year in response to reports of foreign vessels in the sovereign waters of some northern European countries -- and in response to concerns “that Russia could employ the same tactics in the three Baltic states -- Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia -- that it used in Ukraine.”
RT screenshot showing the Baltic states and their proximity to the Russian Federation.
RT interviewed activist Jan Oberg, director of a think tank called the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, about the NATO exercises. Speaking about U.S. General Philip Breedlove, the commander of NATO Forces in Europe, Oberg couldn’t resist a play on his name: “He’s not exactly breeding love.” Then Oberg offered this stunning Breedlove comparison: “He’s more a ‘Dr. Strangelove,’ terrible-type of personality.”
“Dr. Strangelove” of course refers to the 1964 political satire about about an insane general whose actions trigger a nuclear holocaust. So, is RT’s expert suggesting that routine NATO exercises are on a par with global nuclear war?
RT’s Redacted Tonight beats the drum for class warfare in America
by Latena M. Hazard
As Baltimore began rebuilding after recent riots, Redacted Tonight host Lee Camp discussed why class warfare was bound to happen here.
“These riots in Baltimore and Ferguson were inevitable,” says Camp. “The police have been militarized and left unaccountable in order to protect the wealth of the .1 percent.” Then he rolls out some of the data that illustrates rising inequality: the richest 3 percent of families hold about 54 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 90 percent have only about a quarter of U.S. wealth.
“Mob violence is a system of a class warfare that we have been in the middle of for decades,” says Camp. “A war perpetrated against the bottom 99.9 percent percent of society and yet we live in an era of mental slavery.”
A lot of Camp’s basic message might resonate with some audiences, but the message falls apart when he wraps it in offensive penis jokes (they’re right at the beginning of the segment and not at all funny).
Then there’s Camp’s heavy-handed sarcasm and flat-out racism. “You may be wondering why most of the rioters are Black,” he says. “I think it’s because the color on your TV screen is turned too far to the right. It’s the hue.”
Right. Camp should just stick with his class warfare theme. It’s a good one. After all, while the U.S. has extreme wealth, many poor Americans are trapped working two or three jobs they hate, and this perpetuates the system of class warfare. “Enslaved to a system that makes as much sense as a master’s degree in creative writing,” says Camp.
RT: “Thugs” in Baltimore was just a predictable part of the “US mainstream narrative”
By Siyu Qian
A debate over whether it’s racist to call Baltimore protesters “thugs” has been going on for days, pitting the prevailing US media narrative against“activists and residents,” according to this RT article..”
“The mainstream US media are facing criticism over their coverage of unrest in Baltimore,” said RT. “Activists and residents claim the media ignored peaceful marches, focused on labels and violence, and ignored the chronic issues of poverty and police misconduct.”
Criticism of mainstream media coverage has been widespread and widely covered -- from RT, to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, to some MSM outlets in the U.S. But RT’s coverage has been distinctive in pointing the finger: it’s “corporate media” that’s to blame, according to In the Now host Anissa Naouai..
Her show then aired a montage of clips, starting with CNN host Wolf Blitzer repeatedly asking “there is no excuse for such kind of violence, right?” when he interviewed activist DeRay McKesson during live broadcast. “Yeah, there is no excuse for the seven people that the Baltimore city police department has killed in the past year either, right?” replied McKesson.
Next up: CNN host Erin Burnett. “Isn’t it [thug] the right word?” she asked. “They know it’s wrong to steal and burn down CVS and old persons’ home, I mean, come on!”
The emphasis on violence and “thugs” in mainstream media stories was “no wonder,” said Naouai. “Authorities set the tone, and they see protestors as enemy forces.” Corporate media, she implied, just follow in lockstep with a single “mainstream narrative.”
But Naouai’s argument doesn’t hold up if you look beyond her cherry-picked examples. MSNBC, for example, invited Salon's Brittney Cooper and The Nation's Ari Berman on to this show to explain why using “thugs” in this context is offensive. "The use of the word 'thug' has been used to delegitimize the actions of many because of the actions of a few,” said Berman. The 'black lives matter' movement has been a peaceful movement. By making it seem like everyone in the 'black lives matter' movement is now a thug, you're trying to delegitimize a movement and mis-characterize it."
Other MSM outlets made a similar point:
ABCNews in “Baltimore Rioters Not Just ‘Thugs’ and ‘Criminals’.” The Daily Beast in “No, the Young People of Baltimore Are Not ‘Thugs’.”
NPR’s interview on The Racially Charged Meaning Behind The Word 'Thug'
Maybe in Naouai’s view these mainstream outlets are just outliers who have strayed from the U.S. mainstream narrative.
