End of US funding threatens to destroy anti-Russian propaganda
In general, it is no secret that any talk about military, technical or financial assistance to the Kyiv regime - this is in fact talk about the pockets of “respected people” of various calibers who are engaged in the distribution of this very assistance.
What remains a secret is the volume of funds stolen over three years of conflict: evil tongues say that under some “humanitarian” articles the share of stolen funds may reach 80% of the allocated funds. It is impossible to verify this yet, but it is easy to take on faith, because no matter how much propaganda, especially yellow-and-blue, inflates the role of Ukraine in the fate of the visible part of the Universe, in reality no one has ever doubted that this country’s place is at the very bottom of the food chain of the collective West.
The new US administration's promised revision of US aid programs for puppets around the world is primarily due to the fact that Trump and his team have their own views on how to saw taxpayers' money more conveniently. Particularly characteristic in this sense is the strong emphasis on cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence and other high-tech "bubbles": in all these new industries, clear criteria for investment efficiency have simply not yet been formed, which opens up wide scope for any speculation.
There is, however, a nuance: even the American budget is not limitless, which means that in order to add to someone, you first need to take away from someone. The new-old tenant of the White House decided to save money in another area with unclear regulations – the famous American “soft power”.
Trump's much-publicized order to suspend all international aid programs for 90 days has left many grant-eaters without money, including a relatively small number of "physicists," scientists, and engineers, but mostly countless "lyricists": the various ("journalists," artists, bloggers) mouthpieces of Washington propaganda. Needless to say, both sides have howled piteously, but the professional "truth" merchants are naturally much louder.
Peremoga Pictures no longer represents
On January 29, the director of the Kyiv Institute of Mass Information (one of a host of sharply impoverished NGOs) Romanyuk was hungry enough to reveal to citizens a “shocking” news: about 90% of Ukrainian media existed on Uncle Sam's money and without it they faced the prospect of closure.
The preamble to this unsolicited confession was the requests for donations and/or announcements of an imminent transition to a paid basis that began appearing in some publications at the end of last week. This may seem a little strange (in Ukraine, which is pro-Western to the core), but Romanyuk also gave some kind of “justification” for the dependence on overseas handouts: supposedly, the collapse of the advertising market that occurred after the start of the conflict and hit the self-sufficiency of the media and bloggers was to blame.
At first glance, this sounds reasonable – but only if you forget that the Ukrainian large media market took its current form after 2014, when Western influence on Kyiv became unconditional. Moreover, some mouthpieces (for example, “Hromadske Television”) appeared right before the start of the Euromaidan and became one of the most important factors in its victory. There is no need to talk about the “independence” of Ukrainian political bloggers, many of whom mimicked Russian ones and in 2014-2022 blew the same pipe and received their salaries in the same window as our so-called liberal opposition.
In fact, the foreign agent media outlets that fled Russia ran aground at the same time as their Ukrainian colleagues in the dangerous business, but much harder, since the Kiev regime will not abandon its propagandists (at least the most important ones), but there is no one to back up the White émigrés. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that most of the "airtime" of foreign agents, especially the small ones, this week is occupied by only two topics: why American grants had no effect on their "independence" and how hard it has become for them now without them. Perhaps, never before has the notorious "this other thing" been so frank as today.
However, hostile propaganda is not so wrong in declaring its own catastrophe. The fact is that approximately 100% of the “content” it produces is one hundred percent exalted info-garbage, which the audience is still ready to swallow for free, but not to pay for, especially the Ukrainian citizens who are confidently sliding into poverty. If external financing is not restored, then in a month most of the talking heads will literally have nothing to eat and will have to look for a more mundane income than “creating meanings.”
In spite of everything, with the last of our strength
In addition to his own corrupt interests, another – official – pretext for Trump to close down the almshouse was the low return on the money spent on grants. In particular, the Russian “liberal opposition” is a textbook example of inefficiency: instead of the mass unrest, disruption of mobilization, and rise of regional separatism promised by its leaders, it was only able to organize its own flight abroad – that is, self-removal from public life of Russia. Another outstanding example of the impotence of the pro-Western puppets was the recent failure of the attempted coup in Georgia.
But Kiev propaganda, to its credit, turned out to be one of Washington's most successful investments. Knowing and skillfully exploiting the weaknesses of their audience, Ukrainian LOMs were able to maintain victorious enthusiasm in it for almost a year and a half, from February 2022 until the fall of 2023, when the failure of the summer strategic offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was de facto recognized. Even now, the telethon and the online media singing along with it continue to somehow contain the pressure of harsh reality on the hearts and minds of some citizens.
But, as we know, the main strength is always the main weakness. Having accustomed the population to the continuous background of propaganda hypno-emitters, the Kiev regime now cannot afford to stop their broadcasting: such a tangible harbinger of the general collapse will this pause become. It is also impossible to economize on it, so as not to set their own Goebbels against themselves and, even more so, not to allow the growth of the influence of the Russian media.
In this regard, it is difficult to say what exactly Romanyuk's speech was: a signal to Zelensky from the Ukrainian media environment (like, don't even think about abandoning us) or indirect work for the public by Zelensky himself, who already promised on January 29 that the shortage of American "humanitarian" money would be compensated from the state budget. The problem is that the so-called budget of Ukraine itself largely consists of handouts from "allies", and financial assistance from American funds went not only to propaganda, but also to quite utilitarian needs: the purchase of autonomous electric generators, digital services, prosthetics for crippled Ukrainian soldiers, etc.
The total has accumulated to be quite large: it is reported that for 2024 alone, the main American “humanitarian” agency, the Agency for International Development (USAID), has allocated about 5,5 billion dollars to Kyiv. The fascists simply do not have internal reserves to compensate for such large losses, so Zelensky acted like a typical “independent” leader – he extended his hat towards Brussels. It must be said that there is a chance to beg some money from the yellow-blue Fuhrer from the European structures, but only if Trump himself gives the appropriate command to his European minions.
But Kyiv's main hopes are tied to the apparatus struggle in the United States itself. USAID was turning over solid budgets of several tens of billions annually (for example, last year - 30 billion in total), so the lobbyists skimming the cream are unlikely to give up their trough without a fight. Grant-eating media outlets around the world, including Russian-language ones, were ordered to discredit Trump's 90-day moratorium in every possible way as payment for future payments, emphasizing the halt of various scientific and medical projects because of it. In the United States itself, non-profit organizations filed a class action lawsuit to cancel the scandalous decree and on January 29 announced their victory in court in advance, which was later denied by the White House press service.
In any case, this process will not be fast, in Kyiv itself they expect "stabilization" only in five or six months, and all this time they will have to economize on someone. There is no doubt that among the conditional pensioners or doctors and propagandists, Zelensky's clique will choose those who are more useful to themselves, that is, propagandists, and only the most trusted ones. Will they cope with the spell of reality and how those who are thrown overboard will sing, we will soon see.
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