One year after the invasion of Ukraine, and as troops in Kiev are resisting a fierce offensive by Russian forces, Russia’s Ministry of Culture announced on Tuesday the creation of agitation and propaganda brigades in collaboration with the Ministry of Defense to boost troop morale.
“In some places you have to visit the guys during rehabilitation, in others it’s about big concerts, speeches in squares or trips to the regions,” Olga Liubimova, the Russian culture minister, explained on public television.
Liubímova stressed that the artists who will form these brigades will come from different regions, artistic genres and ages, although she did not name specific names.
He stressed that Russian artists themselves turn to the Ministry to “participate and contribute to the cause with what they do best and love to do”.
By order of the presidential administration, propaganda brigades have already visited the military garrisons and polygons where reservists were trained as part of the partial mobilization ordered by President Vladimir Putin.
Russia has officially acknowledged the deaths of fewer than 6,000 soldiers on the battlefield, although other Russian and foreign sources speak of tens of thousands of casualties between dead and wounded in action.
In turn, the minister denied having ordered the preparation of a blacklist of writers who oppose the war and whose works must be confiscated from libraries, including Boris Akunin, Liudmila Ulítskaya, Joanne Rowling or George Orwell, among others.
The Russian government recently replaced the director of Moscow’s largest art gallery, the Tretyakov Gallery, Zelfira Tregulova, with the daughter of a Federal Security Service general who served under President Putin, a former KGB officer Soviet.
Persecution of opponents
In August last year, Russian deputies and senators created the Group of Inquiry into Anti-Russian Activities in the Sphere of Culture (GRAD), in the image and likeness of the commission created by McCarthyism to persecute communists in the United States after World War II World War.
Russian deputies and senators have denounced that many cultural personalities promote Western values and tendencies, which go against the traditional morality promoted by the Kremlin head, who is very critical of Western defense of sexual minorities and non-traditional marriages.
Additionally, those politicians urged cultural establishments to turn their backs on Western culture after the US and European Union passed sanctions against Russia over its military campaign in Ukraine and allegedly attempted to ban Russian culture in the West.
Putin’s request to the secret services
Meanwhile, Putin called the Federal Security Service (FSB) on Tuesday. put an end to any attempt to divide and weaken the country taking advantage of the military campaign in Ukraine.
“We must identify and put an end to the illegal activities of those who seek to divide and weaken our society,” the Kremlin head said during his meeting with senior staff from the FSB, formerly the KGB.
He underlined that the most “vulnerable” category is that of young people, for which he underlined their importance stop those who use social networks “for propaganda and the ideology of terrorism and extremism”.
“And also those who try to recruit our citizens for terrorist organizations,” he added.
Putin also considered it essential to fight extremism and attempts to use separatism, nationalism, neo-Nazism and xenophobia “as weapons”.
“That was also used against our country and now, of course, the attempts are much more active, the attempts to activate all that scum on our land,” he denounced, alluding to Western intelligence services.
The Russian president also accused the West of launching “more resources” against Russia, both technically and in the number of agents, activities to which the FSB must react by strengthening its “counterintelligence activities”.
put in called on the FSB to defend critical technologies with all its might, the arms industry, command systems and military facilities and security organs from the threat posed by foreign espionage.
In his recent state of the nation address, Putin accused the West of wanting to wipe out Russia “once and for all”.
Source: EFE
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.