West attacked "West-2017" according to Goebbels precepts
Last week, the Russian Ministry of Defense summed up the general results of the last Belarusian-Russian strategic exercise (BRSU) “Zapad-14” of 20 – 2017 of September. (We will adhere to this abbreviation, because according to the first letters of the official - joint strategic exercises - this looks obviously inconsistent and unequivocal, which its operators should have thought of). The preparation for it and the practical promotion of the scenario itself were carried out in an environment of a months-long information attack unprecedented by NATO countries. “Western media frightened the most incredible scenarios of the exercise,” said Defense Minister General of the Army Sergei Shoigu on October 6 during a conference call. - It got to the point that some officials, including individual leaders of states, called him a prelude to the seizure of foreign territories. All these lies were exposed immediately after the end of the exercise, which was exclusively defensive in nature. ”Pay attention to the latest conclusion of the Minister. It turns out that during the preparation of the BRSU and during it, it was not possible to expose "all these lies". What have we seen? If the fight against thousands of gangs of conditional terrorists is just a war game with a planned, convincing victory over the "foe", then a multi-month battle on the information fields around it is not at all.
These were not “pukalki toys”, but, scalamburim, is the most natural reality! The war of minds, nerves, approaches to presenting information, to assessing the situation and the speed of reactions to it. There has been nothing like this in the practice of conducting such maneuvers before. And it is worthy of a separate serious study by experts. The following is an attempt by the NVO to analyze the stages of this hard bloodless confrontation. And, if possible, to reveal in him not the "appointed", but the true winners, to figure out whose it took. Or he takes it, because the West has cooled down about the “West-2017”, but the fangs have not yet covered up the fangs: interesting foreign analyzes appear in the foreign press about the past exercises, around which there was so much noise in politics and media space.
IS THE SHAPKOSPIDING ASSESSMENT LESS?
Immediately it should be noted that from the Western countries and their NATO minions (and not only them, bearing in mind Ukraine or, say, Sweden), the attack began on a wide united front, and without “reconnaissance in force” and not even “from the march” . And right off the bat (or how they broke off the chain), barely in March, a message was announced that the head of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, had approved the exercise plan. And from that moment on, day after day, these attacks were carried out very offensively and emphatically uncompromisingly. Certain “reliefs” were made only with the start of combat training, when it was no longer possible to hide from numerous journalists what a huge crowd of military observers were present in all the places where the BRSU episodes were practiced. But even then this “positive through the fangs” was often accompanied, say, with tar political reservations. All the efforts of the Belarusian and Russian information specialists of the West-2017, their NATO opponents each time tried to distort, reduce “to the plinth”, find in them the “secret aggressive meaning”.
The Belarusian side has also partially published its view on this “crossing of feathers”. The official organ of the national Ministry of Defense "Belarusian Military Gazette" ("GVH") soon after the end of the games rather originally hurried to notify the army and society that in the newspaper, network and TV-trick with the West "we were great to wash them!" (Quotation from Sholokhovsky the novel "They fought for their homeland"). With unbridled self-praise, it is reported that “all the details of the military information media machine worked perfectly during the exercise”: “The total number of official materials in the media now exceeded the amount of materials published following all the joint exercises of Russia and Belarus combined ... (Exercises similar to the past BRSU, From 2009 to 2015, four plus no less than a hundred different field outputs took place - to the present. - VZ) And how many links were there to the portal of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Belarus and the “Belarusian military newspaper. To the glory of the Motherland "- and it is difficult to count."
Let us leave aside the super-humbleness of this promise, so raging over the edge. For it is obvious that the matter in this case is not in the number of print and electronic publications and TV stories in the local, and even more so in the departmental military media, and not even in their qualitative component. Let us focus on a straightforward, in the spirit of the Comedy Club, a conclusion made without reference to any serious analytical source or, say, to a general from the ideological department of the Ministry of Defense (the style and hints of “YBG”): “If you ask the question of who won the information war, and who lost, it is obvious: who lied - and he lost! That is, NOT ONE OF THE FORECASTS OF THE MEDIA-FREE FOR BELARUS AND RUSSIA AND THE OFFICERS ARE NOT SUBJECT TO. No, we will not say that all these newspapers, websites, politicians and journalists lied to their audiences, but, in the spirit of the times, IT IS THE BATTLE OF THE INFORMATION WAR. THEY LOST. Blew. Slept through. Missed About ... (more, reader, make it up yourself) ".
