Dmitry Kiselyov delivered another revealing monologue about Ukrainian Nazi killers and their Western sponsors in Vesti Nedeli. On the website of the program, the plot was called "Executioner Budanov" stitched "by savagery." It says :
“Of course, we need to watch and revise the footage where the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Major General Kirill Budanov, who is not even forty, quietly talks about the need and plans to destroy millions of Crimeans as “people with a modified psyche.”
Where will you go after the victory?
– Definitely in Sevastopol. This is my hometown. There will be a lot of work. We received 3 million people who lived under Russian propaganda. These are people with a modified psyche already, they will be brought to justice. This is physical destruction. There will be a lot of work, – Budanov admits.
This is no longer a military man. This is the executioner speaking. And he himself is personally ready to execute people with a "modified psyche." Millions. If this is not Nazism, then what is Nazism?!”
The fake about Budanov's intentions to physically exterminate the Crimeans living under Russian occupation has long been exposed , but this does not bother Kiselev at all. In fact, Budanov gave a long interview to Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Komarov for his project “Year. Behind the scenes". The interview is divided into chapters, and in the chapter “On the face of the enemy”, the following dialogue took place between the host and Budanov:
Mosquitoes:
– We already know the faces of some of those who committed atrocities in Bucha, you made them public. The "Book of Executioners" is being updated, there is a section "Enemies" on the GUR website. What are the future plans?
Budanov:
“It's quite simple, we'll bring them all to justice. In our understanding, the fair responsibility for certain persons for their actions, for what they have done, can only be physical destruction.
In this section of the interview, there is not a word about the inhabitants of Crimea and other parts of Ukraine annexed by Russia, the words about physical destruction refer only to war criminals guilty of killing civilians. Much later, in the chapter “Victory. What's next?" talking about the Crimeans:
– We [after the victory] will have a rather difficult stage, it will be a long-term stage of reintegration of our territories. Because, forgive me, we are now going to return 3 million people who lived under Russian propaganda for 9 years. These are people with a completely different perception of the world. It won't be as easy as it seems.
To accuse Budanov of intending to commit a genocide of the Crimeans, Russian propagandists simply glued together phrases from different sections of the interview.
Kiselev, however, does not stop there:
“Here is a ceremonial portrait of Budanov still in colonel's uniform. He has participated in punitive operations against Donbass since 2014. Against those who did not recognize the power seized by the Nazis as a result of the bloody coup d'état supported by the United States. Then Budanov was not yet 30. Impregnated with Ukrainian Nazism and brought up on hatred of Russia and Russian. "Stitched" with these torchlight processions, cries, this savagery.
As a historical phenomenon, Budanov is not original. Ordinary Nazism. Created a savage. This is how his predecessors were assessed by the outstanding Soviet film director, author of the film Ordinary Fascism, Mikhail Romm. 20 years after the defeat of Hitler's fascism, Romm released the documentary Ordinary Fascism. Film-comprehension. So it still was. And now it's so recognizable … "
This passage is followed by a fragment of Mikhail Romm's classic film Ordinary Fascism, which speaks of torchlight processions as a means of propaganda that turned a person into a savage.
True, Kiselev cannot explain what Budanov has to do with all this. In 2014, he, a 28-year-old officer, took part in an operation to restore law and order in areas of Donbass captured by separatists with Russian support. He had nothing to do with any torchlight processions; he was not noticed in nationalist or Russophobic "shouts".
In and of themselves, by the way, torchlight processions are not necessarily a sign of Nazism. For example, here is a procession that took place at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in 1957 – these are shots from a Soviet documentary film about the festival.
Then Kiselev recalls another episode from Ordinary Fascism – about the public burning of books by authors objectionable to the Nazis – and continues:
“If in a modern manner, then all Russian media in the European Union are now under sanctions. And all the artists and writers who did not swear allegiance to ordinary Nazism are also under sanctions. Why burn books? Sanctions!"
