AFP
August 24, 2008 Sunday 1:59 AM GMT

By Marina Lapenkova

Television images like those of Georgia's president nervously chewing his tie and terrified civilians welcoming Russian tanks are being served up in large spoonfuls to Russian viewers these days.

The Kremlin's propaganda machine has gone into high gear with a steady barrage of footage and daily briefings that have left Russians massively applauding Moscow's military campaign in Georgia.

Heavily dependent on television for their news, Russians are seeing reports of battle-scarred buildings mixed in with unflattering images of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

On the screens of Russia's three major television networks, Saakashvili is mostly shown speaking in English in a not-too-subtle attempt to portray him as a pawn of the United States.

After the Georgian president was caught on video nervously gnawing at his tie while taking a call from his cellphone, Vesti television aired the embarrassing footage and an accompanying interview with a psychiatrist who described Saakashvili as unstable.

During a recent tour of battered villages, Saakashvili was shown being hurriedly bundled into a car after a Russian plane was spotted overhead.

Slow-motion footage allowed viewers to decipher his "Let's move away!" comment delivered in English to an official standing nearby.

President Dmitry Medvedev, who is facing his first major international test since taking office in May, is shown as a tough-talking leader even though it was his predecessor, mentor and now prime minister Vladimir Putin who spoke first on the Georgia crisis.

While Russia's two-week-old campaign in Georgia has been widely condemned in the West, television footage at home is "giving rise to an outpouring of patriotism, even reaching young people, who are usually politically apathetic," said media expert Irina Petrovskaya.

Some of the reports have focussed on how the Western media allegedly is unfairly portraying Russia as the culprit in the conflict.

"We were outraged by what they were showing," said Konstantin Ernst, head of state-run Pervyi Kanal television network.

Ernst said footage of Georgian attacks in South Ossetia were aired by major US networks to support reports of Russia's "aggression" in the neighbouring republic.

Media officials say it was Georgia's move against separatists in South Ossetia that put Russian public opinion on the side of the Kremlin -- and not television coverage.

Russia sent troops, tanks and air power into Georgia on August 8 in response to Tbilisi's offensive agaist Moscow-backed separatists in South Ossetia, where Russian troops have been stationed since the early 1990s.

"Russians had the law on its side, at least at the beginning of the conflict, which is why Russian media coverage appeared convincing in the country," said Alexei Venediktov, chief editor of Ekho Mosvky radio.

"For me, Saakashvili is the guilty one for firing rockets on his own people even though the Russian response is not beyond reproach," said Venediktov, whose radio station is often critical of Kremlin policy.

To make Russia's case, the Kremlin has put forward Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a telegenic politician who is at ease waging the information war.

His military counterpart, Russian deputy chief of staff General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, runs daily televised briefings, sitting behind a desk next to faded maps of the conflict zone.

"We are like schoolchildren when it comes to using the media," commented Lavrov, a former ambassador to the United Nations who has spent many years in the United States. "But we are learning."

A poll conducted this week by the Levada institute showed 70 percent of Russians believe their leadership did everything possible to avoid bloodshed in Georgia.

Some 49 percent accuse the United States of having a hand in the conflict by trying to strengthen its influence over Russia's neighboring states.