The famous journalist Sergei Dorenko died yesterday in Moscow at the age of 59. While riding a motorcycle, he lost control and crashed into a concrete barrier, which doctors today declared as a heart rupture.
For the younger generation of our readers, Dorenko is simply a well-known journalist. Older readers, however, remember well that it was this information specialist who, in 1999, on behalf of Boris Berezovsky, ensured the destruction of the opposition to the ailing President Boris Yeltsin and the transfer of power to his then unknown successor — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The main tool for this became the Second Chechen War, which diverted public attention from systemic problems in the economy and state governance to a «small victorious campaign» and elevated an unknown Chekist to the status of «savior of the fatherland».
For example, here is one of Dorenko’s reports from that time in Chechnya, showing the ruined center of Grozny. If one has enough information about the subsequent development of events and about the events described by Dorenko, it is impossible not to be amazed at the accumulation of propagandistic clichés in one article. There are tales of completely crushed rebel resistance that will continue at full throttle for another ten years, claims that the military operations had virtually no effect on the civilian population, and horror stories about whole units of mercenaries from the Baltic states and western Ukraine fighting against federal forces. In Dorenko’s language, the word «Chechen» is clearly used as a synonym for «enemy,» and the main refrain of his material is: the first Chechen war ended in vain (rather than having begun), and this one should be «carried through to the end. There is also discussion of plans for the future — what to do with those who fought against Russia, whether to exile them to Solovki, put them in reservations, how to identify «traitors» within Russia itself, etc.
Moreover, only 13 years after his sensational report, after the bombings in Moscow, Dorenko again states that «the enemy is not defeated». What conclusion does he draw from this? Perhaps that this problem has no military solution and that a political solution should be sought? No, he once again calls for a war against the «Chechens,» extending the concept of the collective enemy to the «North Caucasus.
«We simply know that there is a region in our country that brings death to Russian cities… I don’t understand why the North Caucasus brings death, and we don’t give an adequate answer… There are many shells and bombs waiting to be disposed of, warehouses are overflowing. General Kazantsev told me about it. I think General Shamanov can confirm it. Isn’t it time for us to go back? — He transparently hints at the need for a new genocide and the collective responsibility of entire nations for the actions of individual terrorists.
However, the Chechen issue did not let him rest even until his death — to such an extent that his last publication on his Telegram channel was an ironic comment «The Russians are coming» in response to the military formations in Chechnya chanting in unison the greeting of their chief: «Wa alaykumu as-salam» and «Akhat is power.» Obviously, his propaganda machine did not envisage such a «final solution to the Chechen question».