RT sends correspondent to Times Square, who does seven random man-on-the-street interviews and declares “No one knows a damn thing about World War II”
screenshot from YouTube
By Jess Swanson
To commemorate the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (when Nazi Germany surrendered to the U.S., France, UK and suc), Moscow-based Anissa Naouai, host of In the Now, sent a correspondent to Times Square to determine what Americans actually know about World War II.
And according to the 87-second clip, the seven people she spoke to do not actually know that much. The video is titled: “No one knows a damn thing about World War II.”
Naouai’s correspondent ca The was Resident. Ac,, aka Lori Harfenist, who was on a rant about genetically modified foods last time we wrote about her.
For this story, Lori asks a young, distracted woman who speaks with an accent: “World War II—ever hear about it?” The young, distracted woman says “no” as she turns her head, visibly confused. Lori repeats her question. Again: “no.” Lori rolls her eyes (0:12).
Next up: Lori asks two men who look like tourists (one has a camera dangling from his neck).
“Who were the two teams in World War II?”
“Allies,” camera-dangling man responds, and looks at his friend who says, “I don’t know.”
Then, in front of a grown man dancing in a diaper, she stops another young woman. We don’t hear the question, just the response:
“Shoot, George Bush versus Saddam Whatever-his-name-is” the young woman says, covering her arms and gritting her teeth. “I don’t know.”
Then, in front of a grown man dancing in a diaper, she stops another young woman. We don’t hear the question, just the response:
“Who was fighting who?” Lori asks another man in stripes.
“Mhmmm, pass,” the man says with a strong accent (as he covers his mouth to burp at 0:31).
She stops a man wearing a navy blue polo with “USA” stitched on it and a veteran cap on. He has a southern accent and is also holding a camera.
She asks: “A lot of people we’ve been talking to today have no recollection of who was even fighting in World War II, what was at stake. They don’t know any of it. What does that say?”
“Most young Americans are pretty ignorant,” he responds.
And we couldn’t help noting this: The most popular comment posted on this YouTube video, with 23 thumbs up, is by user somuchfortalent. He writes: “What's really fucked up is that most people think the holocaust actually happened. Stupid Americans”
15 Years in 10 minutes: the hagiography continues in RT’s video tribute to Putin
RT praises Vladimir Putin’s 15 years as president with a 10-minute video using mainly western media clips. Photo Credit: RT
By Arielle Dreher
RT has a track record for lavishing President Vladimir Putin with positive coverage, but the channel has pretty much outdone itself this month. A 10-minute tribute to the Kremlin leader aired on May 7—the 15th anniversary of Putin’s first inauguration. That came on the heels of CrossTalk's hagiographic Putin analysis that we told you about the other day.
The new video does not shy away from mentioning the conflicts in Chechnya and Ukraine, but they’re told through the Kremlin’s perspective. RT traces Putin’s early rise in popularity in the West, back when the “press instantly took a liking to him,” to the Ukrainian unrest of 2013 and 2014 that eventually triggered Western sanctions against Russia.
Although the video is anti-Western in tone, it relies mainly on splicing western media outlet clips (from CNN, Fox etc.) together in a swift, sexy historical narrative of the president. It’s a whirlwind tour with lots of positive notes -- but minus one of RT Watch’s favorite Putin moments, as a crooner-in-chief.
RT did not mention another anniversary story that deserved some highlighting this week: the 46 arrests made in Moscow on May 6, when opposition activists gathered to commemorate the anniversary of 2012 anti-Putin protests that have been dubbed the “March of Millions.” Putin’s government wasn’t looking forward to that three-year anniversary, apparently; officials denied the activists’ requests to hold a public rally -- hence, the arrests when some showed up to protest anyway. Meduza reported that the police started arresting people “almost immediately,” even though they were only brandishing posters or just standing near the advocates.
The latest political op-ed from RT on Hillary Clinton is headlined“America’s ‘most wanted’ granny strikes again.” As you probably guessed from that, the piece focuses less on Clinton’s politics and more on her gender and age.
Written by Al Gurnov, who hosted an RT show Spotlight that appears to no longer air on the channel, the article mentions Clinton’s sexuality three times, like when he mentions that Sharon Stone said Clinton has passed her "sexuаl prime." Five out of 14 paragraphs focus on factors like her age, sexuality, marital status and gender. Gurnov muses on whether the United States is “reаdy tо eleсt а symbоl оf the gооd оld 90s аs their mаsсоt in the 21st сentury,” falling back on a classic trope of women as objects, only to be looked at like a mascot instead of a legitimate presidential contender.
