West will arrest Russian if we lose, TV viewers told
Kremlin propaganda tries to boost flagging enthusiasm for Ukraine war by warning Russians the entire country will be punished if Putin’s army is defeated.
Kremlin propaganda is trying to boost flagging enthusiasm for the war in Ukraine by warning Russians that the entire country will be punished by western powers if President Putin’s army is defeated.
“Everyone will be considered guilty, without exception, regardless of whether they are on the territory of Russia or outside of it,” Olga Skabeyeva, a prominent state television presenter, told a current affairs talk show aired by the Rossiya 1 channel. “The existence of the country as well as the existence of every Russian citizen is at stake!”
Skabeyeva, who is known as Putin’s Iron Doll, said that ordinary Russians living abroad, even those with no connection to the Kremlin, would “immediately be arrested” if Russia loses the war.
Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT, the Kremlin-backed media outlet, warned of “unimaginable” consequences for Russia in the event that Ukraine emerges victorious. “If we manage to lose, The Hague, real or hypothetical, will come for even the janitor who sweeps the cobblestones behind the Kremlin,” she said, referring to the International Criminal Court.
Speaking on national television, she urged the Russian military to continue its relentless attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, saying: “This is the only thing we can do in this situation.”
Simonyan, who routinely refers to Putin as “the boss”, also said that unnamed officials in “high circles” were increasingly concerned about being prosecuted for war crimes. “[But they] should be afraid of losing, of being humiliated, of betraying their own people,” she said.
A series of humiliating setbacks on the battlefield, massive military casualties and a wildly unpopular draft mean that just one in four Russians is now in favour of continuing the war in Ukraine, according to a leaked Kremlin poll that was obtained by Meduza, a Russian opposition website. Support for negotiations to end the nine-month conflict has risen from 32 per cent to 55 per cent.
“The conflict has become increasingly tangible for many Russians since the September 2022 partial mobilisation,” the British Ministry of Defence said yesterday (Sunday).
“With Russia unlikely to achieve major battlefield successes in the next several months, maintaining even tacit approval of the war among the population is likely to be increasingly difficult for the Kremlin.”
Simonyan and Skabeyeva, as well as Vladimir Solovyov, another notorious peddler of Kremlin propaganda, have previously said that they would prefer to see the world destroyed in a nuclear war than for Russia to be defeated in Ukraine.
The European Union called last week for a special court to investigate Russian war crimes. “We are ready to start working with the international community to get the broadest international support possible for this specialised court,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said.
She also said that Moscow and Kremlin-linked tycoons should provide the vast majority of the funds needed to rebuild Ukrainian cities and infrastructure after the war.
“Russia must also pay financially for the devastation that it caused,” she said. “Russia and its oligarchs have to compensate Ukraine for the damage and cover the costs for rebuilding the country.”
European Commission officials have said that the cost of rebuilding Ukraine will be at least $929 billion. President Zelensky has estimated the cost at a trillion dollars.
The Times
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