BY PETER POMERANTSEV
Putin and Trump the World Anti-doping Agency. WADA ruled Russia should be punished for manipulating laboratory data after the doping scandal.
Then there is the “covert” control over separatist armies in Ukraine, which is obvious to anyone with the faintest knowledge of the situation; or the outrageous denials of bombing civilians in Syria; or the social media campaigns in the US where Russian trolls posed as Americans to help push the vote for Trump.
The root of this behaviour is in the 90s, when the Kremlin’s leaders felt weaker than ever at home, let alone internationally.
Kremlin spin doctors who worked on President Yeltsin’s and Putin’s victorious presidential campaigns told me their overarching aim was to resurrect the idea of the strong state, even though it had all but come apart.
They figured they could make a weak Kremlin seem strong domestically by spreading the impression everywhere in the information flows and media landscapes of people’s lives. Thus they focused intently in taking control of television.
In more subtle ways, the Putin regime in the 2000s made a big show of blatantly rigging the elections: the aim to convince people the government was so powerful it could pull o f f anything.
The ultimate aim became, in the words of the spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky, to convince people there was “no alternative to Putin”. In a recent book Pavlovsky argued Putin simulates global influence by purposefully leaving the fingerprints of his hackers and information operations all over the world.
He said: “It’s all just theatre for a world audience.” As Trump and countless net trolls
Trolls are used in ops
Putin at Sochi Olympic Games builds a siege mentality everyone had better go along with as, both domestically and internationally, there really does seem “no alternative to Putin”. The faltering upholders of the global order are in a double-bind: Not to respond to the Kremlin’s jabs looks weak; responding plays into Putin’s promotion of the siege mentality.
We see this in action with the WADA ban. It might be the right thing to do, but it’s being spun mercilessly inside Russia as what the Russian Prime Minister has called “anti-russian hysteria”.
A firm response to Putin’s actions needs to be teamed with imaginative outreach – through digital tools and social media – to have worked out, gaining attention the Russian people, to make clear is power. And the easiest way to our fight is with their kleptocratic get attention is to be self-scandalising, government, not them. whether you’re Nasty Nick in The secret is to concentrate on Big Brother or Putin in Ukraine. the issues Russians and the rest of
Putin long ago proved to the world have in common but the domestic audiences there is “no Kremlin, for all its bluster, can’t alternative” to him, but to do it on fulfil – whether that’s success in the world stage he needs to show science and tech or developments the rules constraining his international in health and the environment. behaviour mean nothing Such contacts can show an and the West’s strength is hollow. alternative to Putin’s dog-eat-dog
All the time he must ensure any vision of the world and the emptiness push-back from Western countries behind his mirage of power. will be mere sanctions and not the ■ Peter Pomerantsev is the author sort of strong military response of Nothing is True and Everything where his weakness would is Possible: Adventures in Modern become apparent. Thus the focus Russia.
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