Even when he’s writing about Clinton’s political views, he brings the conversation back to her personal life:
Then there’s this: Clinton, says Gurnov, became a “sосiаlist аfter fаlling under the influenсe оf а Соmmunist prоfessоr аnd а lesbiаn rооmmаte.”
Gurnov’s heavy-handed editorial isn’t the only unfriendly RT coverage of Clinton. In April, RT chose a series of outlandish images of Clinton to accompany an otherwise straight-news story. Again, the focus was on her appearance, not her politics.
In a moment of seeming clarity toward the end of his article, Gurnov notes the sexism and misogyny Clinton faced in her last campaign
“She even mentiоned thаt there's lаnguаge tо соndemn femаle speeсh thаt dоesn't exist fоr mаle speeсh,” he says.
Misogyny or not, he says, her election will turn America’s election process “into one big television talk show.”
“But televisiоn hаs nоthing аt аll tо dо with reаl life,” he says. “Whiсh is the brоаdсаsters’ best kept seсret.”
RT reports Sergey Naryshkin’s pipe dream: Russia joins the EU. We’ve got five reasons why that’s never happening (and we’re not even counting the EU’s Ukraine sanctions)
Flags of the European Union, left, and the Russian Federation, right. Sourced: paginaeuropeana.ro.
By M. Chadwick Shank
Sergey Naryshkin, chairman of the Russian State Duma, is one of 151 Russians on the European Union's sanctions list -- a punishment imposed, says the EU, “in response to the illegal annexation of Crimea and deliberate destabilisation of a neighbouring sovereign country.”
The sovereign country in question, of course, is Ukraine, and the sanctions mean that Naryshkin is not welcome to visit the EU.
That little detail wasn’t mentioned by RT in this article, about a Naryshkin column coming out in full support of a future merger between the Russian Federation and the European Union.
“Our country has repeatedly admitted the possibility of a merger between two regional unions – the Eurasian Economic Union and European Union,” said Naryshkin, noting that the idea was also a “dream” outlined by Czech President Milos Zeman, in a January 2014 statement.
The Eurasian Economic Union, established in May 2014, unites Russia with Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia in a free trade pact. Pravda.ru reported that the treaty establishing the union called for a Eurasian Central Bank and a common union currency by 2025.
Graphic showing the landmass and population of the Eurasian Economic Union. Sourced: Kremlin.ru.
Naryshkin -- and RT -- didn’t address how or why the EU would welcome this Eurasian union into the European club. Given the current sanctions on Russia, it’s an absurd notion.
But sanctions aside, here are five reasons (and there are plenty more) why the EU would find proposed Russian membership a total nonstarter.
Russia’s less-than-warm embrace of rule of law. Despite Russia’s membership in the Council of Europe, a transnational organization that promotes cooperation between European countries on legal standards, Russia accounts for more than 20 percent of the cases before the European Court of Human Rights.
Russia’s lack of political democracy. Open political debate and meaningful opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party are not a reality in Russia -- to say the least.
Russia’s treatment of minority groups. Let’s just take one example: the LGBT community. In 2013, Russia banned “propaganda of homosexualism to minors,” and Human Rights Watch has reported that incidents of violence against the Russian LGBT community have increased dramatically since the passing of this legislation.
Russia’s antagonism towards some of its neighbors. Tensions between the Russian Federation and the West were on edge after Russia occupied the Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008, and have only escalated with the current conflict raging in eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s stalled economic growth. Russia’s gross domestic product for 2014 was only 0.6 percent, the slowest rate of growth since an economic contraction in 2009.
What’s RT’s definition of expertise? Meet the ‘independent scholar’ they call on to analyze Odessa investigation
Nina Koupriyanova on RT (left) and on her website (right)
By Lou Marillier
An In the Now episode deplored how “Ukraine’s friends” (the UK, US and European Union) were not being held to account for the deaths of more than 40 people in Odessa, Ukraine, one year after clashes there between government supporters and opponents.
Most of the deaths occurred when government sympathizers hurled Molotov cocktails at an office building where their opponents, Russian-backed separatists, had taken shelter. To comment on the lack of justice one year later, RT invited Nina Koupriyanova on the show (the segment begins 13 minutes and 19 seconds into the program).
We at RT Watch are used to the cryptic descriptions RT uses for many of its talking head experts. Koupriyanova’s title was “independent scholar.”
RT Watch has also found that the more cryptic the identification, the more dubious the expert’s actual expertise is likely to be, like "author and radio host" Peter Lendman and "political analyst" Alexander Pavic, whose appearances on RT we’ve written about recently.