The hint, of course, is understandable. But about "all these newspapers" and others "about ... about ... about ..." even with a cursory examination of the situation, one cannot deeply doubt. For - as if not the opposite! Let us take a look at things without a frantic capticulatory glee.
MOST EFFECTIVE WEAPONS
It is impossible not to see that the Western info attack on the teachings of the two allied countries, if we alter the famous “witness oath”, initially it was built on lies, only on lies and nothing but lies! On a lie in the third degree. Plus, they used Ostap-Bendery - “Get more cynicism!”. And who dared to doubt that lies and cynicism suddenly ceased to be a weapon in the information war of the West against both countries and the Union State and its two armies ?! In relation to the BRSU, these sister Lies and brother Cynicism were used more than fully! The feeling is that the political technologists of the Old and New Worlds and their anti-Russian pugs (not to say mongrels) in the “near abroad” once again studied the Hitler’s master of fooling the masses Dr. Joseph Goebbels (“A lie repeated a thousand times becomes true”, “We’re not truth, and the effect "and the like). And once again where, as unsuccessfully, did these propaganda patterns of a “poisonous dwarf” (as it was called “rampant Nazi” in the Reich) were put on the spreading fabric of the newly prepared bilateral exercises.
What are the figures on the number of troops allegedly secretly attracted to the maneuvers, with which the followers of the "trumpeter of victories of the German army on the Eastern Front" operated? These deliberate inventions were thrown sequentially, incrementally. As soon as official figures appeared in spring — participation of thousands of Belarusian and 7,2 thousands of Russian troops in the BRSU 5,5, thousand of 12,7 men — as if from Washington immediately reached the message: “We do not believe!” The Pentagon immediately started to get on to the borders of the Baltic countries and its "NATO friends" can be stretched from 70 thousand to 100 thousand. Russian military alone.
And it went! Warsaw and Berlin, even though they are now squabbling over reparations for damage in World War II, have unanimously poddaknuli: over a hundred thousand Russians will “saber in arms” at the borders of the alliance. Vilnius, where the rulers are every year widening the eyes of the Russian threat that they have designed themselves, "horrified" predicted "140 thousand troops of the aggressor." But "ahead of Europe all over" (and the Pentagon) turned out to be - as without it! - Ukraine: its General Staff announced nothing that the 230 – 240-thousandth group of troops are already taking part in the exercises, “while 100 thousand of them may turn out to be in the south-western strategic direction” - that is, in Ukrainian. Directly "aggression on two fronts" is expected!
Let's compare. During similar exercises in Belarus, 2009 (continued 20 days, 12,5 thousand participants, of which 6 thousand Russian military) and 2013-th (7 days, more than 12,1 / 2,5 thousand), they only showed “increased concern” Baltic countries and Poland. The rhetoric was in the sense that, they say, the individual elements being worked out were offensive in nature. Let's notice the “individual elements” of the teachings, but not all of them. But then nobody thought about the “invention” of truly fantastic numbers, so there were estimates, but not seriously. This time ...
Here are the general staffs of the friendly “deuce” informing that 3,1 thousand Russian participants will come to Belarus with their weapons and equipment - “98 combat tanks“104 armored combat vehicles, 32 artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, 27 aircraft and helicopters.” And the atlantists instantly launch the duck, which, firstly, the Russian army will arrive at Sineokaya many times more, and secondly, after the completion of the joint action, they will not leave, but will remain with the goal of "occupying Belarus." At this stage, foreign puppeteers connected their Belarusian puppets - “fighters with the regime” inside the country to the cause. And they already in June organized the first anti-war "protest".
