Russian Viagra as New Strategic Advantage? Russian Media Monitoring Report, 13-19 February 2023
The sanctions continue taking a heavy toll on the Russian pharmaceutical market. Many Russian pharmacies ran out of Viagra last week with no further supplies in sight. However, the propagandists rushed to assure that this is just a minor inconvenience since Russia has strategic stockpiles of sildenafil, the basic component of Viagra.
This monitoring report covers these and other topics of the disinformation spread by Russian state media and online parajournalists to manipulate public opinion.
More trends of Russian disinfo - find in our interactive dashboard "WARTIME DISINFO FROM RUSSIA"
“Why haven't we taken Kyiv yet?”
The ongoing hostilities received only cursory attention from the Russian media last week. This is no surprise considering the exorbitant human losses suffered during the attempted Russian offensive on Vuhledar and Bakhmut. Russian propagandists hardly said anything apart from quoting the emotionless bulletins of the Ministry of Defense while the disinformation media quoted Western media out of context to manipulate the public opinion: “US President Joe Biden and the warhawks made yet another deadly mistake by approving arms supplies to Ukraine since arming Kyiv with American weapons would quickly drain Washington’s own supplies and render the USA and its allies defenseless”.
Instead, the interest in the second mobilization wave in the Russian Federation is on the rise which is most likely due to the growing battle losses of the Russian army. Just like before, the officials are calming the populace with dozens of reasons to prove that mass draft is not on the table: “The press secretary of the president of Russia Dmitry Peskov said on 13 February that the Kremlin does not have any information that might suggest the need for new mobilization wave in Russia”, “Andrey Gurulev, a member of State Duma Defense Committee, said that the second mobilization wave in the first six months of 2023 is unlikely”, “According to the statement of Artur Gayduk, member of the Pskov Regional Council, on Telegram, the decree on partial mobilization in Russia remains in effect to secure the social guarantees of the mobilized Russian citizens".
At the same time, some specialized propagandist media seemingly decided to whip the level of patriotism among Russians with active calls for war: “I would say that some people just don't want to look up, they are so laid back! There isn't a hint of mobilization — I just can't sense this motivation. As far as the Unites State, Britain or Israel are concerned, those countries haven't had such wars for at least 80 years. Has any of them had a front line one and a half thousand kilometers long? Guys, wake up and smell the coffee: there aren't enough soldiers in the professional army, the private military companies — well, even the contract servicemen to close that breach. This is big deal. It concerns everyone in the country”, “All those petty quarrels and looking up to Xi, Putin or Biden, all those bravado reports on storming yet another fortified position god-knows-where that would make Artyomovsk encirclement one inch closer are making human tragedies feel routine and turn them into the new norm”.
Vultures Are Circling over Russia
The well-known propagandist Sergey Lavrov who doubles as Russian foreign minister isn't very happy. “We have never had true allies in the West”. Lavrov moans that there has been a lot of talk in the West about dismantling Russia after Ukraine's victory: “Just a few days ago, a panel of American experts and some professor from Ukraine invited by Hudson Institute spent two days talking about how to prepare for Russia’s collapse and how to handle it. According to them, it is just bound to happen, and they have nothing to do with it. They are already discussing who is going to get what!”, fumed the minister. “Friends and allies don't act like that!”
Lavrov keeps pretending to be baffled by the hostility of the West towards Putin’s policy: “The friendliness and trust that Western diplomats used to show while dealing with Moscow with after the collapse of the Soviet Union disappeared overnight right after the beginning of the special military operation”. The Western elites “simply stopped pretending and finally showed their true colors”, says Lavrov commenting on the level of support which Ukraine is receiving as the victim of unprovoked Russian aggression.
The Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya followed suite stating that the West has always had an anti-Russian bias: “You have shown enough of your deeply-rooted Russophobia to let us understand that it is the primary reason for your desire to destroy our country — if possible, using someone else as a tool. This is what drives you, the true source of your motivation!”
And, of course, the Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, one of the most active generators of wild statements and a true believer in all kinds of conspiracy theories, also complained about the treacherous West. In particular, Mr Patrushev said that “The countries of the West have been fooling Russia for decades. They promised partnership while plotting behind our backs”, “Over many years, Western leaders made lots of loud declarations and signed tons of documents that named Russia as a partner, but in fact they were only pursuing their selfish goals”, “The West has always dreamed about dismantling Russia, and it still wants it to happen”.
