The lies of Vladimir Putin and the russian nomenklatura

In one of our articles, we already examined that Russia is governed by the nomenklatura (which shares the ideology of statism). Vladimir Putin is a rather striking representative of it, but it is a brilliance in greyness. As is well known, Leon Trotsky once called Joseph Stalin “the most eminent mediocrity of our party”¹, and this precise description fits well any apparatchik who has reached the pinnacle of power through sophistication in intrigue. Due to their mediocrity, the statists are forced to maintain power through the force of the whip and propaganda, the foundation of the latter being constant lies. Let us turn to specific examples.

Perhaps the most memorable case is the lie about changing the retirement age. In 2005, Putin said the following: “I am against increasing the retirement age. And as long as I am President, such a decision will not be made. In general, I believe that we have no need to increase the retirement age. We need to stimulate people who believe that after reaching retirement age, they can continue their labor activity based on their state of health. It is possible to stimulate and create economic conditions that make continuing to work attractive, but without infringing on their pension rights. And I repeat once again, I am against increasing the retirement age for both men and women”². Ultimately, in 2019, during Putin’s presidency, the retirement age began to rise to 60 for women and 65 for men³.

The next striking instance of a lie is Putin’s words in that same year of 2005: “Stability in the country, in society, cannot be ensured in any other way than through the stability of legislation and the country’s fundamental law – the Constitution. Therefore, I do not intend to change the Constitution under any circumstances“⁴. Naturally, in 2020, during the presidency of the same Putin, a change to the Constitution of the Russian Federation took place⁵.

In 2014, Putin made a statement that went down in history as “We aren’t there”. According to Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, in response to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s demand to get out of Ukraine, Putin replied: “Unfortunately, this is impossible to do because we are not there”⁶. The same was stated by Russia’s Ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov⁷. However, soon after, Putin himself admitted not only the presence of Russian troops on the peninsula at the time of the Crimean events but even that they “ensured the holding of independent free elections” there⁸. This was despite the fact that as recently as 2013, commenting on the situation in Crimea, he had stated: “this does not mean at all that we are going to rattle our sabres and send in troops. This is complete nonsense, nothing of the sort exists and it cannot be“⁹.

In 2022, during the events in Ukraine, Putin stated the following: “I emphasize that conscript soldiers are not and will not be involved in the hostilities. There will be no additional call-up of reservists from the reserve. The assigned tasks are solved only by professional military personnel”¹⁰. This was on March 8. It should come as no surprise that as early as March 9, his words were refuted by the Ministry of Defense, which stated that “a number of servicemen, including conscripts”, had been captured¹¹. At the same time, shortly before this, when Putin was asked whether the deployment of Russian troops into Ukraine should be feared, he replied: “Look, there were talks about a possible entry of Russian troops into Ukraine at the beginning of the year – we were conducting the Zapad-2021 exercises – but, as we can see, this did not happen… Perhaps someone is intentionally leaking this to make a profit, and then it will rise again”¹². This was at a time when a huge number of people from his team were lying that there would be no military action, but more on that later. For now, we note that in September 2022, Putin signed a decree declaring mobilization¹³.

Let us once again mix foreign policy lies with domestic ones. In 2012, Putin stated that the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was not tortured before his death: “No one tortured him, he died of a heart attack”¹⁴. However, there is an entire report titled “The Torture and Murder of Sergei Magnitsky. The Cover-up by State Authorities”¹⁵. Photographs of Magnitsky’s hands and feet taken at the morgue clearly showed traces of abuse.

Separate mention should be made of Putin’s numerous promises, which earned him one of his less offensive nicknames — “Obeshchalkin” (The Promiser) — and led to the opposition mocking his statements in the style of “promising to promise”. The so-called “Strategy 2020” declared a goal of increasing real disposable incomes by 64–72% by the end of 2020 compared to 2012 (instead, from 2012 to the third quarter of 2019, real disposable incomes of Russians decreased by approximately 5%), reducing the level of absolute poverty from 13.4% in 2007 to 6–7% (by the end of the second quarter of 2019, Rosstat recorded an increase in the number of poor to 12.7%, while the criteria for defining poverty were changed to lower the percentage¹⁶), increasing the middle class to more than half of the population (in 2020, only 10.3 million people, or 7% nationwide, fully met all middle-class criteria)¹⁷, and so on.

