Putin has a whole new kind of problem on his hands
One of my all time favorite jokes is a review of a restaurant on the moon: great food, great service but no atmosphere. Today you can take the simple idea of restaurant reviews to help get pravda (“truth”) to the Russians people.
Restaurants across Russia (and bars and hotels and any place you can leave a message) are getting bombarded with five-star “reviews” on Google and other websites with messages condemning Vladimir Putin’s ignominious invasion of Ukraine. Some of the messages could even one day prove of tactical value to Ukrainian command and control as Russian encroachment on Ukrainian communications networks advances.
It’s all part of a worldwide grassroots effort to cut through the Kremlin’s own version of Fox News. The state run media only reports what it wants the people of Russia to hear. Now you can help tell the Russian people what’s really going on. You’re not just limited to hinting that the head waiter “Vladimir” is rude, either. You can spell it out with that bald and straightforward and universal language known as English.
“5,800 Russian Soldiers died today, 4,500 yesterday,” reads one review of a Moscow restaurant as reported by the Daily Beast. “Stop your aggression, don’t let your kids suffer, if you go to war you will not come back.”
This clever idea began after a Twitter account linked to the vigilante hacking group Anonymous told followers to “Go to Google Maps. Go to Russia. Find a restaurant or business and write a review. When you write the review, explain what is happening in Ukraine.” What do you write? “If you don’t know what to say,” they suggested, “here is an example text: The food was great! Unfortunately, Putin spoiled our appetites by invading Ukraine. Stand up to your dictator, stop killing innocent people! Your government is lying to you. Get up!”
The movement is running into some problems, however, as some of the reviews on Google are disappearing. But even before reviews stopped showing up, users on Twitter and Reddit suggested switching to Yandex Maps instead, which is a Russian equivalent of Google Maps. Apparently it’s more widely used in Russia than Google.
Naturally Putin’s government will try to thwart every effort to spread real-time truth to the Russian people. But as Josef Goebbels discovered to his horror, you can’t both conduct a war and successfully lie to your own people forever. Sooner or later murder will out. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.