Finally, it got to the point that in the midst of the exercises, 18 of September, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite was so much misunderstood that she rushed to New York, where, by hook or by crook, she obtained the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for a conversation. The president, judging by her press service, did not come up with anything more inimitably than trying to convey to her biggest overseas international leader, preoccupied with events in real trouble spots in the world (Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea), her endless fright over what is happening in Russia and Of Belarus’s strategic doctrine: “The head of state informed the UN Secretary-General about the actions of Russia on the border of Lithuania, the security situation in the region, and the threat that the aggressive exercises“ West ”pose to the people of the whole world. The president argues that it is important for world leaders and heads of international organizations to provide objective information first-hand about what is happening in our region (and it’s hard not to agree, but it’s not even the smell of a Ustinian leader. - V.Z.) . Grybauskaite told Guterres that the actual modeling of the conflict with NATO countries, the concealment of the scale and scenarios of the exercises, the deployment of military and tactical weapons (about these strange weapons - “military and tactical” - probably, to heighten deterrence. - VZ), are not conventional The actions clearly indicate the aggressive and offensive nature of the exercises "West-2017". At the same time, the head of Lithuania did not seem to be embarrassed by the fact that “at a time of mortal danger” for her state she is not with her people off the coast of the Baltic, but across the ocean on another mainland, 7 thousand km from the capital of her native country.And this was uttered by her at that time, when directly in each area of the exercise, literally crowds of military observers, including Lithuanian, were already sticking out, and in one voice already recognized the openness of the Belarusian-Russian war game. And about the conformity of its declared military agencies of the union "duet" data.
And the official representative of the Pentagon in Moscow, Michel Baldans, said the day before: “We recognize that Russia and Belarus have taken steps to ensure the transparency of the ongoing exercises.” However, she noted, however, that “the official data of Moscow and Minsk regarding the scale of the exercises do not coincide with the information of the media, which encourages us to closely monitor these exercises in order to identify any differences between the declared data on the participation of military personnel and equipment with actual information.” The official lady reasonably kept silent about the fact that the media gathered information thrown in by the US military itself. In the future, "any differences" were not identified, but the case on the UN site was already done.
Grybauskaite in New York also instructed the Secretary General that "recently the UN’s response to violations of international law has been insufficient and the organization is not fulfilling its mission in full." At the same time, the press service proudly emphasized that "the Lithuanian president is the only head of state facing threats from the West exercises, during the session, she had the opportunity to present the situation directly to the UN head." It is necessary to assume that after this communication, General Secretary Guterres was so frightened that he was speechless because of fear. In any case, he did not utter a half-sounding sounding of the “unhappiness” of countries trembling on the threshold of “Russian aggression”.
But the fact is what! An admirable informational attack! Goebbels would have applauded ... After all, even the permanent representative of the Russian Federation in the organization of Vasily Nebenzya “did not guess” to enlighten Guterrish about the “complete non-aggressiveness and broad transparency” of the Russian-Belarusian strategic exercises. It seems that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not give him about this.
TRUE GOALS OF ATLANTISTS
Immediately easy to see the following things.
The military component of the Western Military District is rounded 400 thousand soldiers and officers. That is, if we take the above-mentioned “data of Ukrainian intelligence” at face value, then more than half a district would have “stirred”. Or a third, if you believe the Lithuanian "military analysts."
To hide such movements with modern control capabilities is not possible. What NATO knew very well when they gave the start to the informational smear campaign. As they clearly understood from the beginning that: a) no “Russian aggression” is foreseen; b) all military personnel and equipment of the Russian Federation troops at the end of the games will certainly be removed to their barracks and car parks.
Therefore, it is naive to imagine that the Atlantists were seriously considering the options for what to do, “if Russia does attack”.
In this regard, at least one of the most concerned about the “Russian military threat”, Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid, who told journalists in Luxembourg (already after the completion of “West-2017”) is indicative of at least that she considers Russia’s attack on Republic Even despite the fact that “unfortunately, Russia is an unpredictable state that does not recognize its own signature on international treaties”.
