1984 in 2014: A new propaganda war underpins the Kremlin’s clash with the West

FIREWORKS, concerts, uplifting speeches and patriotic euphoria: the Kremlin is celebrating the annexation of Crimea as though Russia had won the second world war (again) rather than grabbing a piece of land from a smaller and weaker neighbour. The public seems intoxicated by victory in a war that was begun, conducted and won largely through propaganda.

Russians have been subjected to an intense, aggressive and blunt disinformation campaign in which they were bombarded by images of violence, chaos and fascism in Ukraine, sinister plotting by the West and evidence of Russia’s strength and nobility in response. The Russian media have always shaped reality as much as they have reflected it. But in the seizure of Crimea, television played as much of a leading role as the army. Russian television, widely watched in Crimea, bolstered the loyalty of the local population while justifying the Kremlin’s actions at home.

The propaganda campaign has seen several stages since the protests on Kiev’s Maidan began, says Lev Gudkov, head of the Levada Centre, an independent pollster. It portrayed Maidan as a conspiracy by the West. It showed the protesters as nationalists, fascists and anti-Semites who had staged a putsch, posing great danger to Russian-speakers. It faked stories of Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Russia (using footage of a border crossing between Ukraine and Poland). The case for taking Crimea, to defend the Russian population from an imagined threat, morphed into Russia’s reclaiming historic lands. Addressing a crowd in Red Square, Vladimir Putin boomed: “After a long, hard and exhausting voyage, Crimea and Sevastopol are returning to their harbour, to their native shores, to their home port, to Russia!”

Nobody knows how long Mr Putin has been working on the idea of this homecoming (some say since the 2008 war in Georgia), but the appointment of Dmitry Kiselev as the face of Russian propaganda in December last year marks the moment when he began to execute it. Mr Kiselev’s anti-Western and homophobic rhetoric made him a marginal figure a few years ago. But as the new head of RIA-Novosti, the state news agency, and an anchor on the state news channel, he has become one of Mr Putin’s key weapons (and is now subject to European Union sanctions).

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http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21599829-new-propaganda-war-underpins-kremlins-clash-west-1984-2014