Russians See and Read Another Slant
to War, With Milosevic as a Hero
April 4, 1999
By CELESTINE BOHLEN, New York Times
MOSCOW -- Since the Cold War ended, no other event has so
divided the West and Russia as the NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia. The chasm is so deep that even words have taken on
opposite meanings. While Americans and Europeans talk about the
"genocide" of Kosovo Albanians by Serbs, many Russians talk about
the "genocide" of Serbs by U.S. bombs.
In Russia, the chief villains are President Clinton and NATO,
variously described as fascists and bullies. Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic, widely identified in the United States and
Europe as the man responsible for a vicious campaign of "ethnic
cleansing," is seen by many here as a defiant patriot, defending the
sovereignty of a country attacked by foreign aggressors.
But above all, the different perceptions stem from a stark contrast in
images. While Americans and Europeans watch in horror as
Albanian refugees describe being hounded out of their homes by
Serbian gunmen, Russians listen to Serbs tell of houses, bridges and
factories destroyed in the latest bombing raid. Albanian refugees are
occasionally shown on Russian television but usually they are seen
as the victims of a widening war, not of an organized effort to push
them out of Kosovo.
Watching French television in his hotel room during a trip to France,
Vladimir Kustikov, news director for NTV, Russia's main
independent television station, was struck by the difference. "There
they made a clear emphasis on the suffering of the Albanian
refugees," he said. "It was a clear accent that I guess is somehow
connected to the market demands in the West, and some political
pressures that are not visible."
"It is the same in my country," he said. "We are serving our Russian
market, and our Russian market is more interested in the fate of the
Serbs, in part because of the psychological closeness of the people."
If the Cold War were still on and Soviet information controls still in
place, these differences in perception could be written off to
propaganda. But the global competition between Washington and
Moscow ended at least eight years ago, and the Russian media, like
the U.S. media, is more or less free to choose its focus.
There are Russian newspapers and television channels that strain for
objectivity. Major newspapers have published articles blaming
Milosevic for the human tragedy in Kosovo, and criticizing Russian
foreign policy makers for supporting him. An NTV news team on the
border of Kosovo has conducted interviews with ethnic Albanian
refugees, describing their forced evictions, but the emphasis is
different.
"This huge flow of refugees is very striking, and it shows that the
situation is horrible," said Kustikov, who had to pull Russia's only
television crew in Kosovo out of the Serbian province after it was
caught in cross-fire that killed their driver, and destroyed their
cameras. "But the reasons are mixed. On the one hand, it is the
Serbian brutal policy towards the Kosovars. On the other hand, the
bombardment intensified this evil process, and people are afraid -- of
bombardments and of Serbs."
Not that Russian government officials haven't done their best to steer
public opinion behind a policy that has consistently attacked the
NATO bombing as an act of brutal international aggression. The
picture of the Yugoslav conflict painted at regular briefings at the
Russian Foreign Ministry is of Western support for a criminal gang
of drug-running Albanian terrorists, who have challenged the
territorial integrity of a historic Russian ally.
The difference in the political perspective can even be measured by
facts: according to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Kosovo
Albanians made up 60 percent of the population of Kosovo before
the bombings began -- not 90 percent, as Western analysts say.
Ivanov has also claimed that civilian casualties in the province
numbered 300 over the last year -- compared to a figure of 1,818
from the United Nations refugee agency, which includes 200
soldiers with the Kosovo Liberation Army and 139 members of
Serbian security forces.
Russian reporters on the ground in Belgrade have attempted -- so far
in vain -- to confirm Moscow's claims of more than 1,000 civilian
casualties in the bombing.
Sorting out fact from propaganda is not a problem just in Moscow.
Reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels have also had trouble
with official statements, in particular with reports beamed around the
world about the murder of top Kosovo Albanian political figures that
NATO later said were untrue.
At Sovietskaya Rossiya, the newspaper of Russia's Communist
opposition, Valentin Chikhin is openly skeptical about the Western
media's emphasis on the plight of the Albanian refugees. "The
people in Kosovo are leaving because they are being bombed," he
said. "People are afraid that a war will start there tomorrow; they are
afraid of an all-out ground war." In his mind, the West's skewered
reporting fits into a pattern of anti-Serb propaganda dating to the
1992-95 war in Bosnia and before.
According to Chikhin, the reaction from his readers has been a
ground swell of anti-American sentiments that is continuing to
escalate. Western diplomats put some of the blame for the firing up
of anti-Western views on official statements that have been
remarkable for their tough Cold War rhetoric. "The government has
a lot to do with how these emotions are playing themselves out,"
said one senior diplomat. "What I would hope is that the government
does not inflame these emotions, and remains mindful of their impact
on the pursuit of a normal diplomatic relationship."
But even Russian officials have been surprised by the gulf that is
opening between Russia and the West over Yugoslavia. A Russian
diplomat who asked not to be identified said this was not due so
much to media or politicians. "When the bombs started falling on
Serbia," he said, "many Russians felt as though the bombs were
falling on their land. You can't call this a good thing, even if you
don't consider Milosevic to be the savior of Yugoslavia."
He concluded that the emotional response to the bombardment had
less to do with feelings of brotherhood with Orthodox Slavs than
with Russians' own resentment at being dictated to by the West.
''It is a feeling of humiliation that Russia also feels," he said, ''a
feeling that comes when a big power is pressuring a smaller one." |
