REMINDER: Bette’s Happy Hour with Paul Niland — Founder of Lifeline Ukraine

Bette members — please register to join Paul Niland, a reporter based in Kyiv, Ukraine, and the founder of the nation’s first suicide hotline, Lifeline Ukraine — Tuesday, May 14, noon PT

***BETTE MEMBERS: You will find the registration link at the end of the post below the paywall. If you would like to join our community events, please take out a membership. Thank you to those who already support a Mother of the Resistance.

“As a result of propaganda, Russia has become a death cult.”

—Paul Niland, Ep96 RadPod

Welcome to all the new members, and a heartfelt thank you to those who have been supporting my work with monthly, annual, and Founding Member donations. If you are new to Bette, scroll down to the very bottom of this post to access the registration link.

The event is tomorrow, Tuesday, noon PT.

As some of you know, I am working my way slowly through Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, and it’s not for the faint of heart. Nearly each page causes me to pause, and investigate historic and recent events. It was from Snyder that I learned famines are political.

As I wrote last week, I am revisiting Russian active measures that began in 2013 and 2014, laying the groundwork for the Great Information War.

I was reminded of a New York-based photo exhibit — Material Evidence. Syria. Ukraine. — the exhibit ran from September through October 2014 in a giant, Chelsea warehouse. Reviewing it again a decade later, you can still smell the Russian propaganda. The exhibit, financed largely by Prigozhin’s psychological influence operation based in St. Petersburg, Russia, was designed to paint Euromaidan protesters as reactionary neo-Nazis, while also painting Syrian rebels as barbarians.

Beware the tankies.

Today, High Fidelity and I interviewed a major voice from Georgia, and we will get that interview out to you as soon as possible. She has dedicated herself to exposing and identifying disinformation and teaching media literacy to youth in Georgia, and her work is under attack and she herself is at risk.

If we do not pay attention to what those fighting for democracy in this moment are teaching us, we will be worse for it. I bring you these interviews so you have greater global awareness, better threat perception, and are able to better take directed action.

So that brings us to our guest for tomorrow.

I stay close to my friends in Ukraine — they are not fooled by Russian information warfare.

I am so excited to introduce Bette members to Kyiv-based reporter Paul Niland, who is also the founder of the nation’s first suicide prevention hotline, Lifeline Ukraine — Tuesday, May 14, noon PT.

When I brought him back for Ep96 of RadPod, I knew it would be an important interview, but it still blew me away when he described Russia as a death cult.

When my podcast partner High Fidelity asked him why Russians don’t seem to care about the massive amounts of casualties they’ve absorbed in the past two years in Ukraine and what role propaganda may be playing, Niland said:

“The UK Defense Ministry said the number is 465,000 dead and wounded Russians… they don’t do medevac, they don’t take people off the battlefield… it’s even worse than that, they not only leave their own to bleed out on the battlefield, anyone who is retreating is shot by the Russian side.

“As a result of propaganda, Russia has become a death cult. The way that the supposed heroism of fighting and dying for your country is portrayed in Russia has become a fundamental part of their national identity. And one of the things that leads to that is the militarization of their society — we’ve seen that in the ten years since Russia has been at war with Ukraine.”

As I wrote earlier this week, when Niland talked about how Russia denied the war in Donbas a decade ago, I think about how Stalin denied that he was starving Ukrainians. Instead, he ran a propaganda campaign to pin the blame on starving peasants and not his failed collectivization. Poland ran its own propaganda campaign, putting up posters of Stalin calling him the “Hunger Tsar”.

“The domestic propaganda has not only turned Russia into a fascist state, but it’s also a death cult, it’s a place where people are indoctrinated into believing the lies about the reasons for this war.”—Paul Niland, Ep96 RadPod

Niland became a reporter after the initial invasion a decade ago, when Russia tried to portray Ukrainians as nazis — poisoning the truth, poisoning reality.

Please have a listen to our interview, and Bette members, please register for our Tuesday noon PT event below the paywall.

I am hoping we can put our heads together to see if we can help secure donors for LifelineUkraine.com. Niland founded the national suicide hotline a decade ago to help prevent veteran suicides after Russia’s first invasion. As we all know, war is hell.

The hotline is now in demand for the entire country. The group has been surviving on small grants, and needless to say, it’s a struggle.

Thank you to everyone who supports my work, and the work of many vital pro-democracy voices in this global fight for truth and humanity,

REGISTER BELOW…

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Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you as well to all those who support my work with your generous coffee tips and who buy my ebooks. Some of you prefer making subsidizing donations via venmo, and it’s always greatly appreciated.

Also, a private link to an annual membership discount for older adults, those on fixed incomes or drawing disability, as well as activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous/gmail. 🥹

More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.

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Begin each day with a grateful heart.

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