New York Times Editors Lie, Obfuscate Facts, To Reinforce Their False Russia Narrative

Moon of Alabama

Navalny in the prisoner's dock. The New York Times and the rest of the Western oligarchs' disinformation machine is using 'Navalny the Martyr' to prepare their own home publics for more extreme measures against Russia, including war.  (NYT photo)

It is amusing to what extent the editors of the New York Times resort to lying in their attempts to portray the incarceration of the right wing racist Alexei Navalny as the best thing that happened since the invention of sliced bread.

Today's editorial is as delusional as it can get.

Aleksei Navalny Is Resisting Putin, and Winning
The opposition leader was sentenced to prison, but he has mobilized a vast movement that’s not done growing.

Beyond being delusional the editorial is full of lies and disinformation:

A Russian court on Tuesday opened a new and fateful stage in the gripping power struggle between Aleksei Navalny, Russia’s tough-talking and internet-savvy opposition leader, and President Vladimir Putin, by sentencing Mr. Navalny to his first serious stint in prison.

On the face of it, this would appear to be a clear victory for Mr. Putin, who has effectively proclaimed himself president for life.
...
But in this David v. Goliath saga, the 44-year-old Mr. Navalny has succeeded through raw courage and perseverance in putting Mr. Putin on the defensive. The imprisonment was Mr. Navalny’s move. Mr. Putin had tried for years to give him only brief sentences to avoid making him a martyr.
...
The Kremlin attempted to give the court proceedings a veneer of legitimacy by moving them to a large courtroom in central Moscow and allowing Mr. Navalny to do all the talking he wanted to. But the outcome was preordained: Mr. Navalny was accused of violating parole from a 2014 conviction that the European Court of Human Rights had debunked as “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable.” The accusation served to underscore the main reason Mr. Navalny couldn’t make the requisite visits to the authorities: Evidence suggests he was nearly poisoned to death in August by the secret police. He was subsequently evacuated to Germany.

The sentence in bold is an outright lie. On January 17 the Russian Foreign Ministry relayed a statement (in English!) by the Moscow Directorate of Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service which debunked that claim:

Earlier, on 30 December 2014, Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow sentenced Mr. Navalny to serve 3 years and 6 months in prison and pay a fine of 500 thousand rubles on the charges of fraud and money laundering. The court ruled the sentence to be suspended with a 5-year probation term. On August 4, 2017, Simonovsky District Court of Moscow extended Mr. Navalny’s probation period by twelve more months.

However, Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia has registered multiple violations of the probation terms by Mr. Navalny during the year 2020; namely, Mr. Navalny has failed to check in for registration at the Department of Corrective Services of the Federal Penitentiary Service’s Moscow Directorate twice a month as per the assigned schedule. There were two registration appointments missed in January 2020, and one in each of the following months: February, March, July and August, 2020. Last time Mr. Navalny checked in with the Department of Corrective Services was on August 3, 2020. All this time the Department of Corrective Services has been warning Mr. Navalny that these violations could lead to his suspended sentence being revoked and replaced with an actual prison term.

Department of Corrective Services suspended the requirement for Mr. Navalny to check in for registration for the duration of his treatment at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, Germany. However, Charité Hospital’s official statements indicated that Mr. Navalny’s treatment there was completed on September 23, 2020. Later, Mr. Navalny confirmed this fact in a notification he sent to the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia. In the apparent absence of any valid reasons Mr. Navalny has not appeared for any of the regular check-in appointments with the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia from October 2020 until the end of his probation period, thus violating the probation terms again.

Either the editors of the New York Times do not know the facts or they are avoiding them because they do not fit their narrative:

It was Mr. Navalny in the glassed-in prisoner’s dock. But it was Mr. Putin and his corrupt cohort who were on trial behind the army of riot police officers gathered in central Moscow to prevent the sort of mass protests across all of Russia that followed Mr. Navalny’s return to his country on Jan. 17. “Hundreds of thousands cannot be locked up,” Mr. Navalny declared from court to his millions of followers on social media. “More and more people will recognize this. And when they recognize this — and that moment will come — all of this will fall apart, because you cannot lock up the whole country.”

There were, at max, some 40,000 people protesting all over Russia when Navalny returned. Many of those were school children. In total there were way less protesters than on other occasions.

Nina Byzantina @NinaByzantina - 15:11 UTC · Jan 23, 2021

Neon sign on the building above these anti-govt protesters in Russia reads: “Circus: trained animals.” Yes, yes they are.

The following week less than half took again to the streets. Navalny's organization has since stopped all calls for further demonstrations. They know that no one would follow them. The "vast movement" the NYT claims to see does not exist.

Massive police repression and winter frosts may quell the demonstrations. But the vast movement Mr. Navalny has mobilized is quantitatively different from earlier opposition forces, and still growing. The opposition now has 40 offices across Russia, and most of its millions of followers are young people who have not challenged the Kremlin before. Among people ages 18 to 24, Mr. Putin’s popularity has slid from 36 percent in December 2019 to 20 percent.

The last sentence is an outright and intentional lie. The link provided goes to a Washington Post story which does not include any such numbers.

There are however fresh poll numbers from Russia. The New York Times ignores these because, again, they do not fit its narrative:

Something has changed, we are told again and again. After two decades of misrule, Russians are getting increasingly fed up with Vladimir Putin and his ‘regime’. The recent protests caused by the arrest of Alexei Navalny are just the tip of the iceberg, underneath which is a huge wave of dissatisfaction just waiting to burst loose.

But is it?
...
To answer that question, we turn to the Russian sociological organization known as the Levada Centre. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, Levada has been doing surveys for a long time, so one can compare data over a prolonged period. And second, Levada is well known for its liberal, anti-government orientation, and so cannot in any way be accused of biasing its surveys to favour the Russian state.

Today, Levada published its latest set of indicators. So, let’s take a look at these, starting with the one that everybody is always interested in – Vladimir Putin’s approval rating.

This records that when asked the question ‘do you approve of Vladimir Putin’s activities as President?’, 64% of respondents said yes. That’s down from 69% in September of last year, but up from the 60% recorded in July at the peak of the first wave of coronavirus.

If there is any reason for Putin to be concerned it is that his approval rating is lower among younger people than older ones. Whereas 73% of people aged 55 or over approve of him, only 51% of those aged 18 to 24 do so. But then again, 51% is still a majority.

The New York Times claims that Putin's popularity with younger people has 'slipped' down to 20%. It deceivingly gives a link, which few will follow, as source of its claim even when the linked page fails to support it. This when current polls show that a majority of Russian youths approve of Putin.

The Times and other 'western' media are constantly and intentionally building a narrative of Russia that has little to do with reality. That is dangerous as the false narrative over time forms the basis of 'western' policy making towards Russia.  When Russia reacts harshly to unrealistic 'western' demands and policies the outcry and disappointment is great. But no lesson is ever learned from it.

Posted by b on February 6, 2021 at 12:33 UTC | Permalink

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post