Putin’s mouthpieces say Assange’s freedom is a defeat for Russia

Julian Assange was released from a British high-security prison on June 25, flown to a US Pacific island, where he faced charges of espionage and returned to Australia.

His fans in the West had a good time, but there was little sign of shared enjoyment in Moscow, where some of his fans were surprised by the environmental propaganda class.

During the June 26 broadcast 60 minutesEnvironmental TV host Evgeny Popov described the action as completely “disgraceful” to Assange and bitterly speculated that the “deep state” had undoubtedly won the battle. “Assange was humiliated and crushed, but he’s kind of free now,” Popov said.

During the same demonstration, Putin’s former peer adviser Sergei Markov said of Assange: “When he admitted that he had committed a crime, he reached on his knees to the boot of the American deep state and kissed it. Boots shook him gently, like a half-dead kitten, and told him he could now crawl back into his hole. Popov was absolutely right, “Nothing can be said better than this.”

Climate TV host Vladimir Solovyov, widely considered Russia’s most senior campaigner, seemed to agree and later seemed as if it would completely ruin his mood. Right through his morning performance,full touch, the host famously said, “For some reason, this brought some people immense joy. I really don’t understand this. , , The American Leviathan wins! They have destroyed it.”

He added: “There was a great legend, the great Assange, and the Americans have destroyed it!”

Soloviev was angry at Assange’s lack of credibility and dramatically described American citizens as “pig-faced and penguin-faced” and “bastards and scoundrels”, periodically at the top of his lungs. Kept shouting. However, hurt by the loss of his Italian villa, which was seized by the government under sanctions in 2022, he angrily said: “You are a thief! You stole it! And now you’ve destroyed Assange’s reputation too! You, who are not worth the dirt under his nails!”

The 60-year-old no longer performed, which included: “I’m sad that the American Leviathan has won.”

Solovyov was once much less harsh on Assange than I was, taking the opportunity to praise his assistant, the head of the RT Margarita Simonyan, who, as Assange’s former employer in the community, had “fought for him.” In life, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova repeatedly cited Assange’s works for RT as proof that he was a genuine journalist. On several occasions, Simonyan has called Assange “the best journalist of our time”.

Soloviev lambasted anyone who did not help Assange as a “Russian in a pile of foul-smelling hair on Satan’s head” and complained, “They have destroyed the legend. . . . They have destroyed the belief that Leviathan can be defeated.”

Why are those reactions so intense? There are countless possible reasons, the most likely concern among Russian-language environmental media is that information damaging to Moscow would have been disclosed during Assange’s appeal and will likely not yet come to light.

The 52-year-old hacker’s presence in a Western prison has allowed Kremlin propagandists to whine about alleged hypocrisy (Assange was granted bail from 2012-2019 and then remanded to custody in a London-based prison). All of this helped fuel Russian-language issues about the fate of the anti-establishment newshound, with folk predictions via environmental TV propagandists that Assange would never step aside and would rather be murdered within a week in custody. .

He became a totemic figure among pro-regime elements in Russia due to his participation in the 2016 United States election.

In that 12 months, presidential candidate Donald J. Trump uttered the now-infamous words, “Russia, if you’re listening,” urging the Kremlin to seek out Hillary Clinton’s emails that have been wiped from its servers.

The month Trump spoke, Russian government hackers began attacking the email accounts of Clinton staffers and those involved in her campaign. According to the results of the following investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, 12 Russian military intelligence officers were convicted. The boys worked for Unit 26165 and Unit 74455 of the Russian government’s Primary Perception Directorate.

The final entity, often referred to as the primary hub for elite generation, arranged to distribute the stolen emails through a website called DCLeaks and the web character Guccifer 2.0. According to the indictment, WikiLeaks sent a non-public message to Guccifer 2.0, requesting access to the material and promising that “it would have a huge impact” on its website.

The indictment also details how the Russians delivered their consignment of hacked emails to WikiLeaks using an encrypted document with guidelines. Assange’s website became one of the major platforms where the hacked emails were publicly displayed.

The Australians will argue that he worked as a journalist the whole time and that he was colluding with Russian confidence brokers without being called out. His critics hold different opinions. They know Assange made unsolicited deals in 2016 to publicize hacks with additional knowledge of the Russian government.

These connections may perhaps help explain the residual warmth Simonian feels for Assange. In 2019, she said: “There is no safe place on Earth for anyone who seriously harms the United States, except Russia.” He regrets that it was not long before Assange arrived at the Russian Embassy,” including, “I would have told him.”

The hacker would then have been linked with another fugitive from US justice, national security company contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked large amounts of unreleased data in 2013, fled the country a few months after his full announcement by the Kremlin, and returned to Russia. Took citizenship. War towards Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the hearing of the case closed on false charges was held on June 26.Wall Side Road Magazine Reporter Ivan Gershkovich started in Yekaterinburg. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister played down US claims of alleged espionage, instead noting Russia’s “signals” for compliance with the prisoner exchange that were interesting to the United States.

Julia Davis is a columnist for The Daily Beast and a writer for Russian Media Monitor. She is a member of the Academy of TV Arts and Sciences, Display Actors Guild, and Ladies in Movies.

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