I mentioned in my writings many times how truth about War in Afghanistan led towards dissolution of USSR and victory of the free world over communist oppression. Simple and elegant, poetic even. I also said that the same kind of truth can defeat Putin's regime as well as China and North Korea.
It's simple, but perhaps misleadingly simple. After all these autocrats spent a lot of time and effort building their house of lies and tailoring the narrative to the one most favorable to them. Undoing it with truth sounds simple, but there are pitfalls to avoid.
Just plain refuting Putin and everything he says will not do it. In fact, it may even make things worse. Think like those people who grew to trust him and everything he says. When you just say he is a liar and truth is something else instead, it's your word vs his. Why they should trust you and not him. What proof do you have that you are telling the truth and not him. On his end Putin would further shore up his house of lies by saying Americans and Westerners "make their fake news up to destroy Russia from within".
Plain clash of narratives is doomed to fail. Putin spent years before War in Ukraine even begun, building his narrative, undoing this from the get-go would be near impossible. Much like convincing religions people that god is not real. You know it is a lie, but they refuse to believe you and refuse to listen.
Things such as who is bad guy and who is good guy is fundamentally a narrative. Narratives that clash with each other and not backed by any facts would ultimately devolve into who you trust. If Putin manages to take information war to this conflict of narrative where he has strong advantage, he might win the information war and that can even translate into victory on the ground.
That is how USSR won Vietnam war. Viet Cong was not better at fighting compared to Americans. However, USSR managed to win information war. They consistently portrayed it as anti-imperialist war of Vietnamese people against Western imperialism and destroy all support for war in Western countries. In the end the US was forced to withdraw its troops from South Vietnam, and it was overrun by communists.
Putin does the same thing in Ukraine as well. He portrays Ukrainians are corrupt Nazi who steal western money to erode support for Ukraine in western countries. If he manages to win information war again, Ukraine can become second Vietnam. It's imperative for the cause of free and just world, that we make sure it becomes second Afghanistan instead.
Fortunately, there is a way to get the message right. Voice of America managed to destroy the USSR not by a deliberate effort to destroy it, but rather unintentionally by simply reporting daily what was really going on in Afghanistan. This reporting was not meant to win Cold War, no one could have predicted it would do what it managed to achieve. The reporting only meant to inform people in Russian language of things that happen to their troops in Afghanistan daily. That reporting however managed to produce a much greater outcome that anyone could have imagined.
Because it was unintentional no one in America spent enough time thoroughly analyzing how Voice of America have contributed to collapse of USSR. To put it simply, they were telling the truth. However more details are needed to better characterize what kind of truth it was.
Voice of America was simply reporting facts as they happen. It was free of any narrative or interpretation, just the facts. In this "free from interpretation" lies the key. It was facts that hard or impossible to influence by narrative. Facts that Soviet propaganda machine could neither spin into favorable narrative, nor refute outright.
Voice of America did not try to talk about whether Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was right or wrong thing to do. Instead, it simply reported what happened there every day. How mujahedeen fought, how Soviets back, how people on all sides of conflict were dying there daily. How much misery it all brough to all sides.
That worked because Soviet public was not prepared or even informed of the reality on the ground or the real cost of war. They thought it was just a humanitarian aid operation, that does not involve actual fighting or dying. That is what Soviet government have told them it was. They believed that until casualties became so high, Soviet government could no longer hide the corpses. Voice of America helped to expose these casualties of war that Soviet government was so eagerly stuffing under the rug and pretending there are none.
In this crucial aspect situation in Ukraine is similar. Putin calls it Special Military Operation and heavily censor the footage from Ukraine for exact the same reasons. They once again mislead public in Russia about the reality on the ground and the real cost of war. People are dying daily, and Putin's propaganda machine pretends it's not even happening. They show public images of school and hospitals in occupied territories, rebuild by Russian Army without specifying how Russian Army destroyed them in the first place.
Meanwhile realities of war and daily casualties on all sides are deliberately ignored, even specifically prohibited from being displayed or mentioned anywhere.
Just as during the war in Afghanistan, Russian public is not prepared for real war or casualties. Thus, informing them of these costs will help shift public opinion in Russia. Once enough people know how people on all sides of conflict in Ukraine are fighting and dying daily, things will start to shift, and Putin's house of lies will start crumbling.
To achieve these outcomes, a plain footage of war with few if any commentary, would be much more effective than commented and narrated one. When there are no comments, it is much harder to accuse creators of peddling the narrative or misleading public.
One last note. USSR used to consistently portray Soviet people are heroes and good guys of the world who constantly fight imperialism and help poor and oppressed. People are so get used to that that it would be hard for them believe that they are the bad guys here. Because of that any narratives that portray them as villains would be labelled by people like Dmitry Kiselev as "lies" and ignored by public.
Once again this too can be used against Putin by providing footage of realities of war. It will disprove the narrative Putin so painstakingly created to justify his war. Once public in Moscow realize Putin is not saving anyone from Nazis but fighting an offensive war, support for war will evaporate and Putin's rule with it.
After all there is no footage that show Russian military as heroes saving common people of Ukraine from any Nazis, so Putin cannot prove he is telling the truth. There is only footage of Russian army fighting and dying from attacks of the Ukrainian military.
Hopefully Trump's administration has enough smart people to be able to turn tables on Russia in this information war and win bigly.
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