In the suburbs of Moscow, a team of “Special Envoy” went to Marina, a tourist guide who speaks French. This Sunday evening, there is no question of missing the most followed weekly appointment of Russian television: Vesti nedeli (“The news of the week”). The presenter, Dmitry Kisselev, is close to the Kremlin. He launches a report in the Donbass, one of the “liberated regions“where Russia provides humanitarian aid whose”foreign media never speak“.
The show has been hammering the same message for weeks: Russian soldiers are in Ukraine to fight the Nazis. Nazis who “behave worse than animals“, denounces the presenter, while the Russian soldiers, them, “do not torture anyone and save civilians“. A speech that Marina made her own, despite the “pity“How she feels about Ukrainians:”We know that we cannot live next to a State which has become so hostile and so aggressive against the Russians… because they are Russians. It is Nazism that we see reborn.“
Maternity bombed in Mariupol: the Russian media shout at the staging
The journalist from “Special Envoy” shows him images that shocked the whole world: those of the maternity hospital in Mariupol, bombed on March 9th. Three people died, including a pregnant woman and the baby she was carrying. Here again, Marina adheres to the official version: it is a staging of the Ukrainians. “No woman was killed there”, she assures, taking as proof a report showing that “she gave birth and [qu’]she’s alive”.
In reality, it was another Ukrainian who looked a bit like her: a fashion blogger who was also pregnant and who survived the bombardment. The Russian media presented her as an extra who pretended to be dead. The other woman did indeed die with her baby… But for Marina, as for the majority of the Russian population, it’s impossible, since “Russian soldiers do not target civilians”.
Excerpt from “Russia: the war of words”, a report to see in “Special Envoy” on April 28, 2022.
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