And the popular Polish magazine Polityka these days wrote that “although NATO began to respond to Russian military exercises, the alliance still cannot deploy 100 thousand people in three days or suddenly lift any brigade to its feet.” What does it mean? And the fact that at the headquarters of the North Atlanticists in Brussels they did not immediately see the danger from the “stirring” of a small contingent of the Belarusian-Russian troops near the border line of demarcation of two antagonistic camps. In addition, neither in Poland, nor in the Baltic countries, nor in Ukraine, much less in Germany, did they announce high alertness in the national armies due to "possible Russian aggression during the West-2017 exercises", which several times said the ministers of defense of these states.
In the NATO countries, on the eve of major maneuvers of the allied "two", only a very moderately waving the bogey of the Russian threat was waving over the heads of their fellow citizens - why was it necessary to bring them to the degree of panic - it's more expensive!
The same magazine, Polityka, even logically globally explained to readers why it is not very profitable for Washington to recognize Moscow as “just such a scale of the“ West ”exercises as Russia promised the OSCE” (that is, 12,7 thousand officially declared participants, not 70 – 340 thousand as predicted by the Pentagon, the British, the Germans, the Balts and the General Staff Square). “In this case,” the publication argued, “in Western countries they may decide that Moscow is trustworthy and it’s time to end the sanctions.” Then there may be a consent to the appearance of blue helmets in the Donbass. When the position of Assad in the ruined Syria is strengthened, the Russians will be ready to leave the Middle East (they have already arranged such a show operation once). If at the same time they promise Donald Trump to settle a deal with the DPRK, the American president will be able to make a deal. ” About the obvious answer to the subtextual question: “And we, Europe, all of the above, need it?” - no guess.
Thus, it seems that the goals of the information tsunami on the teachings of the Union State did not consist in intimidating the citizens of their own countries and inducing them “in case of aggression” to take up arms. One of them, perhaps the main one, was to discredit these teachings in the eyes of the military of both countries, taking into account the psychology and mentality of Russians and Belarusians, to make them “come to their senses”. And if you do not cancel the teachings at all, then move them, say, to next year. And if not this, then at least noticeably reduce the number of participants - primarily due to the Russian military. That is, at a certain stage, this informational pressure acquired signs of psychological pressure. And, as it seems, the General Staff in some ways backed down. Below we will show it.
It is noticeable that considerable pressure went indirectly on President Sineoka Alexander Lukashenko. In the West, it is already well studied. His horse is “It is useless to press on me!” But this is, if directly, in the face. And if "not so rude"? Massive daily information stuffing, as well as epistolary via official channels (Old Man, even the notorious “hawk” John McCain wrote - see more about NVO 21 for 2017 a year) he was urged to “flinch” and close entry to the country for Russian military personnel and weapons. To the credit of the Belarusian Farther, he basically withstood the blow.
Therefore, to “rejoice” in the fact that “NO ONE OF THE FORECASTS OF THE NON-FRIENDLY MEDIA TO BELARUS AND RUSSIA AND THE OFFICIALS HAVE ANY KNOWLEDGE”, at least, does not make sense. For, again, the Westerners knew from the very beginning that nothing that they had thought about regarding bilateral war games (“aggression” and “occupation of Belarus by Russian troops after the exercise”) would not happen under any circumstances. Troops did not intend to arrange provocations. The informational hysteria around the “West-2017” itself is a big, well-thought-out and provocation played out like a note. Which, as we see now, the Belarusian side and partly the Russian side did not counteract by the most effective methods.
THE GENERAL STAPS HAVE BEEN TAKING INTO ACCOUNT ...
Developing the plan "West-2017", the general staffs of the two armies, especially the Belarusian one, as the day of the start of the BRSU approached, were noticeably shaking before such an assertive Western attack on the upcoming maneuvers. And, according to some data, they made certain adjustments in order “not to particularly annoy our Western partners.” By July, these plans adjusted to please “concerns about our teachings of Western countries” were finally put in place and partly “communicated to the interested parties”. And the attack to discredit the exercises broke out with a new force. General Staff reacted.
