May 13, 2015–The host of RT.com’s program In The Now, Anissa Naouai, looks at the oversized claims of Russian military intervention in Ukraine that are made in the posthumous report by the late Boris Nemtsov released yesterday. In each case, she discovers, the “proof” of the claims come from reports in Western media, social media, or assertions by the report authors.
From the introduction to the story on In The Now on May 12: “Putin sent troops to Ukraine, spent billions of rubles on fueling the war and is now lying to the whole world. The Russian opposition has released a report called ‘Putin.War’, which contains ‘secret’ findings by Boris Nemtsov. Activists say they finished the investigation which the politician started some two month before his murder in February [2014]. We would call it a digest of media articles, social media posts and subjective opinion with no real sources.”
Watch the two minute In The Now report here:
The Nemtsov report can be read in full online (in Russian). Here is the introduction in full, as posted on Business Insider:
The idea behind this report belongs to Boris Nemtsov. One day he went to the party headquarters and loudly said: “I have come up with what to do. We must write a report, “Putin. War,” published in huge circulation and given the streets. Let us tell people how Putin unleashed the war …
From the beginning of 2015 Boris began to collect material for the report. He has worked with open source, finding people who could share information. Nemtsov believed that attempting to stop the war is the real patriotism. The war with Ukraine is a cynical and cowardly crime for which our country is paying the price in the blood of its citizens, the economic crisis and international isolation.
No one in Russia needed this war, except for Putin and his entourage. Boris did not have time to write the report. On February 27, he was killed on the Greater Moscow River bridge, next to the Kremlin walls. To complete the project it took his colleagues, friends and people who considered this important work. The report is based on materials that Boris had prepared. The content of handwritten notes, documents — everything that he had left — was used in the preparation of the text.
Our task is to tell the truth about the Kremlin’s interference in Ukrainian politics, which led to a war between the two nations. It led to a war, which must be stopped immediately.
For the editors of Canada’s Globe and Mail national daily, the word of Nemtsov’s colleagues is good enough. A May 13 editorial triumphantly reports the “findings” in their report. For example: “The report’s authors estimate that, at its height, in January, there were 35,000 to 37,000 combatants in Ukraine on the pro-Russian side – and they believe a large number of them came from the Russian military.” The source of this and other talking points in the editorial? Why, the authors of the report being praised. A closed circle.
