Telling a lie is easy. To sustain one is hard, especially if those at whom it is directed are paying attention. Those spreading falsehoods find it difficult to repeat them over and over again without eventually allowing the truth to come out. Their only hope is that in today’s 24/7 news cycle, their target audience will move on and not take notice.
That is certainly the case with Moscow’s role in the Donbas, where the Russian media have moved from complete denial, symbolized by the wonderful Russian neologism “yikh tam net” – “they aren’t there” to an increasingly full admission that the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” are operations that are completely controlled by Moscow.
U.S.-based Russian journalist Kseniya Kirillova thus performs an especially valuable service in calling attention to a new article by Yegor Makhov on Moscow’s Voyennoye Obozreniye portal, which is closely linked to the Russian Defense Ministry, in which he openly describes the work of Russian “curators” in the Donbas, their successes and failures.
Ms. Kirillova says many may assume that Mr. Makhov is saying nothing everyone doesn’t know, but he, unlike many who have reported on this pattern in the past, is not a Ukrainian or Russian opposition figure but a part of the Moscow regime. (Ms. Kirillova’s article is at day.kyiv.ua/ru/blog/politika/tak-nazyvaemye-kuratory; Mr. Makhov’s, at topwar.ru/149218-rossija-reshila-okonchatelno-navesti-porjadok-v-ldnr.html).
Similar patterns can be observed in the wake of almost all the lies the Kremlin has put out on a wide variety of other issues. Fortunately for its denizens, but unfortunately for everyone else, few are paying close attention and thus miss both these acknowledgements and the splits they suggest exist within the Moscow regime over its most controversial policies.