Ukraine’s propaganda war: Good TV but bad for truth
DONETSK, Ukraine — Television images of riots, fires, gun battles and helicopters getting shot down by surface-to-air missiles suggest that Ukraine is under mob rule.
That is hardly the case, although law and order is absent in a few small pockets of the country and the central government in Kyiv has repeatedly proven that it does not have nearly the reach it needs to maintain stability.
Like so many insurrections today, the growing conflict in eastern Ukraine is a propaganda war. Kyiv and especially Moscow have reasons for painting the situation in the starkest terms possible.
The conflict has mostly been seen through the narrow prism of television lenses that cannot resist dramatic images of burning tires, water cannons, tear gas, street brawls and gangs’ storming of public buildings in at least 15 cities and towns. These are true enough, and terrifying evidence that the separatists can provoke havoc almost anywhere they want, but news reports have created a somewhat misleading impression about the general situation.
Odesa bears a close watch after that awful fire left 46 dead last Friday, but Kyiv has been quiet since the previous pro-Moscow regime was toppled in a wild shootout 10 weeks ago.
The east represents about one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory and is home to one-third of its population. Life is rather normal except around a handful of public buildings or in a few relatively small centres such as Slavyansk, where Ukrainian forces were once again involved in heavy fighting to oust several hundred well-organized, dug-in separatists who have evidently received plenty of support, direct or indirect, from Russia in terms of weaponry and perhaps even radar systems. The Russian invasion of Crimea, and what it is doing in eastern Ukraine, represents an ominous development for security in Ukraine, Europe and perhaps globally. But it sometimes does not feel like that on the ground. In the so-called People’s Republic of Donetsk, it is peaceful even within one or two blocks of where checkpoints have been thrown up or where Moscow-loving separatists have grabbed government buildings.
I had a fine sushi lunch in a packed restaurant on Sunday only 200 metres from the heavily fortified headquarters of the self-styled People’s Republic of Donetsk, where so many white-haired pensioners nostalgic for the Soviet Union had gathered that I thought for a moment I was at one of Preston Manning’s early Reform Party gatherings. These folks did not seem at all put off by the masked gunmen among them who have undoubtedly been recently involved in acts of extreme violence, but their presence in the city, where they mostly guard razor wire and piles of tires and busted-up furniture, often feels more like theatre.
Restaurants and shops of every kind have remained open in this city of one million. McDonald’s still offers a window where burgers and fries are available at any time of day or night. Hotels full of foreign journalists have not felt the need to add any additional security guards. Tellingly, the police, who have been savagely criticized for running away at the first sign of trouble, still brazenly rake in their usual bribes from motorists.