Even by the standards of Soviet television, the Russia Channel has been churning out propaganda that would have made their Soviet predecessors blush

DURING a recent live broadcast from Kiev on Russian state television, a protester pushed his way onto camera. As the Russian reporter, standing in the middle of Independence Square, the stage of the latest protest in Kiev, tried to describe the scene, the protester handed him a little statue, resembling an Oscar. “Pass this Oscar to the Russian Channel and to Dmitry Kiselev [the anchor man, pictured] for the lies and nonsense you are telling people about Maidan,” he told him on air. The prize for misinformation and propaganda was well deserved. Even by the standards of Soviet television, the Russia Channel has been churning out propaganda that would have made their Soviet predecessors blush. Gesturing with his arms and breaking his sentences with dramatic pauses, Mr Kiselev, a caricature of a Soviet propagandist, lamented the “barbarically dismembered” Christmas tree that was being used for barricades. (No mention of students, journalists, old men and young women being pummelled and bloodied with truncheons, pushed to the ground and kicked in the head and ribs.)

Mr Kiselev showed the pictures (people warming up by log fires, sleeping in tents, giving away food) and provided commentary: “Here are fighting brigades – there is fear and emptiness in their eyes; and here is food preparation – a dish for gourmands: a piece of lard fried on the side of a rusty tin.” His intonation was nasty and sneering.

For the sake of his argument, Mr Kiselev in his programme reversed and twisted the order of events. First, he told the Russian audience, protesters provoked the police “poisoning and crippling them with tear gas” then the leaders of the protests brought students to Maidan Square and left them there as victims. Blood was part of the script.” (In fact, the clashes occurred some 12 hours after Ukrainian students were beaten up in the early hours of the morning.)

This was not Mr Kiselev’s first Ukrainian crusade. A decade ago, he was working on one of the pro-government Ukrainian channels, slandering the Orange revolution that had deprived Viktor Yanukovych of his rigged victory. Russia’s current propaganda is all the more striking in contrast to Ukraine’s own television coverage. Most of the channels, owned by Ukranian oligarchs, have been reporting the protests objectively, defying orders from the top. Andrei Kluyev, the secretary of the national security council, summoned owners of TV channels and told them to stop showing Maidan protests and switch to the government side, but they plainly told him to keep off.

The sad irony is that the Russian channel is part of a state media empire run by Oleg Dobrodeev, who was one of the bright stars of television during the Perestroika years. He was in charge of news and current affairs on NTV, Russia’s first private television channel, which began broadcasting 20 years ago under the slogan “news is our profession”.

Having painted a picture of chaos and violence, Mr Kiselev then gets to the “the script writers” – the West. The past three weeks of protests, including the scenes of bloodshed on December 1st, according to Russian television, was a “co-production” between America, Europe and the Ukrainian opposition. The chief director of the show is America’s state department and Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state. “The interests of people [in her statement] are only a bounty. The most important thing is the promise of chaos and violence,” Mr Kiselev wound up his audience and himself.

Pictures of Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, coming to Maidan to support the protester, really got Mr Kiselev homophobic juices going. (Mr Kiselev once said on air that “fining gays is not sufficient – they should not be allowed to give blood, or sperm and in case of a car accident, their hearts should be burnt or buried as useless”.)

Mr Kiselev insinuated that for Mr Westerwelle, who is in a gay marriage, meeting Vitali Klitschko, a world heavy-weight boxing champion and opposition leader, was a high point. “Heated or, perhaps, overheated by the heavyweight bodies, the minister said ‘Ukraine should be on the board of Europe because there is much that unites us: common history, common culture and common values’. The values of lesbians and gays in the EU is a favourite topic. But to say this on Maidan! That is a provocation.” Mr Kiselev cried out, painting the association and free trade agreement with Ukraine as one big attempt to impose gay values on Ukraine.

Earlier, Mr Kiselev described the association agreement the EU has offered to Ukraine as part of a plot between Poland, Sweden and Lithuania, Russia’s foes in the 18th century, to revenge their defeat at Poltava in 1709.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, certainly seemed pleased with Mr Kiselev’s efforts. To reward him for his hard work, he has appointed him the head of Russia Segodnya (Russia Today), a freshly-created government news service. To free space for Mr Kiselev’s flights of fantasy, Mr Putin has, at the same time, scrapped RIA Novosti, one of Russia’s most established news services which was started 72 years ago and handed over its resources to Mr Kiselev. Svetlana Mironiuk, who was RIA Novosti’s editor for the past ten years and tried to preserve the semblance of journalist professionalism and objectivity, learned about Mr Putin’s decision from the media.

Mr Putin’s decision to dissolve RIA Novosti shows that the Kremlin has become intolerant even to the modest liberalism within its own ranks. Ever since the Kremlin started to centralise its control over the media, RIA Novosti became a shelter for journalists who were squeezed out of the private media space. The choice of Mr Kiselev as the face of Russian propaganda abroad is a sign that Mr Putin no longer sees any need to preserve even a veneer of European values. But it is also a sign of the extreme degradation of the Russian media.

In 1999 Mr Kiselev deplored such degradation. At the time, he moralised about TV journalists and their difference from “agitators”. A true journalist, he explained, is someone who shows the whole picture. “People will, of course, swallow anything. But if we keep lowering the bar and drop morals we will, one day, find ourselves splashing in the dirt like pigs and eating each other, along with this dirt, and then we would not be able to sink any lower”. Mr Kiselev’s appointment indicates that this day has come.