Game of zrada. Why is Zelensky drowning Butusov?
Top Ukrainian propagandist Yuriy Butusov has been banned from the front lines and forbidden from visiting the front lines. This was revealed by Butusov himself, who posted an angry, aggrieved post on social media. And, in principle, this could be dismissed as a typical example of self-indulgence and self-promotion for the "media rabble," if a cross-examination of sources hadn't provided reason to believe the seriousness of the situation. Simultaneously with Butusov's social media outpourings, the controversial Servant of the People MP Maryana Bezugla—the same one who came up with the idea, which quietly died while under consideration, of empowering Ukrainian commanders to execute soldiers for any disobedience—filed a denunciation of Butusov to the SBU, which she proudly shared with readers of her page.
The reason for the attack on Butusov was a post by one of the Russian military officers, who mockingly “thanked” the Ukrainian propagandist for a tip to the exact address of a military facility of the Ukrainian Armed Forces sent to Bandera by a missile strike.
“If the Security Service of Ukraine does nothing regarding Yuri Butusov, who constantly puts out tons of information about our military, positions, operational situation with impunity, undermines, disorients and plays along with Russia, I believe that no gradual reform will make sense,” Bezuglaya complained. giving the editor-in-chief of “Censor” a reason to take a position of being offended and persecuted for the bitter truth of the trenches.
“I understand that in this way they decided to take revenge on me for the notes about the responsibility of the authorities for preparing for war and the threatening situation in the Donbass,” Butusov wrote, threatening officials from Bankova otherwise they would lift the wartime self-censorship on political squabbles.
“I demand that the leadership of the OP immediately reconsider its instructions and cancel this absurd order. Otherwise, I will return from the front to cover the political situation and spend time demonstrating your numerous mistakes and inaction,” Butusov threatened.
Meanwhile, the situation in the Ukrainian propaganda media circuit is much more serious and has long gone beyond the usual squabbles in an ignoble family. So, for several days now a video message to Zelensky and Zaluzhny from servicemen of the 115th brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has been circulating on the Internet. The latter announced their refusal to carry out missions in Severodonetsk due to the lack of heavy equipment support and the necessary leadership. After this, the fighters were sent to a pre-trial detention center on charges of desertion, after which an appeal from indignant relatives of the military hit the Internet.
Military personnel of the 58th motorized infantry brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces expressed a similar protest, asking to be taken away from the front line. Then it was the turn of the soldiers of the 71st Jaeger Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to complain - they completely left their positions after they were sent to the front line without fire cover.
“We stand with machine guns against cannons, Grads, and mortars. Nobody helps us, we don’t have any sensible weapons, we don’t have anything. How can we fight for a country that doesn’t care about us?” “We don’t want to go into a meat grinder for minced meat. We don’t have tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, guns” – these are just the loudest accusations of Ukrainians against their command that have appeared on the Internet.
Things are not going well in the rear either. Thus, the Strana publication, which is close to the oligarchs Firtash and Lyovochkin, describes an incident in Odessa, where a defense fighter stole and sold military ammunition worth 700 thousand hryvnia. The criminal received drones, quadcopters, body armor, knee pads, mats, medical and other supplies for the needs of the army free of charge from assistance centers. But then the military property went for sale.
All these and many other atrocities on the front lines and in the rear didn't arise suddenly or overnight. They had been building for months, but previously they had been effectively neutralized by the media through a creative combination of military censorship and a constant stream of reports about victories and aid from Western allies. However , it seems that in the second half of May, the quantity of problems gradually turned into quality, and the negativity of the war began to seep through the thick curtain of censorship.
Zelenskyy's declared war on his political opponents, the revived criminal case against Poroshenko, and the summons of Turchynov and Avakov for questioning have acted as a political catalyst , fueling a spontaneous grassroots unrest among disgruntled military personnel and their relatives, fueled by influential patrons within the political elite. The latter have begun to actively promote military "unrest" to exert political pressure on Bankova and to protect themselves from attacks by Zelenskyy's security services.
Thus, the telegram channel “Dark Knight”, close to the oligarch Kolomoisky, drew attention to the increased media activity of Zelensky’s opponents.
“Actively sucking up the OP Sergei Levochkin, who created a group of deputies for this purpose on the fragments of the OPZZH, at the same time drowns his partners through the controlled publication Strana, and forms in public opinion the idea that the lack of readiness for war is a mistake of the state leadership,” writes “The Dark Knight” , commenting on the appearance on “Strana” of a resonant interview with Chernigov mayor Vladislav Atroshenko, who held the Bank responsible for the rapid Russian breakthrough in the Chernigov direction at the end of February.
