According to reporting from the Daily Beast's Russian media reporter Julia Davis, some of President Vladimir Putin's biggest supporters on Russian state media are growing increasingly frustrated that the public and guests are still questioning the invasion of Ukraine.
As Davis notes, the invasion was launched in February of 2022 and a large segment of the Russian populace is still not convinced it was necessary and are publically stating so -- much to the dismay of the Russian strongman's propagandists.
Case in point, a recent interview with a popular Russian entertainment personality who questioned the invasion, which led the host of the program to snap.
According to Davis, "During Wednesday’s broadcast of NTV’s show Meeting Place, hosts Andrey Norkin and Ivan Trushkin spearheaded a discussion about the effectiveness of homegrown propaganda, complaining about the lack of views and comments on 'patriotic' promo reels urging the youth to rush for the front lines," adding, "One guest, Russian rapper Ptakha, whose real name is David Nuriev, didn’t beat around the bush. 'As far as the youth is concerned, honestly speaking, I communicate with a lot of them and very few understand what we’re doing there, because they [Ukrainians] didn’t cross our borders. Very few understand,' he said. 'Trying to ride the wave of the Soviet ideology, claiming that we’re fighting Germans, is also very questionable.'"
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The report adds that "Norkin angrily retorted: 'I categorically reject what you’re saying right now, young man. Let’s stop butting heads over here.'"
As Davis explained, "State media’s desperation to control the narrative of the war is palpable, with propagandists seemingly competing for the most outrageous theory on what would happen if Russia loses the war. Head of RT Margarita Simonyan previously alleged that the Russians would end up in Western concentration camps or be turned into mindless 'yahoos,' while Professor Dmitry Evstafiev predicted that they would be caged and displayed alongside animals at the zoo."
According to the Beast report, "In an apparent effort to strengthen Russia’s ideological standing and eliminate foreign influence, Vitaly Tretyakov, dean of Moscow State University’s School of Television, pushed for Russia’s liberals to be forced into publicly denouncing their written criticism of the Soviet Union. He called for the Russian Academy of Sciences to arrange for these public denouncements and threw in another proposal: 'Maybe we should burn these books!'" to which political scientist Sergey Mikheyev eagerly added, "Together with their authors!”
You can read more here.