So, for a number of signs, it can be understood that the territorial scale of the exercises and their practical content were initially considered somewhat broader than in the version proposed in May. And that the final chord with the participation of the head of the Belarusian state should have been heard not at the Borisov range located deep inside the country 227, which is in the center of the country (73 km northeast from Minsk, 330 km to Poland, 290 - to Ukraine, 180 - to Lithuania), and "closer" to the state border. At least on 230-m Obuz-Lesnovsky under Baranovichi (140 km from the border with Poland) - the most used platform in Belarus for this kind of exercises. And even on the “Gozhsky” (27 km north of Grodno) - 21 km to Poland, 10 km to Lithuania.
And in general, all six of the Belarusian landfills involved under “Zapad-2017” were “deep in the rear”. In any teaching, of course, there is enough conditionality. But still, outside military experts were “somewhat oddly” to observe, say, the refinement of actions by border guards to cover the area of the state border where the hell out of the real lines of demarcation of countries. Namely, at the Losvido training ground, the 103 Brigade of the Special Operations Forces, near Vitebsk: from here 593 km to Poland, 355 to Ukraine, 215 to Lithuania, 197 to Latvia. While up to the Belarusian-Russian border (on which, as you know, there is no full border infrastructure), the entire 45 km. However, it may have been conceived this way: suddenly, conditional sabotage and reconnaissance groups and illegal armed formations that were blocked here, penetrated by the Russian Federation — so to speak, from where they were not expected.
In the middle of the exercise, Major-General Oleg Voinov, head of the Department of International Military Cooperation of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Belarus, at a specially briefing for accredited attaches and other observers confirmed that the six “guerrilla” training sites were not chosen by chance: “When defining areas for practical actions of troops to eliminate tension in relations with Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia are fundamentally selected polygons located at a considerable distance from the state border. ”
Those who heard this and the service ... and here we will be mistaken if we write "heard." None of the Western media has not noted this fact. The onslaught of attacks on Goebbels was not shot down. They wrote that “the elements of aggression are practiced at once at nine Russian and Belarusian test sites”, while silently saying that all of them are “at a considerable distance from the state border”.
For its part, the Russian Glavkoverh also did not "greatly anger the geese." He inspected the actions of troops at a 135-kilometer distance from NATO in Estonia - at the 33rd combined-arms training ground of the Western Military District (140 km south of St. Petersburg, a few kilometers west of Luga). I did not go to the 714th central training ground of the Russian Airborne Forces involved in the BRSU (Strugi Krasny, 67 km northeast of Pskov, 95 km to Estonia). And even more so, he refrained from visiting the Pravdinsky polygon located in the Kaliningrad region (7 km to the north from the center of the urban district of Pravdinsk, 17 km to the border with Poland, 82 km to the Russian-Lithuanian). By the way, Pravdinsky was not particularly noisy at all - only tactical training of motorized rifle units of the Baltic fleet.
It is also curious that, for the first time since 2009, the Belarusian and Russian presidents did not watch the final phase, as they say, from one binocular, but were divided. Lukashenko explained this by saying that he had previously agreed on such control with Putin: “At first, we planned to have a joint presence at the doctrine, but we decided that we still needed to cover this doctrine more widely so that people could see the presidents - where they work, how. The main phase is really here, here in Belarus, but very large exercises took place just in the Leningrad Region. ”
Certain logic is visible in this. However, the inadequate version of why the Russian colleague Farther did not even look at the main phase of the BRSU and what is the true background of why the chief clerks dispersed to different "main" points, let us remind you about this. In the "West-2009" for the training "last and decisive battle" they watched together (in Belarus). And in the “West-2013”, first inspected the troops of the two countries in Sineok (by the way, right on the Gozha frontier site), and from there flew by helicopter to the training field on the Baltic coast, where the “second main stage” of the exercise was organized. I also remember this. When, in due time, the Russian Supreme, contrary to the agreement reached and reached, suddenly did not arrive at the large Union Shield - 2006 maneuvers, the Belarusian Old Man watched them in “proud loneliness”, being blacker than a cloud, and then in his emotional manner expressed “everything that he thinks "on this occasion; He was offended then on his Russian counterpart.