Stay Strong, Stay Erect! Russia Has its Own Viagra.
The news that “Viatris, a global pharmaceutical company, suspends the supplies of Viagra in the dosage form of a tablet to Russia” circulated all major Russian media last week.
As usual, the disinformation mongers responded with loads of reassurances: “There are many analogs of the American Viagra on the Russian market, and the domestic supply is quite ample”. The suspension of supplies of the coveted blue pills is bound to be felt by the average Russians since “the production of domestic potency drugs rose 11% with a 15% increase in sales over the first 9 months of 2022. Only time will tell if the local manufacturers will be able to offer domestic alternatives for the American-made Viagra whose supplies had been suspended and produce enough of them to meet the demand”.
The news reports on the disinformation media about Western sanctions and foreign companies exiting Russia are strewn with reassurances of Russia’s ability to replace the imports: “According to the spokesperson of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, “Russia has secured the technological capability to produce medicinal drugs with the same active ingredient”, “The pharmacies in Tyumen will soon offer the Russian analog of Viagra named Sildenafil produced by Northern Star pharmaceutical company, “The Russian analog of Viagra may soon hit the stores following the suspension of supplies of the American-made drug”. They also reported about the commencement of the clinical trials of a domestic analog: “The clinical trials of the Russian-made drug in the form of a tablet which contains sildenafil were organized within the framework of the state program for the development of pharmaceutical and medical industries”.
Viagra is clearly considered a strategic commodity since Russia has made stockpiles to compensate for its disappearance: “Russia has enough supples to satisfy the domestic demand for potency drugs containing sildenafil … We have built ample stocks of drugs based on sildenafil”, “The stocks of the manufacturers as well as the wholesale and retail industries are sufficient to meet the current demand for potency drugs in the Russian market for eight months”.
More trends of Russian disinfo - find in our interactive dashboard "WARTIME DISINFO FROM RUSSIA"
Also in the News:
The disinformation media ran misleading and manipulative stories about a recent man-made disaster in the USA. On 3 February 2023, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed near the town of East Palestine, Ohio: “The Biden administration is concealing facts about the disaster in Ohio”, “Ohio Suffers from a Horrible Man-Made Disaster: US Authorities are Hiding the Truth”. The disinformation media gloated at the disaster and even somehow managed to mention Ukraine: “Are you sure that this is Ohio, not Ukraine? Ignore the cries for help, cancel all relief payments” — this is a kind of response from Joe Biden that one of the commentators predicted”. The Methodology
We have built a comprehensive corpus of all the materials from Russian websites and those maintained by the occupation force (approximately 34,000 news items) for our weekly disinformation monitoring report. Each paragraph was processed by the algorithm which defines its topic automatically. The resulting topics (i.e. groups with similar content) were short-listed by the topics relating to the war or its consequences for Russia. The number of mentions of a certain topic was then counted for each publication. Our conclusions are based on the respective findings and contain quotes from paragraphs referring to each topic.
We used materials from lenta.ru, tass.ru, riafan.ru, russian.rt.com, regnum.ru, iz.ru, life.ru, trmzk.ru, vz.ru, donbasstoday.ru, novosibirsk-news.net, ura.news, newizv.ru, news-front.info, aif.ru, slovodel.com, nakanune.ru, kommersant.ru, ruinformer.com, rosbalt.ru, polit.info, sevastopol.su, ng.ru, expert.ru, dni.ru, kafanews.com, antifashist.com, dnr-pravda.ru, naspravdi.info, kerch.fm, anna-news.info, dan-news.info, tehnowar.ru, aurora.network, gorlovka-pravda.com, lugansk1.info, c-inform.info, 3652.ru, politnavigator.net, rusdnepr.ru, politobzor.net, doneck-news.com, mir-lug.info, odnarodyna.org, vsednr.ru, nefakt.info, novosti.icu, time-news.net, xvesti.ru, comitet.su, sobytiya.info, denis-pushilin.ru, dnr24.com, meridian.in.ua.
