Phil Butler - Putin's Praetorians - Confessions of the Top Kremlin Trolls

People in Europe (and later in the USA) got so accustomed to the powerful stream of defamatory misinformation and disinformation about Russia that the media didn’t have to spend much effort trying to pervert the Communist ideology under which Bolsheviks tried to make my country the best one in the world.

But that were not Bolsheviks who made the 20th century the bloodiest for my homeland. It was not they who initiated the bloody Civil War. Neither did they start the foreign intervention of the powers trying to overthrow the Bolshevik rule or at least bite some parts of weakened Russia here or there. The UK (together with Australia, Canada, and India), France, Italy, Greece, Romania, the USA sent their troops to young Soviet Russia. So did Japan. So did countries of the beaten in WWI Central Powers, first of all, Germany. Even newly born Finland used its chance to kill the Red (though, the latter did not bother much dividing the White from the Red; they preferred to kill all Russians. Now some Finnish nationalists say the Princedom of Finland within the Russian Empire was way more independent than now, within the EU; but that’s now).

Then, we were made to face the aggression of the European Union 2.0 (taking the Napoleonic version for the first one). They stupidly say it was Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that allowed Hitler to unleash the WW2 — skillfully disregarding all the efforts of the USSR made since about 1934 (by the way, in that year Poland became the first country to make an agreement with Hitlerite Germany) to build up a system of collective safety in Europe. Stalin sought a safety accord with the UK and France till August 1939 but was literally pissed off by the powers.

Well, it’s a long story of lies, bullshit, betrayals and the stuff, which lasts till now. Just some examples.

Reading the well-known book “A Relation or Memorial Abstracted out of Sir Jerom Horsey’s Travels…” (printed in London first early in the 1600-s) we learn that in 1570 Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible) came to Novgorod with an army of 30,000 of Tartars (!) and 10,000 Oprichniki, that killed there 700,000 men, women and children.

A terrible blood-thirsty tyrant, isn’t he? Well, he was not soft and kind, but all the population of Novgorod was 30 to 40 thousand people at the time. And the city was suffering from a plague epidemic. The personal death-bill of Ivan IV counted about 2800 people; the full dead count could reach 5000. Is it much? Yes, it is. Does it make Ivan IV the Terrible? No, in no case; European monarchs of Britain or/and France were WAY more bloodthirsty.

This was about 450 years ago. How does it go now? It goes the same way.

A review at The Guardian [42] Russian war film set to open amid controversy over accuracy of events , by Shaun Walker, The Guardian , November 23, 2016 (or lies — which for the matter coincides now), regarding the movie “Panfilov’s 28” professes:

“Arguments over the upcoming film and the mythology around the episode, in general, began last spring, when Sergei Mironenko, the director of Russia’s state archive, gave an interview stating that while there had indeed been a bloody battle outside Moscow, it was not as many had understood it.

His words provoked such outrage that over the summer the archive posted online a 1948 internal Soviet military report into the events, which came to the conclusion that a journalist from the Red Army’s newspaper had made up the particulars of the story, inventing quotes and ignoring the fact that some of the soldiers had survived and one was believed to have surrendered to the Germans.

The legend was cooked up to fit in with the Soviet demand that soldiers should fight to the death rather than surrender.

Vladimir Medinsky, the culture minister, reacted furiously to the intervention, saying it was not the job of archivists to make historical evaluations, and if Mironenko wanted to change professions, he should do so. Shortly after, Mironenko was fired.”

One can conclude that the imperial culture minister, a sub of the evil deity of Putin, fired a fair archive officer. No doubt, any non-Russian speaking human being would agree. And fail: for 1) Mr. Mironenko many times was caught hot lying about our history, and 2) he was retired for having reached the limit age of a state officer, which is 65 years. Moreover, he remained the scientific administrator of the State Archive, and is that now.

Fuck them all.

Call me names, call me a Kremlin troll or whoever, but so far as I live, I won’t keep silent. I am going to deliver the truth.

And fuck the bullshit.

My friend Vladimir Samarin lives not too far from the Kremlin and Red Square. As my friend and a subject in my book he also hints at another real motivation for my own vehement support for Russia. Despite his “Soviet” military past though, Vladimir is one of those “ordinary” citizens who step up to become heroes of a war or movement. He’s another of the fascinating people who came from out of nowhere to do battle with the most expensive media empire the world has ever known. They are ordinary people on the one hand, and extraordinary on the other.

But if any of my Russian friends really “blows” my cover, it’s a real Kremlin operative, my good friend Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Stankevich. Stas, as I refer to him, is a former member of Spetsgruppa “A”, also known as AlphaGroup, an elite, stand-alone sub-unit of Russia’s special forces.

The following is a translation of his own words on this new Cold War we find ourselves mired in.

At some stage, any person thinks about the meaning of his life and often finds this meaning in the struggle for what he believes. For example, in preventing new wars and creating a just world in which there is a place for any people, nation, religion, a way of life.

What are the wars for? To satisfy the commercial interests of individuals who have no homeland, no soul, no conscience, and all their actions in this world assessing by the mathematical attitude of the profits to risk.

Any president, king, or even a dictator depends on the opinion of his people. In a democratic society, deputies and parliamentarians are also forced to rely on the view of the electorate, and no decision on war can be taken without the participation of the people. After all, those who go to war with weapons in their hands or send their children to it must support such a decision, or soon they will oppose those who sent them.

How do modern wars begin? First, an image of the evil enemy is created, and for this everything that is associated with the opponent is painted in dark colors, he is shown unpredictable and bloodthirsty. At the same time, access to information that could break this idyllic picture is blocked. After a while, one can bravely start a war in which there will have support and sacrifice of the people who do not even guess about real goals of this war.

In the Soviet Union and in the United States in the late 1940s to early 1990s, this mechanism for creating an image of an enemy worked well. The USSR had many advantages over the United States, but there were also many cons. Hollywood and Mosfilm produced terrible movies from their opponents on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Capitalists brought up in the laws of the market successfully sold Hollywood movies and Coca-Cola in beautiful tins all around the world, while the USSR could not boast of its information goods with its Spartan, calm, multinational and traditional philosophical way of life. Against this background, Gorbachev betrayed all information positions of his country. The Soviet Union suddenly became a villain even in the eyes of its citizens, but at the same time, everything that was done in the West became an example of humanity, justice, success and role models.