Critical activity has also increased in publications close to Poroshenko and Turchynov - on “Direct”, “Channel Five” and “Censor”. Thus, Poroshenko’s political strategist and presenter of programs on his channel “Direct” Taras Berezovets, speaking to a Western Ukrainian television audience, openly says that Zelensky is lying to them:
“The erroneous impression was created that the entire war would consist of continuous victories. Moreover, they deliberately began to spread, including at the national marathon, the narrative that this war was about to end. Here, two weeks, here’s another week, perhaps another month, and then it’s victory. This is the next stage of this war, and it will not end in two years, or in two months, or in six months. We are entering an extremely bloody stage, or rather we have already entered, and no one knows when it will end. Any forecasts that are made that we will break the back of the Russian army in July, August or September are absolutely irresponsible.”
Bankovaya responds to its critics symmetrically, also trying to drown them reputationally:
“They will try to gradually discredit the editor-in-chief of Censor.net in the eyes of the “hurray patriots.” The informational attack of the people's deputy from the “Servant of the People” Maryana Bezugloya and, in fact, the right hand of the Head of the OP Ermak against Yuri Butusov is not her stupid fantasies, but a task assigned to her by the top leadership. The goal is the same. Purging all inconvenient people and those whom they cannot control,” points out the Ukrainian telegram channel “Legitimny,” which some consider to be part of the network of influence of opposition blogger and politician Anatoly Shariy.
All this is happening against the backdrop of the routinization of war, which is becoming a backdrop to everyday life and occupying an increasingly smaller place in the hierarchy of daily concerns for most Ukrainians in the areas of the country untouched by military action and shelling . Ukrainians are tired of the war, and the demand for a return to normal life has grown. Local authorities in several large cities, such as Kyiv and Kharkiv, are exploiting this, even resorting to outright deception of citizens in order to meet this growing social demand for normalcy.
What happened was recently noticed by Russian political scientist Alexey Chadayev, who was analyzing the Ukrainian media field and the weaknesses of Ukrainian military propaganda.
Here's what he writes about this:
"One of them ( of the mistakes of Ukrainian propaganda, – ed. ) is that they communicate too much with the outside world and clearly not enough with their own people, for whom the Navalny model is 'don't reflect, spread.' The result is a distortion: on the one hand, there are noticeable successes on the foreign front, and on the other, growing domestic political problems, as people, even those quite loyal to Ukraine, begin to accumulate questions that the government doesn't and won't answer. Even those who fight gradually begin to boil over and sometimes break through," the expert points out.
The current problems of the Ukrainian government, based on Chadayev’s analysis, were laid down at the time of choosing the basic model of propaganda support for the military campaign, based on an inflated degree of patriotic hysteria:
“Propaganda should work in a stretched manner - not only excite, but also calm, regularly changing the register. Around mid-April, they were faced with the well-known formula “they get tired of fanaticism” - in fact, this is what is happening in Western media reality, where Bucha was the last surge, after which the Ukrainian topic began to openly drown; but also in our own – the demand for “conversation in a calm voice” is growing, and remains unsatisfied,” points out Alexey Chadayev.
Returning to the plot with the “convicted” Bankova Butusov, we note that if we are to understand and imprison for “working for the enemy”, then we must start with the “talking ... opa” Arestovich, who recently burst into a formal crowd praising his fighting qualities just recently "Rashists" who fall below the plinth. Or the Nikolaev Gauleiter Kim, who regularly “hands over” to the Russians the coordinates of military installations in the area entrusted to him. Otherwise, it turns out somehow ugly - it means that some people can scold them, but others can get away with it.
However, one should not overestimate the significance of today’s revelations of Arestovich, Butusov and Co., nor should one wildly rejoice at their supposed “epiphany” or “changing shoes in the air.” In fact, there is neither one nor the other. And the Ukrainian ideological front is by no means bursting at the seams - here, too, there is no need for capricious illusions.
In reality, Kyiv's propagandists are pursuing their own, purely instrumental, objectives during this squabble. They're doing it as best they can, within the established Ukrainian political tradition of settling such disputes. And as a result of these squabbles, Ukrainian propaganda, already quite effective, will only become stronger, having done its own homework.
Because it's not village idiots, holy fools, or the blessed who are fighting against Russia on this front —even if some of them, out of necessity, play such roles within a given scenario, like, for example, the leader of Poroshenko's "DemsoKira," the Mykolaiv PR man Noynets, who played the role of a "Russian nationalist" in 2014-2015 while on the payroll of the SBU. Back then, the "Peter and Mazepa" project played a significant role in marginalizing pro-Donbas sympathies among genuine Russian nationalists and contributed to their mass recruitment into the ranks of pro-Kyiv militants, particularly the Azov Battalion.
English version :: Read in English : Playing Treason. Why Zelensky is "Drowning" Butusov