Pro-Kremlin Russian state TV pundits just pulled a pretty hilarious about-face when it comes to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the state-controlled network RT appeared on an evening show celebrating Putin’s attack on the country by requesting a bottle of champagne on-air. Simonyan called Ukrainian citizens “traitors” and issued veiled threats to anyone standing against Russia’s military while a majority of her on-air peers predicted Putin would be able to take the country in a matter of days.
Well, we’re a couple of weeks out and the power-hungry dictator’s land-grab has stalled after being met with some unexpectedly fierce opposition from Ukraine’s military forces while Putin’s most out-spoken rival, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has become something of an international icon. Even worse, countries like the United States and their NATO allies have started imposing major sanctions on Russia while companies like Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola shut down operations. All of this means that soon, the Russian people are going to be feeling the economic squeeze and that has Russian TV anchors and the experts they’ve been interviewing on-air very worried.
So worried, in fact, that a lot of them are now begging Putin to bring their soldiers back home.
On a recent taping of state TV show The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, the deputy dean of world politics at Moscow State University predicted the coming months will be worse for Russians than the Cold War.
“For our country, this period won’t be easy. It will be very difficult. It might be even more difficult than it was for the Soviet Union from 1945 until the 1960s,” Andrey Sidorov warned. Another state TV pundit Karen Shakhnazarov labeled the situation hopeless, saying ” I don’t see the probability of denazification of such an enormous country. We would need to bring in 1.5 million soldiers to control all of it. The most important thing in this scenario is to stop our military action.”
Shakhnazarov went on to blame the United States for the current crisis facing civilians, claiming that the U.S. was using the situation in Ukraine to punish Russia and cripple its economy.
“This threatens the change of public opinion in Russia, the destabilization of our power structures… with the possibility of a full destabilization of the country and a civil war,” she predicted when referencing all of the sanctions that have yet to go into effect. “This apocalyptic scenario is based on the script written by the Americans. They benefit through us dragging out the military operation. We need to end it somehow.”
Semyon Bagdasarov, a Russian Middle East expert, echoed those sentiments on Soloviev’s show claiming, “The world has never seen such massive sanctions. I’m not panicking, just calling things by their proper name. We need to be ready for total isolation.”
Still, Soloviev who has close ties with Putin is still trying to spin this war as America’s fault, saying reports of bombings on maternity hospitals are fake news and accusing the U.S. of starting the conflict. To lighten up the mood, and take the pressure off his old friend, Soloviev ended the program with — what else? — a clip of Fox News host Tucker Carlson predicting an easy Russian victory in Ukraine and “invincibility” when it comes to global sanctions. Soloviev ended the show by referring to Carlson’s enthusiasm, “He’s a lot more optimistic than my previous experts in the studio.”
(Via The Daily Beast)