This is how it looks to a viewer of Russian TV. And that is exactly what I am. I learned about the horrific events in Bucha yesterday morning from a news report saying that Russia was convening the UN Security Council over the massacre allegedly carried out in Bucha by Ukrainian Nazis. In the evening, a Channel One host explained everything: “The provocation in Bucha had been prepared by NATO for a long time and at the highest level. This is also confirmed by the fact that shortly before, President Biden called Putin a ‘butcher.’ Listen to how similar the English word butcher sounds to ‘Bucha.’ This is how Western audiences were subconsciously prepared for this provocation.” I’m telling you, you cannot imagine the monstrous scale of the lies on the federal TV channels. And, unfortunately, how persuasive they are for those who have no access to alternative information. My point is that Putinist propaganda has long since ceased to be merely a tool. They are genuine warmongers and have become a political force in their own right. They demand war until total victory. Not even nuclear war frightens them. Live on air, they smear and destroy even their fellow Putin loyalists if they so much as hint that peace talks might be a good thing. Politics has become a propaganda snake devouring its own tail. The propagandists are creating a public mood that no longer merely allows Putin to commit war crimes, but actively demands them of him. Warmongers should be treated as war criminals. This whole “Radio Mille Collines” (a reference to the Rwandan genocide propaganda broadcaster) operation should be sanctioned now and one day put on trial. And I want to remind you that National Media Group, which owns the lion’s share of this machinery of lies, undoubtedly belongs personally to Putin; that is one reason why it is formally headed by Putin’s mistress, Alina Kabaeva (see our investigation, “Putin’s Palace”). The most decisive measures must be taken to hinder the work of these heirs to Goebbels. From a total ban on supplying and servicing their equipment to tracking down their assets in the West and putting them on visa blacklists. The monstrous atrocities in Bucha, Irpin, and other cities in Ukraine were committed not only by those who tied civilians’ hands behind their backs, not only by those who shot them in the back of the head, but also by those who stood nearby and whispered: “Shoot, shoot — we’ll spin this so brilliantly on the evening talk show.”