One of the more shameful aspects of our reaction to a horrifying war unfolding in eastern Europe is how quickly it can slip our minds. It seems our capacity for constant alert is pushed to breaking point, despite the evidence that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows little signs of abating.
Well, that was all true until Russian propaganda directed its bellicose rhetoric in our direction, and threatened to wipe out Ireland and the United Kingdom in a singular nuclear strike.
Russia-1, a state-run outlet and the most widely watched television channel in Russia, treated its viewers to a rather troubling item. Dmitry Kiselyov, the TV host often dubbed Putin’s mouthpiece, revealed Russia’s cunning two-point plan to annihilate the British archipelago (though he opted for the much more testy term “the British Isles”).
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One suggestion was a traditional airstrike, seemingly powerful enough – as per Russia-1’s graphics department – to eradicate not just London, Birmingham and the Pale, but Galway, Cork and every corner of this island too. Ireland’s sovereign distinction from the United Kingdom was, surprisingly, not acknowledged in this dispatch.
The official position of Russia has always been that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and that it must never be unleashed
But the campy broadcast straight out of the Bond-villain playbook did not stop there. “Another option,” Kiselyov mused as casually as you might discuss dinner plans, “is to plunge Britain into the depths of the sea using Russia’s underwater vehicle Poseidon”. Under this proposition, Russia might detonate an underwater nuclear missile off the coast of Donegal, generating a tidal wave just shy of half the height of Ireland’s highest peak to wash over the two countries, before grinding to a halt and gently licking the shores of northern France. Under this particular doomsday stratagem, it seems Brittany has been spared.
‘Television mock-up’
“Nuclear tsunami” is not a phrase suited to calming an anxious mind. But John Everard, the UK’s former ambassador to Belarus, attempted to assuage fears on RTÉ. “I would urge everybody just to keep calm . . . can we please remember this is just a television mock-up . . . the Russians do not have this weapon. I’ll say that again, they do not have this weapon.”
Nevertheless the broadcast generated opprobrium from the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Even the Russian embassy in Dublin – which currently hires more staff than the UK’s Dublin embassy – released a statement to assure us it is not official Kremlin policy to wipe out Ireland in a radioactive tidal wave: “The views and presentations in the TV show are that of the editors. The official position of Russia has always been that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and that it must never be unleashed.” This is most reassuring, given the state’s reputation for transparency and truthfulness.
The tenor of our reaction has been notable. For all the attempts to cast themselves as criminal masterminds, and for the alleged expansion of Russia’s Dublin embassy, the carelessness of their propaganda team has provoked ire. Plenty have raised issue with their outdated use of the term “British Isles”, and upset has been directed towards the ease with which Russian state TV elided our national status with the UK’s.
Nuclear wasteland
We may want to rearrange our priorities. It seems one thing more likely to whip up fury on Irish social media than the threat of turning the country into a nuclear wasteland is the terribly old-fashioned terminology with which they suggested they might do so. It is a strange thing to care about, not least when the aesthetics of the video mock-up makes Russia-1 look more at home in the 1980s than the present day. Every decent propagandist requires a good graphics team. This may be where Kiselyov was let down in his latest broadcast.
Part of the purpose of this kind of propaganda is to threaten the West away from active support of Ukraine
The obvious takeaway is that Ireland’s constitutional arrangements are of no interest to the editors at Russia-1. And the far more important thing to remember is that were we to face the worst possible scenario, “nuclear tsunamis” have little interest in the concept of the nation state, and radioactive fallout has a poor grasp on Ireland’s neutrality. We would be wise to acknowledge that the propaganda outlets of rapacious dictators who are currently invading their own neighbour will pay little heed to the technicalities on the outskirts of Europe.
And we might then want to take stock of what actually matters here. Vladimir Putin and his mouthpiece might look ridiculous. But a cartoon villain is still a villain. And the likes of Finland, the Baltic states and the rest of our eastern European colleagues are under constant and close threat, not just the terror of a bad graphics department. It should also remind us of the geopolitical good fortune we have been blessed with.
In response to the video, Simon Coveney urged via Twitter that we do not get distracted “from the real atrocities being committed by Russian forces in Ukraine”. He is right. Part of the purpose of this kind of propaganda is to threaten the West away from active support of Ukraine. Perhaps another goal is to trick us into getting lost in the noise. We shouldn’t let that happen.