After more than two decades in power, Vladimir Putin is the puppet master. The Kremlin gives editors and producers “metodichki”, or guidance on what to cover and how
You wake in your flat in a new high-rise on the outskirts of Moscow. It is a grey day, overcast and chilly. Your ageing mother has left a copy of, a popular conservative daily, on the kitchen table. Scanning the front page, you encounter familiar storylines: Ukrainian Nazis, Western machinations, Russian heroism.So says Vladimir Mashkov, a famous actor.
As the conflict has dragged on, the tone has become increasingly hysterical. While the fighting in Ukraine is still a “special military operation”, it is portrayed as but one front in a war with the West. Sanctions are proof of the West’s intention to bring down Russia. The memory of past traumas is evoked as evidence that Russia will weather any difficulties. Mr Putin is often referred to as supreme commander-in-chief, rather than his peacetime title of president.
Mikhail Katsurin, a restaurant owner in Kyiv, woke to the sound of explosions on February 24th. A few days later, he called his father, who lives in a small town in Russia. “I called and said, ‘Dad, they started to bomb us, Russia invaded Ukraine,’” Mr Katsurin remembers. “He said, ‘No Misha, that’s all Ukrainian propaganda—in fact it’s a peaceful operation and Russian heroes are saving you from Nazism.
Opinion polls show widespread support for the special military operation, as high as 80%. But the numbers are suspect. “Public opinion presupposes the existence of a public sphere, but that has been destroyed in Russia,” argues Mr Yudin, the sociologist. Rather than being tools to measure preferences, polls have become a means of control. Open discussion of the war is all but impossible.
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