In Russia, police officers have had to attend propaganda classes since the beginning of the Ukraine war. During a lecture, the Russian state apparatus showed them a Bundestag speech by AfD faction leader Alice Weidel.
Russia is waging its war of aggression against Ukraine not only in the theaters of war itself, but also at home on the ideological front. Since the beginning of March, the Russian police officers have been ordered by the Ministry of the Interior to undergo political instruction once a week as part of a propaganda lecture.
This is aimed at promoting the “state political attitude” and the “moral and psychological readiness to perform the service”. AfD faction leader Alice Weidel has involuntarily contributed to the “awareness-raising work”, as the ministry calls the anti-Ukraine propaganda.
As “Bild” reports, citing the Russian portal “Mediazona”, a video recording of Weidel’s Bundestag speech of February 27, 2022 was played to the police officers during a lesson. In it, the group leader explains, among other things, that it was a “fatal mistake” to give Ukraine the prospect of NATO and EU membership. As a result, the country was lured into a “hopeless confrontation”. In addition, it has been apparent for decades that Russia would not tolerate Ukrainian NATO membership.
Nevertheless, the West has stuck to the prospect of accession and “arrogantly denied Russia’s great power status.” The AfD politician therefore sharply counts this alleged political misconduct and the sanctions against Putin’s country: “This is the historic failure of the West: the insult to Russia. “
Harsh words that fit seamlessly into the Russian propaganda event. What the police don’t find out: In the same speech, the AfD parliamentary group leader also describes the Russian attack on Ukraine as a “breach of international law” and “reprehensibility”. However, Weidel’s criticism does not reach Russia, as the police officers are only shown the abridged speech, which is limited to pro-Russian statements.
According to her spokesman Daniel Tapp, Weidel does not want to take responsibility for the sometimes distorted message of her speech. She “of course has no influence on who uses individual fragments of her speech for his own interests,” explains Tapp on “Bild” request.
The police officers are likely to have dealt with Weidel’s words, albeit falsified, in more detail one way or another. After all, they have to summarize in writing each propaganda session – consisting of video recordings of speeches by Putin and his followers, Security Council meetings, statements about information warfare – and then submit the report to their superior. Failure to do so may result in dismissal or denial of vacation. A police officer reveals this to “Mediazona”: “As long as you don’t write down all that crap, you can’t go on vacation”.
The opinion of the officials about the information lectures is divided. The whole procedure is “nonsense and nonsense,” says a Russian ex-policeman in an interview with the portal. He couldn’t take the events seriously. “There were topics I used to laugh at,” he says. “Some nonsense about the international situation” would then be written in the subsequent protocol. Nobody would be interested in the report anyway – that’s why the ex-policeman asked his wife at home to write it.
According to some police officers, the learning effect of the lectures is almost non-existent. After all, while they’re on the job, they hardly have the capacity to absorb anything that’s been said. Such courses would have existed back in the USSR, but even then they would have been useless. “No one has ever taken it seriously and they don’t take it seriously now,” a former police officer told Mediazona.
Nevertheless, according to an employee of the Russian Interior Ministry, there seem to be officials who take the lectures seriously and deal with them in detail. “There are already plenty of patriots among the servants.”
The head of a department at the Central Research Institute in Moscow is said to have celebrated his birthday too much. He was so drunk that he lost his laptop with sensitive data. He tried to downplay the incident to the police.
