In one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories, Sherlock Holmes used a “negative fact” to solve a mystery – the fact that a watchdog did not bark when a prize-winning racehorse was stolen.
The Scotland Yard detective: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
The detective: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.
From the negative fact that the dog had not barked Holmes inferred that it had recognized the evildoer. The mystery was solved.
In political communication, silence is at least as meaningful as words are, if not more. For weeks, the Russian regions bordering on Ukraine, especially the Belgorod region, have been under attack. There have been intense shelling, explosions and multiple raids by pro-Ukrainian, anti-Putin forces, such as the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps. Local population has been evacuated. Many houses have been damaged. This has demonstrated clearly that the Russian borders exist only on Russian maps.
In times like this, you would expect the leader to speak up, swear revenge, call for solidarity. But Vladimir Putin is not of this kind. He has been conspicuously silent about what has been going on. Instead, the Kremlin’s official website has been posting about his meeting with families awarded the Order of Parental Glory, his visits to the Federal Children’s Rehabilitation Centre or the Martial Arts Academy, and other charitable events. Everything is going according to the plan (known only to Putin). Even the audacious drone attack on Moscow deserved only a couple of general sentences.
I find it extremely ironic that Putin has talked so often and so emotionally about imaginary threats, like Ukraine’s plans to obtain nuclear weapons and take over Russian regions, or the unipolar world with Parents 1 and 2. But when a real war finally comes to the Russian territory and Russian people lose their lives and flee their homes, he is completely silent.
So, what does this negative fact tell us? First, we can say that Putin hopes to “sit out” the face-threatening situation and create the impression of “business as usual”. Second, he does not think, perhaps, that these shocking events deserve a mention. For Putin, the lives of ordinary Russian people are too insignificant. And apparently, for most Russians, too. They do not care about Belgorod or other regions. I bet they even cheered when those snobs in the Moscow suburbs were attacked by drones. Putin keeps saying that Ukraine is a fake nation. But the actual fake nation at the moment is Russia – no solidarity, no empathy, not even a basic instinct of self-preservation.
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