The news of US President Biden withdrawing and Kamala Harris entering as a candidate in the US presidential elections took the world by storm. It also dominated the Russian information landscape. The Kremlin and its commentators see US developments through the prism of Ukraine: how this will affect US and Western support to Kyiv.
It is all about peace…
The news of Donald Trump receiving a phone call from Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and the latter’s readiness to consider including Russia in future peace talks is accompanied by a degree of uncertainty or subdued nervousness in Russian state outlets like when reporting about Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba’s visit to Beijing.
Otherwise, the main line from Moscow is that Trump and JD Vance display wisdom, as they embrace Russian ideas adopting Moscow-lingo like ‘accepting realities on the ground’ and suggesting a quick deal involving Kyiv ceding substantial territory to Russia and agreeing to perpetual neutrality.
Before President Biden’s announcement to withdraw from the presidential race, there was a sense in most pro-Kremlin outlets of a done deal for the US elections: Trump as an easy winner and panic in Europe. Thus all the reasons to display schadenfreude and get ready to celebrate victory.
…since the US started it all…
Meanwhile, the political obituary of Biden is already being drafted by leading Russian voices. We pick this example by the head of the Russian State Duma’s International Affairs Committee Leonid Slutskiy who is a more outspoken version of what the Kremlin tries to promote. Essentially, Slutskiy accused Biden for supporting the ‘terrorist regime in Kyiv’ and blamed the US for the war that Russia itself launched. We note the complete absence of self-reflection in these Moscow words trying to suppress the fact that Russia was the party invading Ukraine already back in 2014 in Crimea and the Donbas and then full-scale in February 2022. Not the other way around, nor did President Biden invade Russia.
…and Kamala Harris is the devil
The news of Vice President Kamala Harris entering the US presidential race has somewhat upset the triumphant mood in Moscow. Russian state-controlled and other pro-Kremlin outlets are now engaged in smearing Harris as much as possible. She is painted as a political continuation of Joe Biden but key Russian state outlets add misogyny. The main TV Russia 1 lends its beacon platform ‘60 minutes’ to smear her. Other commentators suggest that Harris is nothing short of the devil in disguise: a women without children (suspicious to a Kremlin mind), ‘smiling and deceptive but distilled evil’.
Misogyny is a classic in Russian state-controlled outlets and sometimes mixed with racially charged overtones. Kremlin voices frequently attacked female US officials such as the former White House press secretary Jen Psaki and, more recently, current Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, in some cases also adding a homophobic angle.
Add conspiracy: the Deep State rides again
The Kremlin also dusted off the old, beaten horse of Deep State-conspiracy theories. Its mouthpiece Izvestiya suggests that Kamala Harris enjoys the support of the ‘deep state’. Such statements, delivered in a matter-of-fact fashion, are clearly designed to prey upon people’s proclivity for conspiracy theories. George Soros and his son Alex as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton are go-to scapegoats in the Kremlin disinformation ecosystem. So, no surprise in seeing the Russian state-run outlet Sputnik engaged in stories like this: ‘Soros and the Clintons are Kamala Harris’ apparent puppeteers’. Through Sputnik and the RT (Russia Today) networks, broadcasting in some 25 languages and feeding local news systems, the potential audience broadens to millions globally.
We should expect the smearing campaigns of Harris to intensify and spread. This would be in line with the recent experience we observed in the run-up to the European Parliament elections. Then, the pro-Kremlin ecosystem engaged in many similar smearing attempts. Access our EP elections series here.
‘Shape the battlefield’: manipulate the information space with repression
Meanwhile, back in Russia, unbridled repression continues from Russian authorities against domestic political groups and activists, foreign journalists, or anybody else who does not toe the party line from the Kremlin.
It is not news to reveal that Russian authorities are using the courts and the administrative system as means of repression. Think political prisoners, killed opposition figures, closed NGOs, and groups forced into exile or censorship. Think Boris Nemtsov, Alexei Navalny, the Memorial, Vladimir Kara-Murza, and countless others.
We highlight a couple of remarkable developments during last week: the Russian Ministry of Justice (should it be the Ministry of Injustice?) listing the Carnegie Endowment for Peace as a so-called ‘undesired organisation’ and Russian courts sentencing two dual-national journalists, Alsu Kurmasheva and Evan Gershkovich, to 6.5 and 16 years in prison, respectively. The EU strongly condemned the sentences (here and here).
This week, another Russian court sent a similar fear-spreader with an 8.5 year prison conviction in absentia of Michail Zygar for ‘spreading false news about the Russian army’. Zygar is one of the co-creators and former editor-in-chief of the independent TV station Rain which has relocated out of Russia.
From ‘foreign agent’ to ‘undesired’ – a huge difference
Every Friday, the Ministry updates the lists and almost every week there are court cases, larger or smaller. The machine grinds on and messages are manifold but blunt: opposing views are increasingly seen as downright criminal.
It’s one thing to be listed as a so-called ‘Foreign Agent’. In Russia, that comes with connotations that your work is dirty, dishonest, manipulated, and paid by sinister usurpers plotting a coup against Moscow. But you can still work as long as you label every detail as done by a ‘foreign agent’ in a kind of self-ridiculing and intellectual degradation. There are now thousands of registered ‘foreign agents’ in Russia in a clear effort to engineer fear and paranoia.
Another thing is to be registered as ‘undesirable’. The legal consequences are much tougher. The organisation has to completely stop working. Financial assets are mostly frozen. Doing business with you becomes a criminal offense. Thus no one will publish, promote, advertise, trade, insure, rent out, or do any transaction with you. Basically, ‘undesirables’ become radioactive. There are more than 150 organisations registered. The listing is an administrative decision, not a court process. Thus no real possibility of appeal, which – theoretically – exists if the case were in the Russian court system.
Disciplining into submission
The prison sentences come as steady drops and have become a daily reality. Very few, if anybody, in Russia dare to seriously criticise the court cases for their blatant fabricated nature. The Kremlin has been largely successful in disciplining journalists into submission and shaping an information space in Russia under almost total political control.
A new no-name person: Vladimir Kara-Murza
Vladimir Kara-Murza, journalist and political activist, sentenced in Russia 2023 with a record prison term of 25 years (tougher than the USSR criminal code) is still reported to have gone missing and his lawyers have been unable to establish contact. The reporting is made by Western media while Kara-Murza is seldom mentioned by name by prominent outlets inside Russia. Like Alexey Navalny previously, Kara-Murza is becoming the person no one really names in public. This suggests a political instruction, a temnik usually issued by the Kremlin presidential administration to leading editors inside Russia. See our analysis of the Temnik system.
Article and pictures first time published on the EUvsDisinfo web page. Prepared for publication by volunteers from the Res Publica - The Center for Civil Resistance.
