{"id":273,"date":"2024-06-15T14:59:09","date_gmt":"2024-06-15T11:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/?p=273"},"modified":"2024-07-16T15:05:41","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T12:05:41","slug":"the-minister-of-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/new-nobility\/the-minister-of-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Minister of Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia\u2019s new defense minister, Andrei Belousov, started his tenure with a bold statement: \u201cI have always been guided by the principle, the reinforced concrete principle: you can make mistakes, you can\u2019t lie,\u201d he told Russian senators on May 14<\/a>, from the stand of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The line \u201cyou can make mistakes, you can\u2019t lie\u201d was immediately picked by the pro-Kremlin media and telegram channels\u201a which were swiftly filled<\/a> with photos of Russian soldiers posing with handmade posters repeating Belousov\u2019s words. The military flash mob was presented to the Russian public as proof that the army takes Belousov seriously, and likewise his new approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The message was clear and mainstream media soon began to echo the point \u2014 Belousov is an honest and uncorrupt official.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But is he? The public image would be credible but for the fact that Belausov, 65, who spent his entire career in academia and the government, once had a villa in the Italian seaside resort town of Forte dei Marmi in northern Tuscany, until he got rid of it in 2018. It also emerged that while publicly deeply religious, he had several mistresses with whom he communicated via email, according to a leaked archive<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first test of Belousov\u2019s new brush approach in the military came less than a month after his appointment, when on June 8 a Ukrainian drone attack destroyed<\/a> a Su-57 and damaged another The stealth aircraft are fifth-generation combat aircraft deigned to match the US-made F35. Subsequent satellite photos appeared to confirm the damage at the airfield of Akhtubinsk, in the Astrakhan region.\u202fThe official reaction of the Russian Ministry of Defense was limited to a statement on its Telegram channel that \u201cthree UAVs were destroyed over the territory of the Astrakhan region.\u201d Su-57 aircraft were not mentioned.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russians seeking news of the attack might have listened to Ukrainian military intelligence, but if they found that untrustworthy, then details were also given on the Russian pro-war telegram channel Fighterbomber, which is close to the Russian air force. Quite remarkably, this post was not reposted or discussed by other pro-war channels, or voenkor <\/em>war correspondents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What should the ordinary Russian conclude? It\u2019s reasonable to believe that Belousov\u2019s distaste for lies is more nuanced than it appears. The Defense Minister was not embracing a new and very unPutinlike affection for the truth; he was merely seeking to improve the military\u2019s public image.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three days after the disaster in the Astrakhan region, Belousov convened a meeting with the\u00a0voenkors<\/em>\u00a0(Russian correspondents embedded with the army) and bloggers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This too was presented as a breath of fresh air as Belousov flung open the Defense Ministry\u2019s doors to engage with a wider audience. His predecessor, Sergey Shoigu, had never done this, which was one reason why he was seen as a haughty and distant minister. Instead, it was Putin who met the with voenkors<\/em> in 2022 and 2023, quite likely as a way to access accurate information about the military withheld by his officials.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Belousov meeting took place behind closed doors, though a photo of the self-described journalists listening to the minister was published by the ministry.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently, the dozen-plus invitees were happy with the meeting, and duly reported on their Telegram channels that the conversation had been very open and that they had spoken with Belousov on the issues that usually were discussed only on Telegram channels, without any restrictions or taboos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notably, Fighterbomber was not invited, probably because of the angry comments published a day after the Su-57 attack. \u201cMy personal concern is whether the full scale of yesterday\u2019s f*** up . . . was brought to the attention of top officials . . . If it was, then today the meme phrase \u2018You can make mistakes, you can\u2019t lie\u2019 has gone to hell.\u201d   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russian war bloggers did not specify what was discussed with Belousov. The pro-war zealots simply claimed the new minister had promised decisions would be made based on what they had said, and seemed very proud of this.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They shouldn\u2019t be. The new minister is a man of the machine. He does not have an abundance of charisma and is unlikely to solve Russia\u2019s underlying problems; instead, he is a servant of the dictator in the Kremlin. His aim is simply to adjust the dials of repression introduced by his predecessor and the FSB to control dissenting voices within the military.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voenkors<\/em> and bloggers enjoyed relative freedom of reporting about problems within the military until the spring of 2023 when Wagner\u2019s mercenaries stormed Bakhmut and Evgeny Prigozhin exploded onto social media channels with growling denunciations of the army\u2019s manifold failures. But by the summer of 2023, following Prigozhin\u2019s cackhanded coup attempt<\/a>, those voices were stilled. Instead, the voenkors<\/em> began to sing the praises of the Russian army, smear the Ukrainian military and President Zelenskyy, and became very careful in mentioning logistical problems and high casualties.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most military bloggers followed suit, with very few exceptions. Igor Strelkov, once the most popular critical voice within the military, was thrown into prison\u202fin July 2023, providing a warning to anyone thinking of contradicting the ministry\u2019s line. Recent purges<\/a> in the upper echelons of the military have merely underlined the point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new minister has not offered the bloggers their old freedom of expression, but he has allowed them to become his private line of communication for military problems (so bypassing the military hierarchy.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, the minister has successfully made them his own \u2014 they will now be his eyes and ears in the military. Better yet, for the Defense Ministry hierarchy, their meetings will henceforth be with him and not Putin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belousov has made sure that the uncomfortable truths of wartime Russia will remain within his ministry walls, unavailable to the Russian people and \u2014 even more importantly \u2014 to the ruler in the Kremlin.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the minister said, mistakes will be made, and the truth must be told. Then it can be silenced, and smothered.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published in CEPA<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agentura.ru 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a very significant gap between the public image of Russia\u2019s new defense minister Andrei Belousov and the reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-nobility"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agentura.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}