Another Delusional Propagandist — Meet Owen Matthews
18 June 2023 by Larry Johnson
I am hesitant to give any publicity to someone who traffics in lies, but this recent piece by Owen Matthews in The Spectator is so egregious and so out of touch with reality that I am compelled to set the record straight.
Owen Matthews masquerades as a Brit (he is a legit citizen of the U.K.) but his mother hails from Kharkiv, Ukraine. Got the picture? I think I am on solid ground to suggest he is a bit fanatical in his support of Ukraine. He speaks Russian and served as the Moscow Bureau Chief for Newsweek form 2006 to 2012. So he is not without experience. How can a man with this pedigree be so dishonest when it comes to writing about the current situation in Russia? He is not lacking in intelligence (by that I mean book smarts), which makes it highly unlikely that he is stupid when it comes to reporting on current events. His latest article, Where’s Putin? The Russian leader is losing control, is a stunner. Here are the introductory paragraphs:
Does Putin even still exist? Where is he anyway?’ asked Igor Strelkov, former minister of defence of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic last month in one of the regular video rants he publishes on his Telegram channel. It’s a good question. Since 3 May, the Kremlin has been struck by two Ukrainian drones while up to 30 more have fallen among the billionaire dachas of Russia’s elite along the exclusive Rublevo-Uspenskoe highway. Anti-Putin Russians attacking from Ukraine have seized at least eight villages in Belgorod province, capturing Russian soldiers and sending drones to hit the regional capitals of Belgorod, Voronezh and Kursk. Russia’s Wagner mercenary group captured and beat up a Russian regular army battalion commander and forced him to make a hostage-style video admitting to drunkenly ordering his men to shell Wagner positions. Meanwhile, Wagner’s founder and chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been touring Russia drumming up recruits and giving a series of highly inflammatory interviews in which, among other things, he has called for defence minister Sergei Shoigu to be tried and shot for facilitating ‘the genocide of the Russian population’.
And Putin? As Strelkov put it, Russia’s ‘commander-in-chief has withdrawn from hostilities’. Over recent weeks Putin has appeared to tell an audience of children that he sleeps ‘very well at night’; to briefly claim that the Ukrainian counter-offensive has ‘failed to achieve any of its goals’ despite then admitting Russia had lost 54 tanks last week; and to have breakfast with his ally Alexander Lukashenko and agree that Russian tactical nuclear missiles would be deployed in neighbouring Belarus. In all these appearances Putin looked stiff, puffy and stilted. ‘You can make reports to a mummy, but it does not mean that the reports are heard,’ continued Strelkov in an open attack on Putin. ‘Either we must hand over power to someone more competent, or take it upon ourselves to carry this burden. If a horse has drowned crossing a river, you can’t conceal it for ever. The wagon is sinking.’
To be charitable it is possible that Matthews pecked out this piece two months ago when Prigozhin was doing his almost daily, crazed rants and that his editors held it for some unknown reason. If that is the case then his editors should be fired for allowing this nonsense to run.
Where is Putin? He has been a busy boy.
Let’s start with June 13, 2023. Putin held forth for almost three hours with war correspondents representing a variety of news outlets and blogs. Imagine “Dementia” Joe Biden doing that? Biden would be hard pressed to do 30 minutes and most of his babble would be incoherent (e.g., God Save the Queen). If you have not watched this press conference it is worth your time.
Putin followed up this sit down by hosting the President of Algerian on June 15 at the Kremlin. How did a guy missing in action, as claimed by Owen Matthews, managing to do that?
The following day, June 16, Putin delivered the keynote address to the participants in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). It lasted several hours and he shared the stage with the President of Algeria.
On June 17 Putin spoke again at the plenary session of SPIEF, which also featured speeches by Xi Jinping, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, and President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
And let’s not forget that President Putin also had an extended sit down with the delegation from Africa (which I wrote about yesterday).
Owen Matthews is delusional. He closes his article with this nonsense:
A regime that is capable of such a massively self-defeating act of stupidity and mass destruction is capable of anything. Putin was dangerous enough when he was strong, confident and aggressive. Now, as he retreats into silence and paralysis and those calling for him to escalate grow more strident and more fearless, his career could be entering its most dangerous and unpredictable phase yet.
Putin apparently did not get the memo that he is silent and paralyzed. His actions at SPIEF showed tremendous stamina as he delivered multiple substantive addresses, met with various foreign dignitaries and talked in detail about the war in Ukraine and international economic issues.
When journalists like Matthews lie so blatantly to their Western audience about Putin and the status of the war in Ukraine, they are doing the crudest form of propaganda and setting up their readers for an eventual psychological break when the reality sinks in that Putin and Russia are not failing. Putin is not sick, isolated or quivering in fear. You need only watch the video evidence from his various appearances over the last week to appreciate that the West, and specifically Mr. Owen Matthews, are engaged in deliberate fabrications in order to try to shore up flagging support for the anti-Russian campaign. Propagating these kinds of falsehoods makes it more difficult for the West to find a way to extricate itself from its war with Russia. That is dangerous.