The photos Putin doesn’t want Russians to see – VG

The version that the war in Ukraine serves for the Russians is very different from the one that you and I see. It is no accident.

– No no. No such pictures appear on public channels in Russia, says Natalia Moen-Larsen, a researcher at Nubian, about photos from the war in Ukraine showing dead Russian soldiers.

The column of Russian tanks reached Bucha, located next to the Hostomel airfield, about 20 km northwest of central Kyiv, but no further. He was stopped by heavy artillery from the Ukrainian forces on Sunday.

The pictures show what it looks like to destroy tanks. It also shows the dead Russian soldiers:

Pictures like these, showing the massive resistance that the Russian invasion is said to have faced in Ukraine, have been met with censorship at home in Russia.

– They cannot admit to the Russian people that things are going well for the Russian forces. Russia should emerge as the strong party, says Moen Larsen, who researches Russian media, among other things.

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It is important to remain hidden

No pictures show how Russia is Missiles fired at Ukrainian cities, as in the video from Kharkiv below, appears in the Russian state-controlled media. And the explanation for this, according to the researcher, is that the war that is in fact a war will not be supported by the Russian people.

– It is important for President Vladimir Putin to hide this, because a war of aggression where Russian forces strike Ukrainian civilians is not a war the Russians want to support, says Moen Larsen, published in an article in TV2 Today he writes that “the reality of war does not stand up to the light of day in Russia.”

She explained that most Russians consider the Ukrainians a brotherly people with whom they do not want to go to war. But she believes that if this is seen as an “editing process”, then it is something completely different:

If the Russians got all the factual information, they would be very dissatisfied, says Moen Larsen, and adds:

– But I do not think that they will have this information, because there are fewer and fewer independent sources.

The US State Department issued a press release on Thursday evening, saying: The media is stifled in Russia.

The photo gallery below shows Russian armored vehicles destroyed in Kharkiv, an example of photos that Putin does not want Russians to see:

Two channels have been taken off

The version given to the Russians is of bombed-out homes in eastern Ukraine, from the part that Russia-backed separatist forces actually controlled before the invasion, and things like ordinary Ukrainians making Molotov cocktails to fight the Russians.

– They explain it and say that it is an example of how the Ukrainian army uses human shields, the researcher explains.

Russia has taken measures to prevent the flow of information to its citizens about what is happening on the ground in Ukraine. Most of the media in Russia is under government control, and after the start of the war everyone was required to report only on the situation as presented by Russian government sources. They are not allowed to use other independent sources.

According to Moen-Larsen, most Russians get their information from television. State channels transmit highly selective information to the population. At the same time, many of the few alternative media outlets that exist that actually show images that Putin does not want Russians to see, have either already been isolated or have been threatened.

Two were lifted from the air on Tuesday, and they can now only be found on YouTube. It limits the number of viewers they have too. Perhaps only 100,000 in a country of 140 million people. A small percentage of Russians have access to alternative media, says Moen-Larsen, and there are fewer and fewer.

cheating by numbers

Thus, there is another story that most Russians tell. In that story, the war was not called “war.”

– Anyway, it was so until yesterday (Tuesday newspaper. But it is reasonable to assume that there is still limited information reaching the population, says the researcher at Nupi.

Another thing they don’t talk about is the number of Russian soldiers who lost their lives in the invasion. Ukraine’s Defense Command claimed on Wednesday that it has so far killed more than 7,000 Russian soldiers.

On Wednesday afternoon, for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia publicly announced the number of people it believed had been killed. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that 498 Russian soldiers were killed in Ukraine, in addition to the injury of 1,597 soldiers.

There is a great deal of uncertainty about actual death rates.

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They also say that they should have Downed 30 fighter planes 31 helicopters, 211 Russian tanks and 862 armored vehicles were neutralized, as well as 85 artillery systems and nine air defense systems. Russia also allegedly lost nine tankers and 355 other vehicles, as well as 40 MLRS missile launchers.

The information has not been independently confirmed, but the British Ministry of Defense also believes that the Russian invasion force may have incurred relatively large losses in Ukraine, according to BBC.

Natalia Moen-Larsen states that in war in general one cannot rely entirely on the characters who come from either side. They are often done better than they are to keep morale.

Reduce the number of losses on both sides and increase the number of victories. And on top of that we have the Russian propaganda machine.