UKR-TAZ

While the source of this analysis, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, could be expected to be somewhat critical of Russia, the critique offered in “The World Through the Eyes of Russian State Television” is supported by several lengthy video segments from Russian state controlled news Channel 1.

As can be seen there, the news provided on Channel 1 is wildly at variance — frighteningly so — with what the rest of the world sees and knows about Ukraine. Either one state-controlled media industry (and a handful of western outlets) is correct and everyone else is in the dark, or there is a great deal of consent being manufactured here (as Noam Chomsky would likely say, if he lived there).

That does not mean there are no alternative views available in Russia. The Calvert Journal‘s Media Compass provides a useful overview of Russian media, mapped out along two axes: state-controlled to independent, and highbrow to lowbrow. As can be seen, there are independent and critical voices in the Russian print and television media. But on topics like Ukraine, these are difficult to find outside the internet and the major metropolitan centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and even there, they have had a hard time being aired and heard.

Meanwhile, rumors about an impending Russian invasion continue to circulate, as pro-Russian groups have attempted — and succeeded most recently — to take over administrative buildings in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Strategic scenarios for such an invasion are widely discussed and evaluated.