Waving a Russian flag, Moscow, September 2023 Stringer / Reuters
South Paris, Maine
Indian peace advocate Bharat Dogra recently noted the near impossibility of raising the “issue of improving relations with Russia or stopping the disastrous, destructive Ukraine war.”He sees the Ukrainian people as “victims of an entirely avoidable proxy war that started way back in 2014 with a USA-instigated coup in Ukraine.” He condemns “[t]he mobilization of almost the entire military might of the West and the NATO to encircle and defeat Russia.”
Russia “has to be considered … in an unbiased way,” he insists. U.S. publicists have created “the devilish image of Putin” and “policymakers are forced to respond not to realties but to the false notions.”
The U.S. people and many public officials may indeed be uninformed generally about realities in Russia. The situation would be due to U.S. government actions, recent educational trends, and biases of a subservient media.
In penalizing Russian media personnel, the U.S. government interferes with the transmission of news from Russia to the United States. FBI agents recently raided the homes of Scott Ritter and Dimitri Simes. Ritter is a former United Nations weapons inspector who writes for the Russian news service Russia Today (RT). Simes, a U.S. resident born in Russia, hosts a Russian television talk show. They allegedly violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act
The Justice Department on September 4 indicted RT employees Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva under the same charge and issued sanctions against RT editor Margarita Simonyan and several colleagues. The New York Times in 2022 reported that its own journalists and those of other U.S. news outlets were being withdrawn from Russia.
On September 16 Rachel Maddow interviewed former Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on MSNBC. One topic was Russian interference in U.S. elections. Asserted Clinton: “I think it’s important to indict the Russians [and] I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda. [Perhaps] they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged.”
Schools and universities have skimped on teaching and research about Russia. An academicians’ group in 2015 reported that Russian studies in universities were in “unmistakable decline in interest and numbers in terms of both faculty and graduate students.” Enrollment levels are presently down by “30 to 50 percent.” College and university students studying Russian dropped 20% between 2007 and 2016.
According to the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, “U.S. policy toward Russia has largely ignored such crucial factors as Russia’s history, culture, geography, and security requirements—as they are seen from Moscow.”
Dogra laments that, “the space for hearing and considering differing points of views [is] shrinking fast in the West,” adding that, “[m]ature democracies are supposed to be keen to hear to hear all points of view, including those of opponents.”
The U.S. people, he notes, don’t realize that“Putin tried repeatedly earlier to avoid conflict and to find a place of self-respect for Russia within Europe, … [and] made huge investments in ensuring cheap energy supply to Europe. … [H]e repeatedly pleaded with the West to honor commitments made earlier regarding not moving the NATO and its weapon systems too close to Russia … [and] took the Minsk accords very seriously.”
Dogra asks, “What kind of democracy is this, what kind of free media? What is wrong with people hearing the views of a leader even though he is widely regarded to be hostile by the West?”
Opinion polls have demonstrated high approval ratings for Putin. The U.S. and European public, says Dogra, ought to appreciate the successes of Russian governments under his leadership. They need “to examine his role as a national leader of Russia, whether he has been good for Russia and for the welfare of Russian people.”
In the 1990s, “western advisers had been active in Russia, leading to sale of Russian assets to private businesses, including foreigners as well as Russian oligarchs, at cheap rates, resulting in huge profits for a few but also in terrible disruptions in the economy.” Life expectancy plummeted.
Dogra highlights a “remarkable recovery in terms of human development indicators, to the extent that some of these are now better than or almost equal to those of the USA.”He cites data:
· In 2021, child mortality under five years of age per 1000 live births “was 5.1 in the Russian federation, while it was 6.2 in the USA,” down from 20 deaths and 8 deaths, respectively.
· “Infant mortality under 1 year of age per 1000 births in Russia declined in a big way,” from 19 deaths in 2000 to 4.8 deaths in 2023, the comparable U.S. figures being 7.2 and 5.4, respectively.
· UN data indicates that, “In the case of maternal mortality rate (reported per 100,000 births), this declined … in Russia” from 52 in 2000 to 14 in 2020, “while that of the USA actually increased from 12 to 21” in those years.
· “During 2000-2019 according to UN data the life-expectancy in the Russian Federation increased significantly from 65.3 years to 73.2 years.”
· “The increase of income or GNI per capita in Russia during this period was very significant—from $1710 in year 2000 to $4450 in 2005 to $9980 in 2010 to $11,610 in 2021. The literacy rate for the Russian Federation is around 99% … The Human Development Index of Russia has improved from 720 in 2000 to 822 in 2021”.
There are two conclusions. One, U.S. citizens certainly need to know more about Russia. Two, information blockade accompanies the supplying of weapons as the U.S. prolongs Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Dogra presumes that with more U.S. appreciation of realities in Russia, U.S. prolongation of the war might lose its appeal. He overlooks key factors: the economic boost provided by war-spending, U.S. habituation over a century to anti-Russian hostility, the official view that Russia is ganging up with China against the U.S. and Europe, and the distracting effect of war in the face of seemingly unsolvable U.S. problems. These include an economy mired in debt, apparently intractable inequalities, and a dysfunctional system of democratic governance.
W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.
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