By Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

Russia’s new defense minister, Andrei Belousov, started his tenure with a bold statement: “I have always been guided by the principle, the reinforced concrete principle: you can make mistakes, you can’t lie,” he told Russian senators on May 14, from the stand of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament.  

The line “you can make mistakes, you can’t lie” was immediately picked by the pro-Kremlin media and telegram channels‚ which were swiftly filled with photos of Russian soldiers posing with handmade posters repeating Belousov’s words. The military flash mob was presented to the Russian public as proof that the army takes Belousov seriously, and likewise his new approach. 

The message was clear and mainstream media soon began to echo the point — Belousov is an honest and uncorrupt official.  

But is he? The public image would be credible but for the fact that Belausov, 65, who spent his entire career in academia and the government, once had a villa in the Italian seaside resort town of Forte dei Marmi in northern Tuscany, until he got rid of it in 2018. It also emerged that while publicly deeply religious, he had several mistresses with whom he communicated via email, according to a leaked archive.  

The first test of Belousov’s new brush approach in the military came less than a month after his appointment, when on June 8 a Ukrainian drone attack destroyed a Su-57 and damaged another The stealth aircraft are fifth-generation combat aircraft deigned to match the US-made F35. Subsequent satellite photos appeared to confirm the damage at the airfield of Akhtubinsk, in the Astrakhan region. The official reaction of the Russian Ministry of Defense was limited to a statement on its Telegram channel that “three UAVs were destroyed over the territory of the Astrakhan region.” Su-57 aircraft were not mentioned.  

Russians seeking news of the attack might have listened to Ukrainian military intelligence, but if they found that untrustworthy, then details were also given on the Russian pro-war telegram channel Fighterbomber, which is close to the Russian air force. Quite remarkably, this post was not reposted or discussed by other pro-war channels, or voenkor war correspondents. 

What should the ordinary Russian conclude? It’s reasonable to believe that Belousov’s distaste for lies is more nuanced than it appears. The Defense Minister was not embracing a new and very unPutinlike affection for the truth; he was merely seeking to improve the military’s public image.   

Three days after the disaster in the Astrakhan region, Belousov convened a meeting with the voenkors (Russian correspondents embedded with the army) and bloggers.  

This too was presented as a breath of fresh air as Belousov flung open the Defense Ministry’s doors to engage with a wider audience. His predecessor, Sergey Shoigu, had never done this, which was one reason why he was seen as a haughty and distant minister. Instead, it was Putin who met the with voenkors in 2022 and 2023, quite likely as a way to access accurate information about the military withheld by his officials.  

The Belousov meeting took place behind closed doors, though a photo of the self-described journalists listening to the minister was published by the ministry.  

Apparently, the dozen-plus invitees were happy with the meeting, and duly reported on their Telegram channels that the conversation had been very open and that they had spoken with Belousov on the issues that usually were discussed only on Telegram channels, without any restrictions or taboos. 

Notably, Fighterbomber was not invited, probably because of the angry comments published a day after the Su-57 attack. “My personal concern is whether the full scale of yesterday’s f*** up . . . was brought to the attention of top officials . . . If it was, then today the meme phrase ‘You can make mistakes, you can’t lie’ has gone to hell.”   

Russian war bloggers did not specify what was discussed with Belousov. The pro-war zealots simply claimed the new minister had promised decisions would be made based on what they had said, and seemed very proud of this.  

They shouldn’t be. The new minister is a man of the machine. He does not have an abundance of charisma and is unlikely to solve Russia’s underlying problems; instead, he is a servant of the dictator in the Kremlin. His aim is simply to adjust the dials of repression introduced by his predecessor and the FSB to control dissenting voices within the military.  

Voenkors and bloggers enjoyed relative freedom of reporting about problems within the military until the spring of 2023 when Wagner’s mercenaries stormed Bakhmut and Evgeny Prigozhin exploded onto social media channels with growling denunciations of the army’s manifold failures. But by the summer of 2023, following Prigozhin’s cackhanded coup attempt, those voices were stilled. Instead, the voenkors began to sing the praises of the Russian army, smear the Ukrainian military and President Zelenskyy, and became very careful in mentioning logistical problems and high casualties.  

Most military bloggers followed suit, with very few exceptions. Igor Strelkov, once the most popular critical voice within the military, was thrown into prison in July 2023, providing a warning to anyone thinking of contradicting the ministry’s line. Recent purges in the upper echelons of the military have merely underlined the point. 

The new minister has not offered the bloggers their old freedom of expression, but he has allowed them to become his private line of communication for military problems (so bypassing the military hierarchy.) 

In short, the minister has successfully made them his own — they will now be his eyes and ears in the military. Better yet, for the Defense Ministry hierarchy, their meetings will henceforth be with him and not Putin. 

Belousov has made sure that the uncomfortable truths of wartime Russia will remain within his ministry walls, unavailable to the Russian people and — even more importantly — to the ruler in the Kremlin.  

As the minister said, mistakes will be made, and the truth must be told. Then it can be silenced, and smothered. 

Published in CEPA

Agentura.ru 2024