To bring you up-to-date: CNN reported that on one day--one day--4,357 Russians--Russians--were arrested in 56 cities for protesting the war. In Moscow, they're now picked up just as they leave the Metro, without even being given a chance to say anything. The authorities know why they're coming, so probable cause is assumed.
The protests have to be based on information being distributed guerrilla-style. The Russian government is making a no-holds-barred effort to reduce the spreading of information to itself, and only itself.
Facebook has been cancelled. Anyone who reports something the government doesn't like can be arrested and convicted for 15 years in prison. Bloomberg News and BBC have been forced to suspend their efforts in war coverage. So has the New York Times. The Washington Post will remove by-lines to protect sources.
It will serve the Russians well. They get to spread nothing but their propaganda and lies without challenge. They get to sustain a news blackout--a real news blackout--for the duration of the war, and probably afterwards. You really think they'll return to an open society after this carnage? This embarrassment?
It is complete nonsense. It pretends that the blame for the war goes on the U.S. It continues to rely on the notion that the invasion, bloody and completely unleashed as it is, with civilian casualties mounting by the minute, is nothing more than peacekeeping.
There will be peace, all right. When Ukraine is completely destroyed.
Meanwhile, the whole effort is one big war crime. 200,000 people were to be evacuated from Mariopol, on the Black Sea. Russian shelling prevented that.
We know that Russians are leaving the country, but we'll now have no idea how many. Censorship solders things shut, leaving us to forage for anecdotes for things like casualties. We have to be patient now; our lust for fast news can't be satisfied. But the well-filmed destruction of major Ukrainian cities isn't being done antiseptically; we have also seen the bodies pile up.
Knowing what we know, though, and what the Russian government won't let us know, will leave us with one, sure conclusion: What whatever that government puts out on the airwaves is either only half-true or contrived fantasy, not just to be taken with a grain of salt, but to be discarded out of hand. As we go, it will only be further and further divorced from reality, like Putin himself.
The only thing that will be sure and verifiable is the carnage that it so willingly foists upon Ukraine, against which its citizens are so bravely resisting. Nobody in Russia, not Putin, not his henchmen, not its censors, can stop that publication. War needs no puffing, no exaggeration. It is formed out of hate and it engenders hate.
The aftermath of this violence cannot bode well for Putin, nor for Europe. He will have to double down on his new imperial plans, or find a way to conclude Ukraine is all he needs and wants. But who will believe him? And who will come out of this with anything good a respectful for Russia?
With the censorship, Russia will most likely become a new blockade of information, like North Korea, which also has its citizens scared to death. It will, in all likelihood, cause a new arms race, justified by ginned-up anticipation of invasion by the West, which is not in the plans. Putin will have to take away everyone's laptops and androids; receiving information from the West will have to become as dangerous as putting something else out there. I wouldn't put it past him to try.
The only thing that can stop this absurd surge, outside of a horribly destructive, expansive war, is an overthrow of Putin. But if information is so difficult to get inside there, how can its population understand the absurdity of what's already happened?
It can't. But Russia is a big place, spanning eleven time zones, and something will leak in--and leak out. The Internet, maddening as it has sometimes been here, can't be stopped forever. No censorship, necessary as it always is for dictators, has ever been proven impenetrable. Cracks will form. Said Leonard Cohen: It's where the sun gets in.
Be well. Be careful. Support the Ukrainians. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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