Putin’s pet journalist is banned in new EU sanctions
mainWe hear that the Russian journalist named in the new list of the west’s unwanted is Dmitry Kiselev, head of the Russia Today media group, mouthpiece for Vladimir Putin. Earlier this week Kiselev said on Russian television that Russia was ‘the world’s only country that is ready to turn the USA into radioactive ash’.
Dimitriy Kiselyov has a love affair with fire, bordering on pyromania, but he is not alone. When the popular Russian actor Ivan Okhlobystin said LGBT Russians should be “burned alive in ovens” the crowd cheered, and when Kiselyov was a talk show television host, he said organs of gay donors “should be buried or burned in the ground”, the audience cheered at length http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1cLcyams1g.
The fact that he was thereafter promoted on the spot by Putin to be CEO of the new Russian state news network was clearly in part at least, a reward for “upholding ‘moral’ values of Russia”. Putin himself has said he wants to “cleanse Russia of homosexuality”, and has told us to “keep away from the children”.
Russian rhetoric seems to go in for burning gays alive, and now Americans too. How long before rhetoric becomes intent?
I somewhat related news, conductor Dalia Stasevska published a public letter in response to the statement by the Russian Ministry of Culture that was signed by 511 artists, including Valery Gergiev and Denis Matsuev. Stasevska was born in 1984 in Kiev to a Ukrainian father and a Finnish mother. She’s grown up and studied in Finland. See
http://www.artistssupportukraine.com/messages/2014/3/20/open-letter-from-dalia-stasevska-violinist-and-conductor
Stasevska may have burned a few bridges of practical significance with her letter. Gergiev is the artistic director of the Mikkeli festival in Finland, among other things. The tickets to this summer’s concerts are on sale and apparently they have been selling well.
Very instructive brief by the UK government on Gov.Uk about the situation with Russia in Crimea. The UK position, as well as the German, appears to be hardening.
“UK government’s response to points made by President Putin in his address to the Russian Parliament on 17 March.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/in-response-to-president-putins-address-to-the-russian-parliament
For an alternative analysis, one might also read former US Ambassador Jack Matlock’s Op-Ed assessment in Time magazine at: http://time.com/author/jack-matlock/. As for the German position, Merkel may be falling in line, but a better take on the attitude of the German people might be found in the position articulated by former Chancellor Schmidt. (See for example: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ex-german-chancellor-warns-of-overreaction-to-ukraine-2014-03-28)
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