Total cyber war, forced power outages across the country and the targeted disruption of internet services – for one of the Kremlin’s best propagandists, all these tactics are fair game in what she describes as a fateful war against the US.
“War [with the U.S.] is inevitable, ”said Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the state-funded Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik, who believes the conflict will erupt if, and not if, Vladimir Putin seizes more territory in Ukraine.
As Russia’s military build-up to Ukraine’s doorstep grows, Kremlin loyalists have pushed for even more overt aggression and bloodshed in the campaign to annex Ukraine’s Donbas region. The only thing getting in the way, they say, is US support for their beleaguered neighbor.
The club of G-7 nations, including the US, issued a joint statement on Monday demanding an end to Russian troop build-up on the border with the disputed area of Donbas in eastern Ukraine. 2014. The US underlined those words by deploying two warships in the Black Sea.
On Tuesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov threatened retaliation. “We warn the United States that it is better for them to stay far away from the Crimea and our Black Sea coast. It will be for their own good, ”he said.
The escalation was foreshadowed on state television Sunday evening with Vladimir Soloviev during the weekend. Simonyan explained that it was time for Russia to get ready for a showdown against the US, prophesying a kind of war driven by hacking, the forced disruption of Internet access, a power cut and a massive offensive against the US. infrastructure.
“I don’t believe this will be a full-scale hot war like World War II, and I don’t believe there will be a long Cold War. It will be a war of the third type: the cyber war, ”said Simonyan.
She warned that – in this theoretical battle – the US would plan to cut off electricity to entire Russian cities. She, in turn, speculated that Moscow could force a power outage in Florida or Harlem in New York at the push of a button.
“In a conventional war, we could defeat Ukraine in two days,” said Simonyan, “but it will be a different kind of war. [the U.S.] will respond by turning the power off to [the Russian city] Voronezh, ”she said.
The best RT editor claimed that “[Russia] must be ready for this war, which is inevitable, and it will of course begin in Ukraine, ‘arguing that the Kremlin’ is invincible when it comes to conventional war, but forget about conventional war … it will be a war of infrastructures , and here we have a lot of vulnerabilities. “
Her solution consists of Stalin-type measures to fix ‘vulnerabilities’ in the run-up to another escalation, highlighting the need for a hack-resistant, government-controlled Internet. “We still don’t have a sovereign Internet, but God willing, we will,” she said.
She wholeheartedly endorsed a suggestion made by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultra-nationalist leader of the Russian Liberal Democratic Party, who argued that all Russian opposition should be eliminated by May 1, 2021. ailments after the proper medical treatment has been refused – the Kremlin appears to be firmly on that course.
Simonyan argued that once Russia minimizes its vulnerabilities and renders Putin’s opposition powerless – which she says could happen within months – the Kremlin will finally be ready to annex Ukraine’s eastern region.
‘I got agitated and even demanded that we take Donbas. We need to fix our vulnerabilities as soon as possible, and then we can do whatever we want, ”she announced boldly. The host, Vladimir Soloviev, wholeheartedly agreed: “We only lose if we do nothing.” He argued that by including parts of Ukraine – or the entire country – Russia would be able to move the zone of American influence further away from its borders.
One of the Kremlin’s most esteemed propagandists, Margarita Simonyan is notoriously close to the Russian president and has received multiple awards directly from Putin. After receiving such an award in 2019, Simonyan thanked Putin “for the most important reward in life … this honor of serving one’s motherland.”
Her ‘service’ included RT and Sputnik-driven disinformation operations aimed at influencing the 2016 US presidential election, which she often brags about by pointing to the inclusion of her name in various US intelligence reports.
Russia’s recent cyberspace activities seem to serve as good practice for the “inevitable war” announced by Simonyan.
Last year, six Russian intelligence officers were criminally indicted by the US for using the world’s most destructive malware to force blackouts in Ukraine and damage the critical infrastructure of multiple countries, causing nearly $ 1 billion in losses. On Monday, hackers from Russia targeted France’s home education platform.
The Kremlin is ready to intensify its offensive against the West, but fears the retaliation that would follow. The idea of a bulletproof “sovereign Internet” – fully under government control within Russia’s borders – is already on the books, as Moscow has introduced the idea as a preventive measure against retaliatory hacking attempts by other countries.
Simonyan argued that Russia will certainly be able to take advantage of the US ‘catastrophic’ educational standards, referring to US military analysts and specialists as incompetent and stupid. She laughed heartily at the news that more than 200,000 U.S. service workers had hearing loss from faulty earplugs.
“We can never make agreements with it [Americans], Simonyan said, arguing that Russia might as well defeat the US in a cyberspace war instead.
She added mockingly, “We don’t even need the nuclear weapons.”