In 2006, Putin stated that in 2008 he would go into opposition and criticize the government. When asked what he would do after 2008, he replied as follows: “I’ll form an opposition party! I’ll sit and criticize the authorities for negligence, corruption, and poor treatment of people”¹⁸. As of 2022, Putin still holds the post of President of Russia.

In Oliver Stone’s film “The Putin Interviews”, the Russian dictator gave free rein to his imagination. He claimed that “we have stopped the schemes under which the oligarchy was created” (despite the fact that in the Forbes list of billionaires in 2000 there were no Russians, while in 2017 there were already 96 billionaires in Russia, many of whom were Putin’s friends), that Odysseus’s route for the Golden Fleece passed through Sochi (even though this is not true, and Odysseus did not sail for the Fleece at all), that Viktor Yanukovych did not flee Kiev during the Revolution of Dignity but went to a domestic political event (while not forgetting to take suitcases of money and valuables, as well as several vans of personal belongings)¹⁹, and so on.

During the “Network case” (Delo Seti), Putin told the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights: “You said that the charges were formulated and identified only against FSB officers, but FSB officers do not work in these buses, you see? They are not there physically”²⁰. Meanwhile, the employees of the St. Petersburg UFSB themselves did not deny at all that they “work in buses” and used a stun gun during the course of this work²¹.

These are by no means all the instances of Putin’s lies, as they are colossally numerous and we cannot describe them all within a single article; however, everything described above already shows that Boris Nemtsov was not far from the truth when he stated that Putin is a “pathological liar”²². Another Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, shares this view: “let’s not forget that we are dealing with a clearly mentally unhealthy person — Putin. A pathological liar with delusions of grandeur and persecution”²³. In fact, not a single word of Putin’s can be believed (every one must be verified); he is a person who has completely compromised himself, repeatedly caught red-handed in direct and crude lies and misrepresentation.

Lies of Putin’s inner circle

Vladimir Putin has also made an effort to surround himself with equally blatant liars, and against the backdrop of some of them, he might even appear to be a sane individual. For instance, one such person, who has become practically a pariah in decent society, is Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whom some foreign media outlets have already dubbed “Mr. Lie”²⁴. For example, on January 21, 2022, he stated: “You claim that we are going to attack Ukraine, although we have explained many times that this is not the case”²⁵. What happened on February 24, 2022, requires no further clarification.

In 2016, Lavrov claimed: “The Budapest Memorandum contains only one single legal obligation for Russia, the US, and the UK, which is that no nuclear weapons will be used against Ukraine, which had divested itself of nuclear weapons. This is the only legal obligation of 1994 enshrined in the Budapest Memorandum”²⁶. Later, when the document was made public, it turned out that it contained other obligations as well, for instance, that “The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm to Ukraine their commitment, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the CSCE, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine”²⁷²⁸.

As recently as May 2022, Lavrov stated: “Our goals do not include regime change in Ukraine. That is an American specialty. They do it all over the world”²⁹. However, by July, Putin’s minister was singing a different tune: “We will certainly help the Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical”³⁰.

It reaches the point of absolute absurdity — in 2022, Lavrov stated: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood”. He was, of course, not just possibly wrong, but flatly wrong — there is no evidence for this³¹, but such statements are utterly provocative, blatantly ignorant, and disseminating them in public is a disgrace for a public figure. Nevertheless, this statement is entirely consistent with the logic of lies used by representatives of the Russian authorities — “they are killing themselves”, “they are bombing themselves”, and so on. Here, the blame is shifted from the perpetrators to the victims, a practice of lying that Russian right-wing propagandists and politicians mastered long ago and with great success.

Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov is not far behind. For example, on April 4, 2016, Peskov stated that his wife “does not and never had offshore companies”³². At the same time, he refused to answer journalists’ questions about exactly when he registered his marriage to Tatiana Navka, calling it a personal matter. However, documents contained in the published archives of the Panamanian offshore registrar Mossack Fonseca include a copy of Peskov’s wife Tatiana Navka’s passport and a document for the registration of an offshore company³³.

In August 2015, in response to a question about where he got a wristwatch worth 37 million rubles, Peskov stated it was a wedding gift from his wife, which she bought with her own money, “and what kind [of money] is nobody’s business”³⁴. Peskov’s constant refusal to answer questions that would be simple for an honest person clearly illustrates the level of “transparency” regarding the income of the Kremlin nomenklatura. However, the point here is not about the income, but that he was caught red-handed in a lie — a photo on his daughter’s Instagram account showed him wearing this very watch before the wedding³⁵.

