The Winning Message

Rivals

Petro Poroshenko was on American cable TV this morning.  Poroshenko is the former President of Ukraine, defeated in the 2019 election by current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  Poroshenko remains in Kyiv, still fighting for his country.  And though he is under indictment on corruption charges, he has stepped up as a Ukrainian public figure defending his nation against the Russian invasion.

The Zelenskyy administration is playing a “weaker” hand against the Russian military might, but where they are absolutely winning is in media strategy.  Part of that is just the nature of the story:  Russia is, in fact, invading a sovereign country to try to force them to “align” with Russian interests.  It’s hard to make a good story in favor of  “Goliath” at the gates.  And while Moscow tried to create three alternate “theories” to support their invasion, none of them have caught on with the world.

Three Strikes

First, Russia claimed to be invading out of their own national interest, to prevent NATO from being “on the border” of Russia.  Of course, NATO is already on the border of Russia all along the western border, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. There’s nothing different here.  And Ukraine’s flirtation with NATO was mostly driven by Russia’s looming threat, a self-fulfilling prophecy anyway.

Then Russia invaded to “protect” the Russian speakers in the Eastern provinces of the Donbas, similar to Hitler’s protection of the Germans in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in 1938.  (Yes, I just violated “Godwin’s Law”, referring any current action to Nazi Germany.  But it’s truly the best example of what Russia is doing). The problem:  many of the so-called “Russians” in the Donbas are Russian speakers, but see themselves as Ukrainians, not Russians. 

Finally Russia itself violated “Godwin’s Law”, by claiming that their invasion was to stop Nazis who were taking over Ukraine.  There are, in fact, Fascists groups in Ukraine similar to Nazis.  But, much like the Fascist groups here in the United States, they are small and have little political power.  (Fascists in the United States?  Remember the chant – “Jews will not replace us,” in Charlottesville?) They didn’t represent a “threat” to anyone, but they did provide one of the excuses that Putin needed.

And for those who claim the US media doesn’t give Russia’s “side” to this invasion, consider this.  When the tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border, Western reporters were covering the Kremlin, going to press conferences, and doing full reports from the streets of Moscow.  But that soon changed:  Putin ordered anyone who referred to the action as an invasion or a war sent to prison for up to fifteen years.  There are reporters all over Ukraine, reporting unfettered except for Russian bombs.  Is it any surprise that the Ukrainian side is told in more depth?  US news networks would love to be embedded with the Russian invasion forces – if the Russians would allow it.

The Story and The Facts

Zelenskyy tells a compelling story; the story of David against Goliath, of a peaceful homeowner defending his own front yard.  Whatever else Putin does, he lost the media battle when he cut himself off from the world. And then Putin’s media plan went from bad to worse.  The “little” Ukrainians stopped the vaunted RUSSIAN TANK FORCE – the FORCE that drove the Nazis from Stalingrad and Leningrad and captured Berlin in World War II.

Russia lost its Black Sea Fleet Flagship  to Ukrainian missile attack, the Moskva.  The Russian Army had multiple commanding generals killed on the ground (targeted because they were talking on cell phones “in the clear” during battles!).  So they have resorted to a murderous strategy of killing civilians and destroying cities.  And it’s all on world television.  

Zelenskyy has united the Ukrainian message.  Even his political rival, Poroshenko, responded  with the same “talking point” as the Mayor of Kyiv, the young members of Parliament, and even the fifteen year-old refugees in Poland.  We need more weapons, or as Poroshenko said:  “We need three things:  weapons, weapons and weapons”.  

There are tens of thousand’s dead on both sides of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  While the Ukrainian media strategy is “winning”, what the winner gets is more weapons to kill more of the enemy.  That’s what Ukraine needs – but it also means that the war will continue.  The Russian “deadline” for a victory is quickly approaching – May 9th.  The blood and violence will surely get worse before it gets better.

Essays on the Ukraine Crisis

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.