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Kremlin spokesperson Peskov says, annexation of Donbas "is not on Russia's agenda", commenting the speech of Kremlin top propagandist Simonyan yesterday in Donbas (Simonyan urged for annexation). Let me explain, why this can be seen as a confirmation, not as a denial (Thread)
The joke "it is not true, as long as not denied by Kremlin" is actually not a joke. There are numerous examples of Kremlin "denials" that in the fact were confirmations. The most prominent one - several Putin's speeches as he said, Russia has not territorial claims vs Ukraine
Putin has confirmed many times, Russia and Ukraine have agreed on the border; Russia has no intentions to annex Crimea; or Russia has never sent any military personnel to Crimea or Donbas - the latter statements have been revoked by Putin himself later.
So if Peskov says "there are no plans for annexation" it only means that he wants to stress the topic, nothing more. So if a denial is not a denial, what can be a reliable denial? In other words - could Kremlin have done anything that can be identified as a plausible denial? Yes!
As in Russian political structure a person like Simonyan would never take such a step as a first visit to "DNR", AND a speech with urges towards Russia (!!!) without a permit from Kremlin, the only way to prove that her speech was not prepared and approved it Kremlin would be:
to dismiss her. If Simonyan would have been dismissed from her position, this would have meant, she has acted alone and against the Kremlin, she has brought Kremlin to troubles and got punished for this. Another soft way would be to start an investigation against RT (corruption).
As RT operates with huge sums of money, paying crazy salaries to expats and buying broadcasting slots abroad obviously for clearly-over-the-market price, an investigation on RT spendings would alway bring smth. Such an investigation would clear show, that Kremlin is not happy.
There were a lot of similar cases. Ministers like Ulyukaev were put in jail after a conflict with Rosneft Sechin, one-upon-a-time almighty Surkov had been stripped his position twice, etc. If Simonyan had acted on her own, such a reaction would be to expect.
As long as this does not happen, we should believe, that Simonyan's speech was calculated and approved. Either to prepare an escalation (to distract Russians from protests) or to increase pressure on Kyiv (forcing Zelensky to give L/DNR more rights and to "integrate" Donbas). END