In December 2021, the Kremlin press secretary stated that “Russia has never in its history attacked anyone”³⁶. Many other members of the nomenklatura claimed the same³⁷. However, Russia and the USSR, of which it declared itself the successor, attacked at least Finland in 1939, Georgia in 2008, and sent troops into Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan. Doctor of Historical Sciences Andrey Zubov confirms that Russia attacked other countries both of its own accord and as part of coalitions from which it could have withdrawn — for example, during the Crimean War of 1853-1856³⁸. If one examines the ways in which Russia acquired its current dimensions, one can clearly see Peskov’s lie. Despite all this, in January 2018, Peskov did not hesitate to state that he never tells an untruth³⁹.

And these are just a few examples of those spreading fabrications. The government of the statists effectively represents Russia’s “national team of lying”, and it would be the favorite for the world championship and the permanent European champion in all age categories. Yet, Vladimir Putin assures his listeners that “a real empire of lies has been created inside the US”⁴⁰.

Lies of pro-Kremlin media

The Russian authoritarian government has been spreading fabrications since time immemorial. Astolphe de Custine wrote about this in his book Russia in 1839: “The Russians still believe in the efficacy of lies; and I am surprised at this error in people who have had recourse to it so many times”; “In Petersburg, to lie is to perform a duty as a citizen; to speak the truth, even about objects apparently the most indifferent, is to be a conspirator”; “History forms a part of the crown property in Russia; it is the moral property of the sovereign, just as the people and the land are his material property; it is kept in the palace cellars with the treasures of the imperial dynasty, and only so much of it is shown as is deemed necessary”⁴¹.

Former deputy chief of foreign intelligence in Romania, Ion Mihai Pacepa, in his book Disinformation, described how the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov (who later became the leader of the state), explained to him the effectiveness and necessity of spreading disinformation⁴². The scale of the fabrications spread by the Russian government and the media it controls has reached such proportions that the European Union was forced to create the East StratCom Task Force to counter them, which maintains a disinformation database on the EUvsDisinfo website⁴³ (as of November 2022, this database contains nearly 15,000 recorded examples of disinformation). While it is difficult to calculate specific percentages, it can be confidently said that a very significant portion of the information about politics and history available in the Russian language is disinformation.

The fakes produced by Russian media are so classic that they could form a “hit parade”. One of the most famous fakes in such a list would, of course, be the legendary story about the “crucified boy”, shown in 2014 on Channel One⁴⁴. In this report, a certain Galina Pyshnyak, presenting herself as a refugee from Sloviansk, told how soldiers drove women to the city’s central square and, in front of their eyes, crucified a little boy on a notice board. The child’s mother was forced to watch the execution. He died for an hour and a half. And when he died, the mother was tied to a tank and dragged through the city streets until she died as well. However, journalists who attempted to find confirmation of this could find no evidence; local residents had heard nothing of such a story. Furthermore, the woman on camera says that the residents were rounded up at the central Lenin Square, but no such square existed in Sloviansk⁴⁵. Galina Pyshnyak herself turned out to be Galina Ostapenko, the wife of a DNR militant, who had actively called for violence against “Banderovites” on her social media page, campaigned against the Ukrainian government, and disseminated Russian media news about the “junta’s” atrocities⁴⁶.

In 2016, a major controversy erupted in Germany surrounding the so-called “Lisa case”, when a 13-year-old girl named Lisa from a family of Russian-German immigrants went missing and failed to return home, later telling her parents she had been raped. As the police later discovered, this turned out to be untrue — cell phone location data showed that on the night of the “abduction”, the girl was hiding from her parents at a friend’s house (“due to problems at school”)⁴⁷. Additionally, during the investigation, a 24-year-old German citizen of Turkish origin was accused of sexual acts with her. It was established that the sexual contact occurred by mutual consent; however, the defendant was found guilty because Lisa was one year younger than the age of consent in Germany⁴⁸. Russian media immediately began churning out news about the “rape of a Russian girl by refugees”⁴⁹, whose number was cited as anywhere from three to seven, and the time of disappearance from 30 hours to 3 days⁵⁰. “Vesti” reported that the girl had been shoved into a car and raped for 30 hours by Arabs, and then, half-dead, thrown out in one of Berlin’s districts⁵¹. According to the “NTV” television channel, there were five or seven of them, and they spat on her while she sobbed⁵². Following this, Germany accused Russia of political propaganda⁵³ and inciting ethnic hatred.

