Putin, the Russian media, and conspiracies

According to David Hoffman (Jan 30 2000), Putin's brief as a KGB agent in Dresden during the last half of the 1980's was,

"to [look] for East Germans who had a plausible reason to travel abroad, such as professors, journalists, scientists, and technicians, for whom there were 'acceptable' legends, or cover stories ..... that they could use to link up with other spies permanently stationed in the West. According to German intelligence specialists who described Putin's task, the goal was stealing western technology or NATO secrets ..."

Acting Russian President Putin speaks to the media (Jan 13 2000) at St. Petersburg University

Putin is thus steeped in using 'cover' stories as a tool of  'deception' to conceal his real goals.

But how do you create a public cover story that you can:

1. actively control as a tool of deception,
2. actively change as circumstances dictate,
3. actively steer in the direction of your ultimate goal,
4. actively re-inforce in the minds of the public upon whom your status and power rests,
5. actively re-inforce in the minds of your adversaries?

In the case of Ukraine; as the events since the invasion of Crimea and the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine have unfolded, Putin has had to:

1. transform his cover story about simply protecting the language and cultural rights of those Russians living in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, as evidenced in particular by his focussing on his Minsk Protocol.
2. ramp up his his 'cover story' to white heat in the minds of the Russian people and the global public by pouring untold millions into his local and global (RT) propaganda machines,
3. sow the seeds of dissention amongst his EU and US adversaries in particular,
4. ensure that the Russian people are 'protected' from gaining access to western versions of his actions by e.g. controlling their access to western media and, most important of all,
5. sow the seeds of western 'conspiracies' against Russia

"America is everywhere, the West is everywhere, Nato is everywhere. Everything is organised against Russia," ( 25 September 2014) the veteran Russian nationalist MP Vladimir Zhirinovsky railed during a talk show on Channel One, Russia's most popular TV station."

Strangely enough, the president of Belarus, Lukashenko, has carried Putin's argument about Novorossiya , which Putin himself used to invade and annex Crimea, to its logical conclusion.

Let us now try to imagine that this argument of Lukashenko is aired on prime-time Russian TV. How will the Russian people react? Will, for example, Khodorkovsky, still agree with the annexation of Crimea by Putin?

M.B. Khordorkovsky

As Gary Kasparov  argues, "When commenting on the scandalous statements made by Alexey Navalny and Mikhail Khodorkovsky that they would not return Crimea to Ukraine, Kasparov emphasized that the conclusion an external observer could reach after this consists of the fact that there is no essential alternative to Putin in Russia." (Glavred)

Alexey Navalny

What is dis-heartening about Kasparov's statement is that there really does seem to be no alternative to Putin. Furthermore, the Russian people are been fed on a diet of  'conspiracy' theories that blames the West for everything that is going wrong in Russia. Even the pulpits are in lock-step with Putin.

(to be continued)