The Ukrainian largest children’s hospital, “Okhmatdet”, has been seriously damaged by Russian shelling in Kyiv.
On July 8, Donald Trump made a number of sharp statements addressed directly to the Russian leadership and President Putin.
Since July 8, every night Ukraine has been subjected to massive Russian air attacks. The strikes have been carried out with a special focus on Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.
On July 10, Russia’s most popular Internet media aggregator Rambler reprinted an article by the popular newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” entitled “Now there is nothing to be ashamed of: Russia hits Kiev after failure with Trump”.
The article claims that now there is no point in any diplomatic maneuvers: after the failure of contacts with Trump and the U.S., the topic of peace talks is finally closed, and Moscow is starting to act any way it wants.
Here are some quotes from the article:
“In his speeches, Trump allowed extremely harsh language, saying that he considers Putin’s ability to ‘speak beautifully’ absolutely useless. He also made it clear that he was ready to return sanctions against Russia to the American arsenal of pressure. Experts noted that such a confrontational stance toward the Kremlin is rare for Trump, especially against the background of his previous, more pragmatic line.
“There is nothing to be embarrassed about any longer, since Trump and the US negotiations on peace in Ukraine are over.”
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the official Russian media has preached the idea that Russia is at war not with Ukraine, but with the entire Western world, led by the United States. Ukraine, on the other hand, is just a tool of the U.S. imperialists.
Trump’s election as President and his attempts at rapprochement with Putin have confused Putin’s propagandists and made it difficult for Russians to understand who they are at war with. The new tone of Trump’s remarks, has dramatically changed the tone of the Kremlin propagandists, who are now enthusiastically returning to traditional anti-Americanism.
Ukrainian TV Channel 24 expressed an opinion that coincides with many anti-Putin columnists:
“After Donald Trump said he was extremely dissatisfied with his recent conversation with Vladimir Putin and emphasized that the Russian leader is not interested in ending the war against Ukraine, the situation has sharply escalated. In response to these words, according to some sources, Putin gave orders to discredit Trump in media space, controlled by the state.”
Here are a few examples of the new tone of Russian propaganda. The Rambler article (see above) quotes military correspondent Alexander Sladkov as saying:
“Trump is not a peacemaker. He is a retail bargainer, just on a world scale. He doesn’t want peace, he wants ‘bucks’, ‘dough’, ‘cash,’ ‘loot,’ … They put him in charge of the world, and the world is outraged. The bankers are mad at him. In order to survive he has only one way out – a new war to please them. The chosen enemy should be the one that the US should be able to beat 100%. Neither Russia nor China are suitable. Perhaps Iran again.”
Here is a quote from a speech of Vladimir Soloviev, one of the most popular Russian TV presenters on National Russia-1 TV channel:
“Trump says, ‘I’m not happy with Putin’. Trump! With Putin! Why’s that?
“‘And I,’ he says, ‘am not happy with the BRICS either! Why they don’t line up at my command? Really, I told you: stop the train, one, two, three! You must stop!’
“Why? What, has Trump decided he’s the king of the world? Does he really think he can tell us what to do and we will obey? Hasn’t he learned anything? Doesn’t he realize that we are guided by our national interests? He still doesn’t understand anything about Russia! And why should we make Trump feel happy?”
Here is a quote from the July 12 program of the Russian TV channel RT:
“Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson suggested on air on the YouTube channel ‘Judging freedom’ that U.S. President Donald Trump has begun to experience age-related mental changes. According to him, the head of the White House has ‘something wrong with his mental aspect’.
“Earlier, Trump asked for a computed tomography (CT) scan of his brain taken after an assassination attempt on him in Pennsylvania last year.”
Russian propaganda had returned to putting down not only the President of the USA, but also the country itself.
Here are the quotes from an article entitled “Prediction of the ‘exact date’ of collapse of the US and the start of second civil war”, published by Rambler on July 12.
(Professor Benjamin Cohen, quoted in the article, is very popular in the Russian publications):
“Professor Benjamin Cohen of the University of California, Santa Barbara, warned that the likelihood of political polarization reaching a tipping point across the US is ‘well above zero’. California may secede from the US, which will trigger a second civil war in America within the next 10 years, a political expert claims.
“While the secession of American states may seem an unlikely possibility to many, Cohen explained that a movement is gaining momentum in the so-called ‘dream states,’ seeking to rally around the goals to which some believe they belong, rather than remaining part of the larger U.S. family.
“A recent YouGov poll found that Cohen’s fears are shared by many Americans, with 40 percent believing it is ‘somewhat or very likely’ that a new civil war will break out in the U.S. within 10 years. The same percentage of respondents believe that the war will be fought between Democrats and Republicans, rather than between individual states, the Daily Mail reports.
“However, surveys continue to show that more and more Americans believe that the government is reaching a tipping point and may even cease to function as a Democratic government within a decade.
“A June 30 YouGov poll of 1,111 U.S. adults found that 31 percent believe America will become a fascist dictatorship by 2035. Another 20 percent believe the U.S. will be communist by then.”
Meanwhile, the Russian media continues to reflect the Russian reaction to every new statement Trump makes. Here is a July 15 publication on the News.ru website:
“Military observer Viktor Baranets answered the question about how the situation in the zone of the special military operation will change within 50 days, as U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Russia with new tariffs if no truce is reached in the Ukrainian conflict in 50 days.
“He pointed out that on average, the Russian Armed Forces have recently taken control of about two or even three settlements.
“‘For 50 days, if we take at least an average figure, about fifty settlements will be taken,’ the observer admitted. ‘The most important thing for us is to fulfill the tasks of taking the territory of the Donetsk region’, he said, ‘adding that it is necessary to fully reach desired Donetsk People’s Republic administrative borders. And Trump’s tariffs’, Baranets emphasized, ‘will not distract our military, let them amuse themselves in Washington.’”
