On November 21, 2022; it was announced that a “Cultural Front of Russia” (Культурный фронт России) had been created. US-Sanctioned State Duma deputy and artist Nikolai Burlyaev was named chairman of the organization. Burlyaev claimed that the primary purpose of the group is to “mobilize and rally cultural and art workers” for the war effort in support of the presidential decree on “State Cultural Policy”.
Nikolai Burlyaev (Nikolai Burlyayev)
According to TASS, the meeting was attended by 227 people, including various influential members of the Duma [1].
Daria Dugina (Darya Dugina), daughter of Alexander Dugin, was reported to have died on August 20, 2022 in a car bombing in the Moscow suburbs. Russian political authorities, federal police, and propagandists have consistently portrayed it as an act of Ukrainian terrorism and pointed to Ukrainian suspects.
Conversely, Ukraine has officially denied these allegations. Rather than taking the event at face value as it has been portrayed in Russian media, many Western reports have questioned whether it was an act of “false flag” terrorism.
In this scenario, the killing of Dugina would be intended to bolster public support for the war in Ukraine by reinforcing the idea of Ukraine as a fascist, terrorist state. It would be analogous to a widespread theory that the FSB had carried out a series of apartment bombings in September 1999 in order to bolster public support for a second war in Chechnya.
When Alexander Dugin first released a public statement about the assassination, he did so through Konstantin Malofeev on Malofeev’s Telegram channel [1]. Malofeev, like Dugin has not only been sanctioned for his actions related to Ukraine, but is a member of the ultra-conservative Izborsky Club; a philosophical group which was co-founded by Alexander Prokhanov and Vitali Averyanov, and includes many prominent Russians, some close to Putin [2].
This long-read report demonstrates that regardless of whom may be responsible for the crime, the death of Daria Dugina has been consciously manipulated by figures like Alexander Dugin, Alexander Prokhanov, and Konstantin Malofeev in order to frame the murder as a kind of symbol of martyrdom which supports the neo-imperialist “Ideology of Victory” that was formally articulated by the Izborskists in October 2021, prior to the Ukraine invasion.
The death of Daria Dugina provokes enduring symbols of Russian ideology
This observation in and of itself does not mean the Izborskists have complicity in the murder. But it does seek to prove objectively that the death has been used consciously from the start as an ideological and political instrument of Russian imperial power. Continue reading ““Ideology of Victory” and the Death of Daria Dugina”
Dracula’s long significance in Russian literature which became the basis of a narrative parallel with the tsar and autocrat is not limited to Fyodor Kuritsyn’s Tale of Dracula the Voivode or Dmitry Merezhkovsky’sAntichrist (Peter and Aleksey) [1,2].
Inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in his 1908 article Sun Over Russia, the writer and poet Alexander Blok (1880-1921) also utilized the imagery of the vampiric ghoul to describe the bloodthirsty behavior of the tsarist empire and its church leaders.
Blok’s essay was written in celebration of the 80th birthday of Leo Tolstoy. (The ghoul was a concept introduced into Russian literature by Alexander Pushkin; and later developed by Alexey Tolstoy (a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy).) [3]
I’ve found the essay and translated it since it doesn’t seem to be common in English.
At a Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) panel held on June 21, 2022 called Fake News in the Era of Globalization, Russian businessman Vladimir Tabak introduced plans for a new social media fact-checking service called “Noodles” (Лапша) (1).
Vladimir Tabak, CEO of ANO Dialog
The name Noodles is a reference to the familiar Russian expression “to hang noodles on one’s ears”, which can be described as “to fool someone in a skillful manner, and make them naively believe what you’re saying.” (2)
Tabak’s Noodles service will include a website, a chat bot, and media monitoring capabilities. It will partner with various internet platforms in order to support the goals of the October 2021 Memorandum on Countering Misleading Information (aka ‘Memorandum on Combating Fake Fakes’) (1). The Memorandum was signed by representatives of many Russian state-owned news agencies. It represents an allegedly self-regulatory and voluntary information data standard for Russian media companies to support “systematic” efforts to “develop common rules for verifying and labeling false information, as well as developing best practices for verifying the authenticity of publications.” (3)
Some media reports on the Noodles announcement proclaimed that “the first anti-fake service will be launched in Russia.” (1 ,5)
An announcement of Noodles being the first such service in Russia might be met with some skepticism by Western observers. Researchers of Russian information warfare activities during the 2022 Ukraine War have already reported extensively about the popular Telegram channel War on Fakes, which purports to be a fact checking website, but seems to have been used instead by the Kremlin as a coordinated outlet for the spread of state-sponsored disinformation narratives (4).
