Medinsky Reloaded: Mythmaking as a Weapon of Mass Distortion

When lies are sacred and history is a matter of national utility

“We call for honesty — before history and before ourselves,” proclaimed Vladimir Medinsky, former Russian Minister of Culture and current Kremlin mouthpiece on everything from Ukraine to mythology.

It would be a noble sentiment — if it weren’t coming from the man who openly admitted that the legendary story of the Panfilov 28 is a fabrication, but called it “sacred and useful.”
In Medinsky’s universe, truth is optional, myth is patriotic, and facts are negotiable — as long as they serve Moscow’s imperial interests.

When Truth Is Treason and Myth Is Doctrine

Let’s unpack the gospel according to Medinsky — line by line, lie by lie.

🟥 1. "Russians and Ukrainians are one people."

This is not a historical claim. It is a political weapon.
To declare two nations "one people" is to erase their distinct languages, faiths, historical experiences, and collective traumas. It’s as absurd as saying Britons and Indians are “one people” because they once shared an empire — except even the British empire never dared to gaslight so shamelessly.

🟥 2. "Other countries invent myths that Russia colonized them."

Translation: Acknowledging Moscow’s imperial aggression is itself a form of aggression.
By this logic, Russia was never an empire, just a misunderstood philanthropist with tanks and Orthodox priests.
And if you dare suggest otherwise — you're mythologizing.

🟥 3. "The Russian Empire allowed annexed nations to preserve their identity, culture, language, and religion."

That’s a hell of a euphemism for banning languages, destroying churches, exiling teachers, and forcibly Russifying entire populations.
If the "preservation of culture" means converting people to Orthodoxy at gunpoint, burning their texts, and renaming their cities — then sure, the Empire was very generous indeed.
Like a zookeeper claiming he “preserved” the tiger by putting it in a cage.

🟥 4. "The best thing we can do for Ukrainian children is to fulfill all objectives of the 'special military operation'."

That’s not history. That’s moral derangement.
It’s like claiming that bombing a school is an investment in education.
Russia has destroyed Ukrainian schools, abducted children, flattened universities, and targeted teachers — and then Medinsky calls it “help.”
Because when the state owns history, even atrocity can be rebranded as kindness.

The High Priest of Useful Lies

Medinsky is not a historian. He is a state mythographer, a bureaucratic theologian who dresses imperial propaganda in academic robes.
His job is not to study the past, but to sanctify it — to turn war into salvation, occupation into unification, and lies into holy writ.

Like any theocrat, he demands not understanding but obedience — to the myth, to the mission, to Moscow.
To question the myth is to betray the nation.
To tell the truth is to risk exile.

The Real War Is Over History Itself

Medinsky’s words are not slips of the tongue. They are part of a larger doctrine: if you control the past, you justify the present and colonize the future.
And in Putin’s Russia, the past is no longer what happened — it’s what the state needs you to believe.

So no, this is not about historical debate.
It’s about the weaponization of myth as an instrument of imperial domination.

When Medinsky says “we call for honesty,” what he really means is:
“Believe our lie — or be erased.”