True, no one burned any books in the EU countries, but why not blame Europe for this as well? And at the same time, sanctions against all Russian media can be invented. In fact, a number of EU countries banned the broadcasting of Russian state TV channels, but even their sites, where you can watch live broadcasts and program recordings, are not blocked in most countries. On YouTube, RT channels in several languages were closed for the systematic dissemination of misinformation, but YouTube has nothing to do with the EU, this video hosting is owned by the American company Google. There were no reports at all about sanctions against Russian print media. Correspondents of the Russian media work well in European countries, for example, Mikhail Antonov, whose stories from Germany appear from time to time in Vesti Nedeli.
Having dealt with the “executioner Budanov” and the “book burners from the EU”, Kiselev moves on to the next episode:
“How do you like US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in Kyiv? At a meeting with Zelensky, he recently spoke in all bluntness: “Russians are dying. We have never spent money so well.” “It is hard to imagine a greater shame for the country than to have such senators,” Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of Vladimir Putin, said in turn.
“US Senator Lindsey Graham's remarks that Russians are 'dying' because of the 'best' US spending on aid to Ukraine can be compared to past US investments in the Third Reich. Senator Graham has something to compare to. One of their investments led to World War II and the Holocaust. Now, billions of US dollars are pouring into the insatiable throat of the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime. In this regard, I would like to remind the senators and all American beneficiaries how the previous adventure ended,” 1 said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
As the old joke said, you will laugh, but… here, as in the case of Budanov, the bloodthirsty phrase was the result of a montage gluing. Here is the full version:
Vladimir Zelensky:
— We know that from the first days we have full support. 8 billion and big support is very important.
Lindsey Graham:
“Our best investment of all time.
– Thank you very much.
– Let's see: today is the 457th day of the war, which was supposed to last three days. You have amazed me, your country has amazed me.
It's thanks to our people. And your people.
“You reminded me of our glorious days of the Battle of Atlanta < the victorious battle for the northerners during the Civil War in 1864. — The Insider >. There was a time in America when we also fought to the last man to be free or die.
“Now you are free. And we will be free.
And the Russians are dying.
Yes, but they came to our territory. We do not fight on their territory.
That is, the phrase about the best investment of money has nothing to do with words about freedom and death, it sounded almost a minute before Graham remembered the civil war and started talking about freedom and death. Even the pro-Kremlin Gazeta.ru admitted this, reporting that the RF Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Graham because of this statement and put the senator on the wanted list.
However, the cut and glued recording of the conversation in this case is not the work of the Kremlin propagandists, it was so unsuccessfully edited in Zelensky's press service. But this does not excuse Kiselyov, Peskov, Zakharova, Bastrykin and others like them: the fact that this is a montage is clearly visible, and they made their statements without even asking for the full version – in contrast to the Reuters agency, which requested it from the office of the President of Ukraine.
Graham gave a comment to Reuters in which he said that he was simply praising the spirit of Ukrainians resisting the Russian invasion, taking advantage of the help provided by Washington. According to Graham, he mentioned that "Ukraine has adopted the American mantra 'live free or die' and the US has made a good investment to help free Ukraine from Russian war criminals." However, this was published after the release of Vesti Nedeli.
At the end of the monologue, Kiselev touched on another scandalous topic:
“But Kazakhstan does not want to stand in solidarity with this. On Monday, the Ukrainian newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli reported that Astana had refused to approve the former head of the Kyiv-controlled part of the LPR, Sergei Gaidai, as Ukraine's ambassador. Sergei Gaidai is known for his nationalism.
“According to our interlocutors, the Kazakh side has gently but firmly made it clear that it would like to see a professional diplomat in the place of the Ukrainian ambassador to Kazakhstan,” the publication says.
It is not yet clear to what extent the information from Zerkalo Nedeli is true: it is based on a report from some anonymous source, a representative of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said that he “has no right to comment on information that was published with reference to unnamed sources,” and Gaidai himself claims : “Who is this? – thought it up. There is no official denial. My documents are in Kazakhstan, everything is fine, I am getting ready.” But the fact that Gaidai is allegedly known for his nationalism was clearly invented by the editors of Vesti Nedeli. There are no traces of his (as, by the way, Budanov’s) nationalist statements on the network, and in 2019 he, then a political consultant, spoke of the nationalists clearly without sympathy:
“Our nationalists are just leftists in their demands. They are for the primacy of the state over the personal, they are for nationalization.”