Similar fake news appears en masse on Russian channels. For instance, in 2018, Channel One aired an interview with a “Euromaidan participant, Kirill Chubenko” (in this case, they even invented a very evocative surname), where he claimed that due to the revolution, the country now has no electricity⁵⁴. Russian blogger Ilya Varlamov reported that after this segment aired, he received an email stating that the so-called “Kirill Chubenko” was actually Vitaly Yurchenko, a resident of Minsk⁵⁵. Searches on social media and correspondence with Yurchenko’s friends confirmed these suspicions, as well as the fact that the man resides in Minsk, not Ukraine.

Another example: in 2022, Russian media began circulating information that the Spanish minister from the left-wing “Podemos” party, Irene Montero, “stated that children have the right to have sex with adult perverts” (Pyaty Kanal⁵⁶), “openly advocated for pedophilia” (Tsargrad⁵⁷), and so on. In reality, Montero stated the exact opposite: “All boys, girls, and non-binary children in this country have the right to know their own bodies, to know that no adult can touch their body, and to know that if they do not want it, it is a form of violence”⁵⁸; furthermore, she was referring to adolescents aged 16–17 (in Russia, 16 is the age of sexual consent).

In December 2022, State Duma deputies, Dmitry Peskov, and Russian media reported that Vladimir Putin “was in the zone of the special military operation”; however, as the outlet “Agentstvo” later proved, he was in Rostov, which was not a combat zone at that time⁵⁹.

Around the same time, Russian media and the Ministry of Defense claimed that Sergei Shoigu “visited the forward positions of the Russian army in the zone of the special military operation”⁶⁰. However, it turned out that the trenches Shoigu flew over are located in Crimea near the settlement of Armyansk, which is approximately 80 kilometers away from the frontline⁶¹.

Another example of how news is manufactured on Russian television was provided in December 2022: the video below shows a chat between Ural 1 TV producer Ekaterina A. (who also identifies as a creative producer for “Moskva 24” on social media) and a native of Chelyabinsk currently living in Germany. The journalist asks the man to help prepare a story about Germans who are “moving to Kaliningrad to spend the winter”. What was the “protagonist” supposed to say? He was expected to state that “it is indeed very cold now, and heating is very unprofitable across Europe”, and then record a couple of videos of himself sitting in warm socks, touching a radiator, and complaining about high prices. Ultimately, the man told the producer that he would not participate in “shameful and rotten Russian propaganda”. Following this, the journalist hastily deleted her messages and blocked the contact.

Russian TV channels like “Rossiya 24” show fake quotes attributed to Zbigniew Brzezinski. The phrase about the “need for wars, famine, and epidemics throughout the world” exists only in the imagination of Russian propagandists; its primary source cannot be found in the Library of Congress, which includes transcripts of Brzezinski’s public speeches, letters, and interviews, nor in English versions in search engines⁶². However, Brzezinski is also credited with other quotes fabricated in Russia.

This is only a small part of the avalanche of false information generated by the Russian media. At the same time, a significant part of the disinformation does not include such direct and crude lies, but consists of manipulations, such as Russia Today’s statement that the Budapest Memorandum “is of a recommendatory nature and was not ratified by any of the countries that signed it”⁶³, while, as reported by The Insider, it was indeed not ratified by any of the signing parties, but simply because it did not require ratification⁶⁴. Its text states: “This Memorandum will become applicable upon signature”⁶⁵. We are not even touching upon channels like Ren-TV, which churn out stories about reptilian conspiracies, UFOs from a printer, how, having gained enough nerve, Sergey Glushko visits gnomes, and so forth. The goal of these streams of disinformation appears to be the total “debilization” (brainwashing) of the Russian population, turning citizens into “vegetables” who cannot distinguish lies from the truth, who are completely disoriented informationally and live in a fake, invented reality.

Naturally, viewers of this information pass it on to others orally, and thus they get the impression that it is correct information because it was reported by a person they trust. In this way, lies are spread and established in the public consciousness as correct information.

Summary

Vladimir Putin, his inner circle, the Russian nomenclature, and the media they control are mass distributors of disinformation and fabrications. For this reason, every statement made by them requires the most thorough double-checking. This is a humiliation of the country’s citizens, a mockery of their dignity.

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