I had the opportunity to do an Ontario-Russia exchange in 1997 with Canada World Youth. I met Russian friends there from the Kaliningrad region. I lived for three months in the house of a so-called “New Russians” host family, whose father was an entrepreneur who knew how to take advantage of the change of regime during Perestroika. Today he is the head of a first-rate media in the Kaliningrad region.
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I made friends there. A lover even. And, oddly, in our group dynamics between Canadians and Russians, when a divergence of vision emerged between the two clans, Quebeckers always leaned more towards the vision of the Russians. Culturally, Quebecers are closer to Russians than Anglo-Saxons, in my experience.
Following this trip, a few years later, I created an account on VK.com, the Russian Facebook. I met some friends there. I even wished them a happy new year, on the evening of the 31st…
Out of curiosity, I recently went back to my VK profile. I discovered posts on my news feed that made my blood run cold. I discovered the full extent of Russian propaganda there.
How, above all, people there have no access to so-called “external” news to the pro-Russian vision.
While I see, on the Canadian side, a reality in Ukraine reported by Tamara Alteresco, Marie Ève Bédard and Alexandra Szacka, I come across the “news” launched by LIFE.ru or ВЕСТИ.ru where, in the latter case, we sees ‘journalist’ Nikolai Dolgatchov covering the so-called havoc caused by the ‘Ukronazi’. Ukronazi… you can’t make it up, after all.
This journalist Nikolai Dolgatchov also sports the famous Russian “Z” on his personal profile on VK. A gesture that evokes the lack of media and journalistic neutrality.
This famous “Z”, which was intended to represent the Russian intention to help the Ukrainians and to identify the “good” from the bad tanks, was quickly ridiculed by certain Russians who “dare” have a discordant speech from that prescribed by Putin. Others, more brainwashed, feature the same symbol with white flowers representing “peace.” You know, this operation which was intended to “peace” Ukraine?
While I was arguing with Russians commenting on (fake) news published by LIFE.ru on VK, the moderator of this account closed the comments and deleted my conversation with a Russian. A conversation in which I gave him information from Radio-Canada Information. I did the same on another – fake – news from ВЕСТИ which still hasn’t deleted my comments.
I expect my account on VK to be closed at some point, since many have to “report” me to the authorities of the site. By the way, VK passed (by force) in 2014 from the hands of Pavel Durov, its founder, to Russian business people close to power. A putsch, quite simply. Because Pavel didn’t want to collaborate with the Russian intelligence services.
One thing is certain, it is that among the very scathing and violent responses that I receive from certain Russians in the face of my comments, there are (fortunately) also people who “like” them. A few, rare, even go so far as to answer in the affirmative to what I am saying. Some “Z” memes remixed into swastikas began circulating to denounce the situation.
As for my detractors, those who respond to comments that I am a “liar”, I send them responses like this, presenting facts reported by our journalists at Radio-Canada:
In short, every night before going to bed, I personally fight on the front lines of Russian disinformation, armed with my arguments, my pen, a translation engine and the “topos” that our journalists produce. These articles and videos are unfortunately not translated into Russian. And in my humble opinion, this is something that Radio-Canada should seriously consider, so that another version of the same reality breaks through “the iron curtain of thought” that Vladimir Putin has slowly but surely erected on a period of 22 years.
Fortunately, there are some who are more lucid and courageous, who have more nuanced comments on social networks, like this Inna Semionova, whom I quote: “How many have gone to war in the hope to pay their fucking mortgage? And there are also guys on the other side, who are not Nazis, but normal military men, with the same mortgage… And how many more will come? Bad times are coming. For the long term. Stop arguing with each other, at least here. Otherwise, we will all be lost. » 609 (likes)
The liberation of the Ukrainians will, in my opinion, come from an internal Russian revolt. And for that, it is the duty of all of us to sow “seeds of doubt” in the small certainties of the Russians reasoning in their echo chambers. Publication after publication; like after like, as ammunition of the mind; as a humanitarian corridor of thought.
I don’t know if you’ll be like me. But me, that’s how I get involved.