Based on the discussions in the SPIEF panel and Tabak’s pro-Kremlin background alone, there is reason to expect that like War on Fakes, that Noodles will be likely to reinforce the ideological position of the state as a first priority in “truth”, rather than enable greater access to factual information by Russian social media users.
In continuedmonitoring of Russian propaganda reports that Western militaries are planning “false flags” in the Donbas which mirror prior disinformation narratives about the White Helmets in Syria, I came to learn of the WarGonzo Telegram channel. There is limited information about this news source’s background in English but it seems to parrot similar narratives to the official positions of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
WarGonzo recently claimed: “The White Helmets are rushing to Donetsk. Judging by the intelligence, the British-Turkish alliance is going to work out its “Syrian case” in the Donbas. We all remember staged documentaries and special reports about the “use” of chemical weapons. The British office of the White Helmets is also preparing scenarios for the Donbass regions of Russia. Knowing their cynical experience in the Middle East, one has to expect something adequate from this case. Donbass needs to be on the alert.” [1]
WarGonzo is run by the journalist Semen Pegov (aka Semyon Pegov) and has consistently been one of the most-cited Telegram channels in Russian media in the past few years [2, 3].
Semen Pegov: Gonzo Muppet (x Proboscis Monkey if it was too subtle…)
Last week I blogged on how Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had claimed that Russia was the victim in a global information war, and how that narrative had many parallels to previous Russian denials of chemical weapons attacks for which Russia bears clear responsibility. Additionally, Shoigu’s remarks on information war had come just weeks after he foretold chemical weapons provocations by American agents in Ukraine in a context which evoked prior disinformation narratives about the White Helmets in Syria [1].
It was reported yesterday that US officials have claimed that Russian operatives may be planning a “false flag” attack in the Donbas as a provocation to justify a broader invasion of Ukraine [2].
This morning, Ukrainian intelligence sources warned:
“According to the military intelligence of Ukraine, on January 14, tanks with ammonia were delivered to Gorlovka [Horlivka], occupied by Russian troops, at Concern Stirol PJSC, from which, due to a leak, toxic substances are leaking into the atmosphere. The man-made disaster caused by the actions of the Russian invaders can be used to accuse Ukraine of using toxic chemicals and as a pretext for expanding armed aggression against our state.” [3]
Russian-language media widely reported today on Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu’s interview on the state-funded Zvezda network’s television program Military Acceptance where he claimed that Russia was in “an information war on all fronts”, and had “no right to lose in this war”. [1]
Shoigu’s call to arms makes up a relatively small proportion of the hour-long television episode which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Department of Information and Mass Communications of the Russian Defense Ministry.
The full program is here, and can be viewed with auto-translated English subtitles:
Despite being targeted to a domestic audience and apparently crafted to promote a sense of pride and patriotism in the Russian “information support” services, the Military Acceptance program as a whole (to include Shoigu’s claims of victimhood) can be contextually analyzed within the broader geopolitical context of the aggressive Russian information warfare agenda. Continue reading “Sergei Shoigu Claims Russia is Victim in Information War”
If someone was to ask me who my favorite artist was today, I would most likely name the late Prodigy (Albert Johnson) of the 1990s hip hop duo Mobb Deep. Prodigy died at age 42 in June 2017 reportedly due to complications of his lifelong battle with sickle cell anemia.
But Prodigy is actually an interesting figure in the landscape of Russia and conspiracy theories too. He is the man who brought a paranoid belief in the Illuminati to hip hop.
While the historical accuracy of the events depicted in the books may be debated, we can infer that this is how the Tsar purposefully intended his legacy to be remembered in line with his efforts to revise the history of his own era.
Such images of death and destruction only make up a small fraction of the miniatures in the Facial Annalistic Set. However, their existence does support the idea that Ivan IV wished himself to be perceived in a fearsome way and didn’t hide that he had people brutally punished in order to enforce his rule.
It was hard to find good quality images online from the chronicles to support this research. After some digging, I’ve found some excellent digital copies of the Facial Annalistic Set which were commissioned by the Russian nationalist businessman, conspiracy theorist, and political aspirant German Sterligov; who became one of the first millionaires (if not the first) in post-Soviet Russia after starting the stock exchange Alisa.
