Getting back on the air in Russian domestic media
Those who have read my essay “Travel notes of a talking head” published in Does the United States Have a Future? (2017) know that during the period just before and in the several months after the presidential elections of 2016 I enjoyed a sort of stardom on Russia’s several state and commercial television channels through appearances on their various political talk shows. The producers of these shows were keen to have a Russian speaking political analyst carrying an American passport to add some salt and pepper to their on-air debates.
My first television appearance there in a Moscow studio was at the invitation of journalist-presenter Yevgeny Popov, who is best known today as host of the very popular program “Sixty Minutes,” which I cite from time to time as an important source of information on the latest thinking of Russian political and academic elites.
In the time since 2016, my appearances on Russian domestic television came to an end and my only link to the medium has been via RT in English-language programs directed at an international audience. These interviews and panel discussions are interesting and maybe even useful for broadening the offering of opinions on current events to a world audience which is very often, especially in our days of hybrid war, living in a bell jar given the restrictions Western governments have placed on Russian sources of information.
However, I have missed participating in the shows in the Russian language directed at their domestic audience because by definition that audience is one or two orders of magnitude greater and because they provide a rare opportunity to bring to Russian officials and to the public views from outside their bell jar.
And so I was delighted yesterday to be invited to join an on air talk show based in Moscow and, apparently, using the internet to disseminate both live and taped formats. This was all the more attractive to me since the presenter was the very same fellow who hosted the Vremya Pokazhet (Time Will Tell) shows in which I participated back in 2016 a number of times.
Here are two alternative links to my participation in last night’s show:
https://vk.com/wall-211860672_22217
https://rutube.ru/video/273e82ca07ab9020b1def0dba525a520/
Part of what I said is set out in a text above the frame of the video.
The question I was asked pertained to the very important article put on the internet the day before by veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh, an article in which he set out in great detail who was responsible for the sabotage bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines and how it was accomplished. See https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
For those of you not fluent in Russian, allow me both to summarize my points in the interview and to take them a bit further than time allowed on air. First, that the Hersh article is a piece of superb journalism: logical and very detailed while remaining easy to read to the end. My first question is how, where he gathered his material. However, I quickly came to the conclusion that this 85-year-old journalist did not have to travel the world to get his story. Rather it is more likely that the story came to him, that his source was from within the Biden administration, from someone who disagreed with the state terrorism which was carried out under personal direction of the American President in what could have, indeed should have been construed as an act of war against the Russian Federation, in violation of the constitutionally directed limitations on the President’s ability to act without Senate approval. The source of the information could rest assured that no U.S. or other state entities would dare to challenge Seymour Hersh to reveal his sources and that his imprimatur on the story would ensure a wide audience.
My second point was that this very day I had received from one of my associates in Germany a full corroboration of the essence of Hersh’s narrative from a German sailor who happened to be on board the ship participating in August naval exercises in the Baltic Sea from which the U.S. Navy divers carried out their dirty deeds of planting the explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines for later detonation. Consequently I am satisfied that the story Seymour Hersh has set out on his website is absolutely true.
My third point delivered on air yesterday but not carried in the video fragment published above is valuable because it demonstrates how being given the microphone on Russian state television can be an opportunity to penetrate the Russians’ own bell jar and offer to them some potentially useful insights.
I had been asked whether the Hersh article would die a silent death, not being carried by major media and described as false by the Administration. The part of my answer that you will find in the video is that it is too early to say, that the ‘dissidents’ in the USA and Europe will take up the cause of Hersh’s article and ensure its promotion to as broad an audience as possible. The part of my answer which has not been recorded in the fragment is the following: that I had heard one panelist on a Russian television talk show Thursday night say that the case as set out in the Hersh article should be placed before the UN Security Council by the Russians for scrutiny, and that Russia should set up an international tribunal in Moscow to hear charges against Biden, Sullivan, Nuland, Blinken and the other conspirators of the sabotage bombing calling for their being brought to justice for state terrorism.
Indeed, if the Russian authorities do not pursue this golden opportunity to hold the Biden administration to account for its crimes then they have no one to blame but themselves that the Information War is being won hands down by Washington.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023