BOOK REVIEW: IN THEIR OWN WORDS: HOW RUSSIAN PROPAGANDISTS REVEAL PUTIN’S INTENTIONS
By Julia Davis / Ibidem Press
Reviewed by: Bill Harlow, The Cipher Brief’s Senior Book Editor and co-host of the Cover Stories Podcast
The Reviewer — Bill Harlow served as chief spokesman for the CIA from 1997 to 2004 and was Assistant White House Press Secretary for National Security from 1988 to 1992. A retired Navy captain, Harlow is the co-author of four New York Times bestsellers on intelligence and is the author of Circle William: A Novel.
REVIEW — Julia Davis seems to be a one-person open-source intelligence agency. The Ukrainian-born analyst performs a public service by keeping a close eye on what pundits, propagandists, and prognosticators say on Russian State TV. She selects the most telling clips and provides translation and context to a Western audience.
Some of the things said by the cast of characters Davis follows are truly stunning. Her excerpts and analysis provide fascinating and often frightening insights into what the Kremlin’s favorite talking-heads are thinking. You may think that commentators and guests on some U.S. television networks say some outrageous things too – but a quick look at the evidence Davis collects demonstrates that even the wackiest American TV opinionators can’t hold a candle to their Russian counterparts.
Davis’ products appear on a variety of platforms. For the past decade she has been laser focused on exposing Russian propaganda. Working as “Russian Media Monitor” her work can be found on YouTube and in columns in The Daily Beast. Her presence on X (formerly “Twitter”) comes with the motto: “I watch Russian state TV, so you don’t have to.” And thank goodness she does.
Davis has just published a collection of her columns in a new book “In Their Own Words: How Russian Propagandists Reveal Putin’s Intentions.” Most of the columns first appeared in The Daily Beast – with some elsewhere in a publication from The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA.)
Even if you have been a regular reader of Davis’s columns – the book, which chronologically assembles her work from 2019 to 2024, is extraordinarily useful in showing the evolution (or devolution) of Russian propagandists as they spun fantastic tales regarding the Kremlin’s intentions regarding Ukraine, paranoia over NATO, concerns about Russian dissident Alexei Navalny and Wagner group bad boy Yevgeny Prigozhin, and even musings about possible Russian intervention in U.S. political matters.
In her columns (and thus this book) Davis introduces the readers to an oddball cast of characters who act as a Russian Greek chorus providing commentary and attempting to whip up public sentiment to support Kremlin goals.
Among the regular players are folks like Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the state funded RT (formerly “Russia Today”) and Sputnik networks. In September 2020 Simonyan made a prediction in the upcoming U.S. presidential election saying: “I think Trump will lose, but then I think there will be a major blow-up from the standpoint of accepting or not accepting the outcome of the election. They’ll be battling over that for a long time, who knows how it might end.”
She said in April 2021 that “War (with the U.S.) is inevitable.” This apparently was predicated on the view that such a conflict would be triggered after Russia seized more territory in Ukraine as it did a year later.
The invasion of Ukraine was long-anticipated by the talking heads – but there was near unanimity that such an operation would be quickly won. Some pundits suggest it would take two or three days…others suggested it would be a matter of minutes. As the conflict turned into a quagmire – other commentators, like military expert, Igor Korotchenko, said: “It’s obvious that the process of denazification of Ukraine will take the minimum of 15-20 years.”
When minutes turned to years – the talking heads got feisty complaining about the lack of dedication of some of their countrymen, and about perceived (or imagined) American and NATO interference in Russian domestic matters.
Particularly noticeable is the willingness (perhaps even eagerness) of many of the pundits to embrace the idea of Russia achieving its goals through the use of nuclear weapons. Sometimes the target might be struck with a tactical nuke in Ukraine, at other times a strategic attack on the United States. State Duma deputy Mikhail Delyagin is quoted saying, “Nuclear mushroom may rise of Ukraine, but the NATO flag may not.” State TV propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov bragged that “Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash.”
One of the central players in the continuing saga is Vladimir Solovyov, the host of several State TV programs and someone who is never at a loss for a provocative take. Solovyov predicted in 2022 “that everything will end with a nuclear strike,” adding that “to me, (this) is more probable than the other outcome.” But be not troubled, Russian viewer, because he concluded that “…we will go to heaven, while they will simply croak.”
Margarita Simonyan apparently concurred saying at one point: “It is true that no one will win in a nuclear war, but who needs the world if Russia isn’t in it?”
Whether Moscow’s mouthpieces really believe that or are just saying what they hope will deter Western nations from providing more help for Ukraine is unclear. But as the war in Ukraine continued to drag on, Davis provided lots of examples of the commentary crew hinting that potential genocide in Ukraine was just a start, but countries like Poland are next.
Some of those commentators captured in Davis’ reporting seem cartoonlike. One fellow, whose name incredibly is Yevgeny Satanovsky, said he gets enraged when members of the public suggest that peace is better than war. “No, peace is not better” he assured viewers. If you were making up a fictional character to express that thought and started his last name with Satan – no novel editor would let you get away with it.
Being a Russian propagandist can require considerable nimbleness. For example, when Prigozhin conducted his mini-revolt, some commentators initially were annoyed that Putin didn’t immediately execute him. Then two months later when Prigozhin’s plane made a sudden plunge to earth – they were obliged to hint that possibly the cause was faulty maintenance. And Solovyov later suggested it was probably the work of the Ukrainians.
Throughout the book there are countless examples of shocking stuff. For example, after Hamas’ strike on Israel on October 7,2023 – another prominent propagandist, Sergey Mardan, declared on State TV there was “Only good news today” adding that “Iran is our real military ally. Israel is an ally of the United States. Therefore, choosing a side is easy!”
There are also a few examples of amusing items – such as Davis recounting the widespread disappointment when Time Magazine named Taylor Swift – rather than Vladimir Putin, their “Person of the Year.”
Davis’ book provides a valuable service, laying out one-after-another, stunning commentary that the Kremlin’s top propagandists want the Russian public to believe. Whether Solovyov, Simonyan, Satanovsky and friends believe what they are saying themselves is unclear, but it is good to know that Davis is monitoring their every word.
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