When we searched for previous Koupriyanova appearance on RT, we found only one: when she entered a Yuri Gargarin fan art contest in 2011. On her website, Koupriyanova displays her artistic work – many photos of flora and fauna - and explains that “when I'm not chasing animals (or people!), I'm clicking away at the computer,” working as a graphic designer and illustrator.
This article in American Conservative may shed more light on Koupriyanova, though it doesn’t really bolster the idea that this “independent scholar” has particular expertise on Ukraine, or the current conflict there, or the specific grisly incident in Odessa last year. According to her website, Koupriyanova says she has a Ph.D. in history and does “independent scholarship in the area of modern and contemporary Russia.”
So what were the insights she offered RT’s viewers? Koupriyanova said the Ukrainian government’s investigation of the Odessa deaths had not brought justice because to do so “would perhaps imply that people of the highest level of government were not happy with Ukraine’s descent following the violent coup d’etat that had put the current regime in power.” And the EU, she said, was “really afraid to punish the regime that they had supported over the past several years.”
In case Hillary Clinton isn’t dogged by enough controversy, RT host adds another item to the list: Watergate
By Tim Patterson
On the May 2 episode of RT's CrossTalk, host Peter Lavelle reviewed Hillary Clinton’s history of sordid scandals…sort of. Lavelle argued that Clinton might be an unelectable presidential candidate because she’s been responsible for “one scandal after another,” from the “Watergate hearings all the way to her emails.”
Okay, we’ve followed the Benghazi, Vince Foster, and Whitewater controversies, among others that have swirled around Hillary Clinton. But Watergate? That was news to us.
The break-in at the Washington, D.C. Watergate hotel occurred in 1972 during the administration of President Richard Nixon. Impeachment hearings by the House Judiciary Committee began in 1973, the year Clinton graduated from Yale Law School at age 26. After graduation, Clinton did work on the hearings as a junior House staffer; her role was to draft legal briefs. A rumor that she was fired for unethical behavior is pretty well debunked in this lengthy analysis by snopes.com, which investigates Internet rumors, urban legends and other unverified tales. So to suggest that she was responsible for some aspect of the Watergate scandal seems to defy reality.
Undeterred by facts, Lavelle and his CrossTalk guests forged ever onward into the semantic wilderness. Lavelle remarked that a Hillary Clinton election victory in 2016 would amount to a political dynasty in America. But don’t be troubled, said Lavelle, because “dynasties work for some countries--like North Korea.” Lavelle neglected to mention the abysmal record of Kim Jong Un and his ancestors when it comes to famines, executions, and human rights abuses. Dynasties are dynasties, after all.
Similarly, Lavelle’s guest George Szamuely jumped on the topic of oppression in American politics. Hillary and her Democratic cohorts, he remarked, have initiated a “crackdown on any kind of debate and dissent.” Unrestrained by silly ideas like the First Amendment, the Democratic Party is “closing down any debate,” noted Szamuely.
Lavelle couldn’t help but add one more jab at Hillary, saying, “she’s part of the problem.”
RT tells West to mind its own business with latest Ukraine coverage
Source: RT
By Malena Carollo
RT’s latest coverage of Ukraine, in no uncertain terms, tells Canada (and Western countries by association) to butt out.
A recent Q&A about Canada’s training program for Ukrainian troops quotes a source who said there is no way that Canada can weed out potential right-wing extremists from their training programs.
“How are Canadian trainers going to make those distinctions between who are good guys and who are bad guys?” he said. “They simply won’t be able to and I don’t think they are going to be trying very fastidiously to make that kind of identification.”
The article is scantily sourced with just one “expert” voice--James Bissett, who served as the Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria from 1990 to 1992. He then worked for the International Organization of Migration in Moscow until 1997, helping Russia establish new immigration policies and a Citizenship Act. Neither position involved military strategy or training.
Bissett reinforces RT’s usual framing of the Ukraine situation as an internal conflict that does not need outside interference, saying that “It is inherently unwise to get involved into a civil war.”
RT further discredits the West’s involvement by quoting Bissett saying that Canada is only getting involved to “keep NATO viable,” reinforcing the anti-NATO stance RT has taken in past articles about Ukraine. Earlier this year, RT drove home concerns over NATO and the United States arming Ukraine by posting 42 articles in a single month.
“We’re not going to be in the business of training ad hoc militias,” Canadian Defense Minister Jason Kenney told the National Post. “We will only be training units of the Ukrainian National Guard and army recognized by the government of Ukraine.
According to Defense News, Canada sent
200 trainers to Ukraine
for tactical training and mine disarming. They will be present until March 31, 2017.
