September 27, 2018.
Lately, the Russian media has been full of publications creating the feeling that the 3rd World War is going to start at any moment. Here are the titles of some articles published this week by the major representatives of Russian media. These articles were suggested to readers as some of the most important news by the most popular Russian search engine and one of the biggest Russian web portals “Rambler”:
“’This is war.’ The Russian Federation responded to the American call for a naval blockade of Russia”;
“The Kremlin has responded to the threat of shooting down Russian missiles”;
“US ‘clear’ the sky over Ukraine”;
“US hit the MS-21”;
“Shelters will be shown to Russians in case of war”;
“Defense Ministry accused the United States in experiments on people in Georgia”;
“Russians are left without imported flu vaccines”;
“Germany believed the charges against Russia”;
“Russian method to defeat the United States proved to be correct”;
“Lavrov have put Trump in his place in one sentence”;
“The most formidable weapon of the Russian Federation against the US Navy was announced”;
“Microwave weapons were tested in Russia”;
“One hundred aircraft took to the air by the order of the Russian Aerospace Force”;
“Russia announced measures against dollar”.
Many of these titles sound much more frightening than the content of the articles themselves. Some examples:
Seeing the title “Russians are left without imported flu vaccines”, an ordinary Russian, following the trend, concludes that the Americans and other foreigners purposely left Russians without vaccines. In reality, the article, published by the popular website “Vedomosty” gives a lot of reasons for the lack of the foreign vaccine in Russia. Here is a quote from the article:
“Tatiana Tarasenko, the head nurse of the Alpha Health Center network, said that the Dutch pharmaceutical company Abbott failed to bring its Influvac vaccine to Russia, which has been the most popular in the country in 2017. A spokesperson for Abbott explained that the reason for the shortage was the workload.
In turn, the French company Sanofi, according to Tarasenko, imported too little “Vaxigripp”, the demand for which has greatly increased due to the lack of “Influvac”.
According to Nikolai Demidov, director general of the Russian representative office of the analytical agency IQVIA, the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation “promotes” Russian vaccines, refusing to purchase foreign vaccines.
Demidov named the weak ruble rate and the low solvency of the population as another reason for small number of the foreign vaccines on the Russian market.
The article entitled “US hit the MS-21” doesn’t say that Americans hit the Russian plane MS-21. It just informs that the Russian aviation enterprises listed in the new American blacklist are being engaged in the creation of the newest Russian aircraft MS-21 (“The main aircraft of the 21st century”). The air expert Oleg Panteleyev explains to the readers of the popular newspaper “Vzgliad” (View), that in his opinion the new American sanctions will “hit” the progress of the creation of the plane.
The article entitled “Russian method to defeat the United States proved to be correct”, published by the popular website LENTA.ru, doesn’t mention any “methods to defeat the United States”.
It just informs that according to the reports of the American Air Force Magazine, the collapse of the US strategic reconnaissance drone RQ-4 Global Hawk, which occurred in June 2017, was caused by malfunction of its navigation system. The Magazine states that the incident demonstrated the critical dependence of American military equipment on the information from their electronic infrastructure. LENTA.ru insists that this idea of critical dependence was previously stated in Russia.
Some of the articles though were based on real facts.
Message of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, published by TASS under the title “One hundred aircraft took to the air by order of the Russian Aerospace Force”, informs that:
“Russia holds the largest military exercises. About 100 aircraft from Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan take part in the training. These are the Su-27, MiG-29, MiG-31, Yak-130, Su-24, Su-34 fighter aircraft, Su-25 attack aircraft, Tu-22, Tu-160, Tu-95 fighter aircraft helicopters Ka-27, Mi-8 “
In addition “subdivisions of radio-technical and anti-aircraft missile forces, allocated to the unified air defense system of these countries, are involved in the exercises.”
The article adds: “Recall that the largest recent Russian exercise ‘Vostok-2018’ was held from September 11 to September 17 under the leadership of the Defence Minister Shoigu in the Far East and in the adjacent waters of the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, the largest in 16 years NATO exercises will be held from October 25 to November 7, and they are expected to be answered by new exercises in Russia.”
All these publications create the mood of the expectation of a war and hatred toward Americans. Most Russians are sure that Americans feel the same toward Russians.
Two days ago my friend, an immigrant from Russia who now is a film producer in Hollywood, got a call from Moscow from her colleague and a childhood friend.
Moscow friend requested of her: “I need American actors to act in my new Russian film. I know that it is very hard, but, please, try to find for me two American actors who don’t hate Russians and Russia.”
