A sign of change in Russian media coverage of the Ukrainian special military operation?
While it has not yet been reported in the Taiwanese press, it has been reported in the "South China Morning Post" (published in Hong Kong under the new laws on press freedom there) under the headline "Ukraine war ‘will get worse for us’, that retired Russian colonel Mikhail Khodarenok participated in the "60 Minutes" program Russian state TV and made some interesting comments, e.g., "Don’t swallow ‘informational tranquilisers’, military analyst Mikhail Khodaryonok warns viewers, in a rare criticism of Putin’s invasion. “The main thing in our business is have a sense of military-political realism: if you go beyond that then the reality of history will hit you so hard that you will not know what hit you,” he said" (
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/russ...etired-russian).
Earlier, retired former PRC Ambassador to Ukraine Gao Yusheng made similar comments during an internal webinar hosted by the government-affiliated China International Finance 30 Forum and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Phoenix News Media, a partially state-owned television network, published an edited transcript of his remark “with revisions from the ambassador himself.” This was removed very quickly from the Internet, however.
Gao's words reflect the Ukrainian perspective, and Khodarenok's a Russian perspective broadcast live on one of twice-daily flagship talk shows on Russian state TV in a studio discussion that promotes the Kremlin line on absolutely everything. Khodarenok had previously made his views known, writing in Russia's Independent Military Review in February (before Moscow attacked Ukraine), criticising "enthusiastic hawks and hasty cuckoos" for claiming that Russia would easily win a war against Ukraine. His conclusion back then: "An armed conflict with Ukraine is not in Russia's national interests." So the channel and the host, Olga Skabeyeva, must have known what he was going to say.
It seems that "The other guests in the studio were silent," and that "Even the host, Olga Skabeyeva, normally fierce and vocal in her defense of the Kremlin, appeared oddly subdued."
Other reports include:
CNN Report: Former Russian colonel criticizes the country's invasion of Ukraine on state television (
https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-...4c715250c7dd00).
BBC Report: Retired colonel speaks out on Russian TV (
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61484222).
NY Times Report: On a Russian talk show, a retired colonel stuns his colleagues by pointing out that the invasion isn’t going well. (
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/w...-invasion.html). This report said "A military analyst on one of Russian state television’s most popular networks left his fellow panelists in stunned silence on Monday when he said that the conflict in Ukraine was deteriorating for Russia, giving the kind of honest assessment that is virtually banished from the official airwaves."
The BBC report concludes: "So what happened on 60 Minutes? Was this a spontaneous, unprompted and unexpected wake-up call on Ukraine that slipped through the net? Or was it a pre-planned burst of reality in order to prepare the Russian public for negative news on the progress of the "special military operation"? It's difficult to say. But as they say on the telly, stay tuned to Russian TV for further signals."