Moscow’s denial of facts precludes any dialogue with US
wanted to save.
But even as I settled into Moscow, the yo-yo of U.S.-Russian relations kept bouncing.
On Sunday, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, announced that Trump would impose new sanctions on Russia shortly. On Monday, the White House said Trump hadn’t approved new sanctions.
As I strolled through Bauman’s Garden Park in a residential Moscow neighborhood, watching kids whip around on scooters and parents push strollers, the scene seemed light years away from the week’s tensions. Yet an hour of watching one of Russia’s premier TV talk shows, whose host Dmitry Kiselyov is a megaphone for anti-Western propaganda, was a sobering reminder of why U.S.-Russian tensions are likely to get worse.
Note that national TV networks in Russia are state-controlled, and most Russians still get their news from television. Kiselyov makes Sean Hannity look tame, and there is no CNN or MSNBC to offer a contrary version.
Kisleyov’s presentation of the “facts” about the missile affair, reflecting the claims of the Kremlin, was 180 degrees opposed to the news from Washington. According to him, the Syrians shot down the bulk of the U.S. missiles (which the Pentagon says is totally untrue).
The talk show host declared there was no chemical weapons attack on the Syrian town of Douma. In his version, the scenes of gasping children were faked by the White Helmets, the courageous network of Syrian volunteers whose members rush to the scenes of Syrian regime bombing to rescue civilians from the rubble.
“There were no chemicals,” Kiselyov insisted. He featured footage of a Russian reporter on the scene in Douma who insisted that no one in the town ever heard anything about chemicals.
The Kiselyov/Kremlin version of the attack is illustrative of the Alicein-Wonderland quality of debate between the United States and Russia — over almost all key points of contention.
Take the poisoning of former Russian double agent and his daughter, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, in Britain — which provoked the latest U.S. and European sanctions against Russia. It never happened, according to the Kremlin, or Kiselyov. It was all fake news. On Tuesday, the Kremlin flatly denied the British and U.S. claim that government-backed Russian hackers had infected computer routers around the world, targeting government agencies, businesses and critical infrastructure. And so the denials go.
It is hard to imagine any serious dialogue occurring between Moscow and Washington because — apart from all the political obstacles — there is no factual basis for such a discussion. Whatever grievances Vladimir Putin holds against the West and vice versa, there can be no negotiations based on denial of facts.
Putin denied invading Crimea (until the facts became visually indisputable), denied sending mercenaries to eastern Ukraine and apparently will continue to deny election meddling in the United States and Europe.
The Kremlin denies the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons on many previous occasions since Russia guaranteed that Damascus had destroyed them.
There are still some optimists in Moscow who believe the tamped-down missile affair could spark a breakthrough. Konstantin Remchukov, publisher and editor of the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, told me he believes there will be a meeting between Trump and Putin by June.
Clearly, Trump wants such a meeting. At some point, a dialogue between Washington and Moscow must begin, but watching Kiselyov echo wholesale Kremlin denials, it’s hard to see how.