Channel One on Sunday occupied the entire broadcasting grid with a propaganda "documentary" about "Russophobia" and the enemies of Russia from several parts, follows from the program schedule for July 24 on the channel's website. For almost the entire day, the Russians were shown the film “A Brief Guide to How the World Works”, parts of which were called “Russophobia”, “Propaganda”, “Enemy” and “War” (“war”, however, has nothing to do with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine since the film was released back in 2021).

The authors of the film claim that Russia and Eastern Europe are "Middle Earths". This is not a reference to John Tolkien's Middle-earth, but an awkward translation of the term "Heartland", which was coined by the English geographer Halford John Mackinder at the beginning of the 20th century and which Russian propagandists still like to use. Sometimes, however, in the film "Middle Earth" is modestly replaced by the words "Heart of the Earth." According to the authors of the film, whoever controls the "Middle Earths" rules the whole world, therefore all contenders for world domination "always came to Russia."

In a series about "Russophobia", the authors of the film reproach the Russians for kowtowing before the West and argue that after "the Great War, which pushed Hitler's European Union against the Soviet Union, the process of integration with the West went on continuously in the Heart of the Earth." According to the authors, this arose because in the Soviet Union such "Russophobes" as Rudyard Kipling, Daniel Defoe, Victor Hugo and Jules Verne were published in millions of copies.

After in the first part the audience is told about Russophobia and Western propaganda in the modern world for an hour and a half to unexpected music (for example, the soundtrack to the James Bond film), in the second part the authors go through some metamorphosis and say exactly the opposite: “The new communication mode has made propaganda , as well as any lie, impossible. Along with propaganda, the Russophobia that it engendered also sank into oblivion. In the history of mankind, propaganda has survived only as a mental artifact.

All these exotic statements in the film are called upon to back up with their authoritative opinion "experts", most of whom are foreigners for persuasiveness - sometimes real, and sometimes with a Russian passport, like, for example, the Swiss Guy Mettan, based on the book of which this film was made. The Insider has already written that Mettan received Russian citizenship back in the 1990s, and in 2017 he was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship. In the same year, Reporters Without Borders, after a conference he organized about the activities of the White Helmets in Syria , declared Mettan a repeater of Russian propaganda. In this film, Guy Mettan plays the role of a foreigner and blames the "aggression of the West" on the Catholics, who "changed the creed and provoked a schism." He also claims that under Ivan the Terrible, Russia again became a major player and it was Grozny who returned the country to its former influence. The legend about the murder of the king's own son was invented by "Western partners", the authors of the film continue the thought of Mettana.

The experts in the film are strange people in strange surroundings, some of them, for example, for some reason, give a comment while sitting in the bushes in the middle of the field:

Actor Gerard Depardieu also appeared in the film, who received Russian citizenship in 2013, and with him two apartments - in Chechnya and Mordovia (although for some reason he remained in France to live). He said that relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated relatively recently and the whole thing is “in the absence of culture” - this is how his words sound in the translation of the film authors. Who exactly lacks culture, he did not specify. The actor also lamented that Europe had forgotten how Joseph Stalin saved her from Nazism. In addition, Depardieu told how French journalists asked him why he admires the Russian president.

“I gave them the opportunity to list all the claims (against Putin): the persecution of journalists, the politician (Boris Nemtsov) who was killed near the Kremlin walls, but when they dried up, he answered calmly: “Yes, Putin, in my opinion, is a wonderful person, I personally can’t imagine to give the order to kill someone."

Another expert is a certain honorary consul of Belgium in Damascus named Eliyah Atiye, but there is no information about a person with that name in open sources. In addition, it is not clear why the consul in Damascus became an expert on Russia in the Channel One film. The consul claims that Europe does not like Russia because "the country has a sense of its own dignity", and in "Europe such things are "not welcome."

On behalf of Russian experts, the film features Andrey Dellos, a Moscow restaurateur, founder of the Pushkin restaurant, which Russian officials like to visit. Speaking about Russophobia, Dellos said that he faced it with his forehead every day and "no Pushkins can fix it."

Another expert in the film is no less than D'Artagnan, more precisely, Amery D'Artagnan, the chairman of the Musketeers Association, the Duke de Montesquiou. He stated that the bad image of Russia was created by the United States, which presented Russia as a continuation of the USSR, although in reality these are completely different things. Immediately after this, the "duke", somewhat contradicting himself, declares that "these things are connected only by the population and culture itself." Recall that earlier the Musketeer came to Russia to observe the elections and came to the conclusion that Russia with its voting system is "ahead of many states." The authors of the film clearly did not decide on a unanimous opinion about Russophobia: if Andrey Dellos (the founder of the Pushkin cafe) said that Russians in Europe are thrown right on the street, then D'Artagnan claims that Russians, on the contrary, are loved in Europe, just there are no good PR people in the country.

Another expert, former French senator Yves Pozzo di Borgo, known for posing on the peninsula after the annexation of Crimea in a T-shirt with the inscription “Obama is a schmuck”, claims in the film that when he was a senator, “summoned the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the head of Ministry of Internal Affairs, so that they give him a report on immigration from Russia. He claims that he suggested that they cancel their visas with Russia, and both immediately agreed. The comical nature of this situation is that the French senator cannot call the ministers to himself for an account.

Another expert, financier Serge de Pahlen, who for some reason is called a count in the film (apparently because there is no place for a commoner in the same film with the duke), explains to the viewer that real corruption is not when officials steal, but when banks raise interest rates . Therefore, according to him, the real corruption is not in Russia, but in the West. He also noted that Putin is not loved in the West for his Christian values:

“The West, in its desire to develop the world in the direction of postmodernism, develops the foundations that have existed for centuries and gives rise to protest in its own population. Putin fascinates a huge number of people in the West due to the fact that he embodies the old Christian values, such as family, homeland. The Western press does not talk about this at all.”

Why the divorced Putin, who gives yachts to his mistresses, personifies family values, the "count" did not explain.

The film ends with cryptic words, apparently generated by a neural network: “Real war is a war of ideas. In the new communication environment (?), humanity realized the scale of the conflict between ethics and pragmatics, and reality also appeared as it is, and then a new era began.”