‘Frightening’: Russian State TV Reportedly Struggling to Sell Putin’s War, Replaying Clips of Tucker Carlson ‘To Lighten the Mood’

Russian media analyst Julia Davis reported Thursday on cracks in Vladimir Putin’s state-run media apparatus, writing that the “ugly truth about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is slipping through.”

Davis, a columnist for the Daily Beast who watches “Russian state TV, so you don’t have to,” extensively quoted recent comments from talking heads on Russian state TV to make the case.

She concluded her analysis by noting that the situation among the Russian propagandists has gotten so dire, “to lighten the mood in the studio, [one] host resorted to one of the favorite pastimes of many Kremlin propagandists: playing yet another Fox News clip of Tucker Carlson and his frequent guest Ret. Col. Doug Macgregor.”

“In the translated video, Macgregor predicted Russia’s easy military victories over Ukraine and its total invincibility to Western sanctions,” Davis explained.

The host, Vladimir Soloviev, who helms one of Russia’s state-run evening news broadcasts then noted of Carlson, “He’s a lot more optimistic than my previous experts in the studio.”

Davis explained that hosts like Soloviev are struggling to frame the ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine and the devastating sanctions crippling the Russian economy in a positive light.

She notes that Soloviev, who has been personally sanctioned by the European Union, recently interviewed Andrey Sidorov from Moscow State University and offered a rare critical look at Putin’s Russia.

Sidorov said on state TV:

For our country, this period won’t be easy. It will be very difficult. It might be even more difficult than it was for the Soviet Union from 1945 until the 1960s… We’re more integrated into the global economy than the Soviet Union, we’re more dependent on imports—and the main part is that the Cold War is the war of the minds, first and foremost.

Unfortunately, the Soviet Union had a consolidating idea on which its system was built. Unlike the Soviet Union, Russia has nothing like that to offer.

Davis brought various other examples including state TV pundit Karen Shakhnazarov noting that the interconnected nature of Ukraine and Russia has led to legitimate criticism of Putin’s war.

“The war in Ukraine paints a frightening picture, it has a very oppressive influence on our society,” Shakhnazarov said.

“Ukraine, whichever way you see it, is something with which Russia has thousands of human links. The suffering of one group of innocents does not compensate for the suffering of other innocent people… I don’t see the probability of denazification of such an enormous country,” she added alluding to the clear challenges Russia would face occupying Ukraine in the long term.

“We would need to bring in 1.5 million soldiers to control all of it. At the same time, I don’t see any political power that would consolidate the Ukrainian society in a pro-Russian direction… Those who talked of their mass attraction to Russia obviously didn’t see things the way they are,” she added, noting that even installing a pro-Russia regime in Ukraine seems unlikely at this point.

“The most important thing in this scenario is to stop our military action. Others will say that sanctions will remain. Yes, they will remain, but in my opinion, discontinuing the active phase of a military operation is very important,” she concluded.

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