Perhaps more than 3,1 thousand Russians should have been involved in games (for example, 2009 thousand participated in the “West-6”). By the way, they were mainly located just under Borisov, and not in the barracks of military camps near the frightened "Russian invasion" of Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine.
In this regard, it is noteworthy that powder smoke over the battlefields of the “West-2017” had not yet been dispelled, as the Russian paratroopers again rushed to 25 of September in Minsk in order to conduct a two-week special tactical exercise together with Belarusian special forces. This gave some Western observers a reason to immediately blame Moscow and Minsk for the fact that “a significant part of the Russian troops after the Zapad-2017 exercise remained on the territory of Belarus.”
In turn, the Belarusian 28 th paratroop battalion of the 16 separate Guards Airborne Brigade with reinforcement equipment, including armored personnel carriers, arrived at the 317-day tactical exercises at the Russian airborne troops Strugi Reds 103 of September. There can be no “suspicion” that the paratroopers didn’t play something on the strategic exercises that took place from 14 to 20 of September and decided to continue the “West-2017” so peculiarly.
The alleged mass exit of the Baltic Fleet ships with the participation of marines did not happen either. Instead, the Baltic Fleet in June-July conducted two local exercises in order to perform tactical tasks. It is noteworthy that if each time in summer, the “pre-30 ships” were brought to the marine polygons, then the entire West-2017 maneuvers were carried out by the entire 10 corvettes, minesweepers, rocket boats and the same number of different ships of the auxiliary fleet. For comparison: in the "West-2009" conditional enemy smashed 30 warships and around 20 support vessels of three fleets at once - the Baltic, Northern and Black Sea.
Perhaps it was this practice of Moscow and Minsk that allowed the commander of the US ground forces in Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges on October 2 to express confidence that the Russian-Belarusian military command "broke the maneuvers into several small exercises in order to circumvent the norms of international law in the field of monitoring large military games ":" However, from a professional military point of view, these small teachings were actually all interconnected. " On this basis, he suggested that "perhaps over 40 thousands of servicemen were involved in these nationwide exercises."
The Research Institute of Defense Studies of the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom based on the results of the maneuvers unveiled its "objective" conclusion: "According to independent estimates, about 70 thousand servicemen took part in the exercises." The “scientific” formulation is good - “by independent evaluations”! Well, the Ukrainian, as equally "independent" speculation did not use?
In both military departments there was no reaction to these conclusions “following the results of the BRSU”. And in vain. The official representative of the Defense Ministry of Russia Major General Igor Konashenkov objected to the head of the Ukrainian General Staff, Army General Viktor Muzhenko, when the latter categorically told Reuters at the end of September that Russia did not withdraw the military from the territory of Belarus after the completion of military exercises. And in fact he replied well: “The statements about the Russian troops hidden in Belarus demonstrate the depth of the degradation of the General Staff of Ukraine and the incompetence of its leader. Absolute non-possession of the operational situation at a distance of hundreds of kilometers from the capital of their own country and fantasies about the number of troops there are a reason for the immediate dismissal of such a Chief of the General Staff! If this is the result of the transition of the Ukrainian armed forces to NATO standards, then such a Ukrainian army could be a direct and clear threat to the North Atlantic alliance. ” The Belarusian General Staff, as if in the mouth, collected water, kept silent on Muzhenko's fabrications.
In this sense, the conviction of Alexander Lukashenko, expressed by him on September 20 after the completion of the maneuvers, was not justified, that after them “in a week, all the troops that were involved in the exercises will be in places of permanent deployment, including Russian, this question will disappear by itself. " Then he advised those who attempted to discredit the Belarusian-Russian exercises, "at least learn how to do it for real".
It is worth noting that this is a rather biased assessment of the real, and by no means conditional adversary in the information war around the “West-2017”. The Atlantists led her very much “for real” - truly Goebbelsian! However, Lukashenka most likely meant “truthfully” by truth. But it was not even necessary to wait for this from “our western partners”. And do not have to. So, it is necessary to develop their effective counter-methods against this kind of information campaigns of the West.
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