Category Archives: Putin

The tip came from the enemy. So, of course, the president found it suspicious and provocative. He was, after all, ex-KGB.

But what came next would have infuriated Vladimir Putin even if he had only been ex-Bolshoi ballet. Right after their CIA tipped his officials, their embassy put it all online. So now just before Election Day ordinary Russians knew all about it:

Security Alert: Avoid Large Gatherings over the Next 48 Hours.

Location: Moscow, Russia. The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours. 7 March 2024.

(The U.S. Embassy alert left out one mega-detail that the CIAs Moscow operatives reportedly told Russian officials, according to a New York Times report: The extremists involved were the Islamic States faction known as ISIS-K.)

Putin promptly lit his famously short fuse, pounded his equally famous iron fist and moved quickly to make sure ordinary Russians knew he was in command and totally in control. Putin summoned the board that runs his Federal Security Service (FSB).

Putin blasted his enemies and made sure his words ended up in Tass, Pravda and on every Russian news screen. Without offering any evidence, Putin claimed Ukraine was now using terrorist tactics. He said the West was making provocative statements about potential attacks in Russia. And Putin claimed the Wests warnings resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.

Three days later, terrorists shot up the concert at Crocus City Hall near Moscow, killing at least 143 people. Islamic State terrorist leaders claimed credit for the attack. But Putin had his FSB director claim on TV Thursday that the special services of Ukraine are directly related to this and Russia believes the United States and Britain are, too.

If the Russians had taken the U.S. tip more seriously and had not scoffed at the alert and spun it into an unsupported (see also: Big Lie) claim blaming it on Ukraine and the West the tragedy might have been averted. Or minimized.

But while we are talking about the might-have-beens, we also ought to remember what used to be. At the turn of the 21st century, Russia and its new young president, Putin, were much different than anything we see today. The United States and post-Cold War non-communist Russia were, in many ways, becoming somewhat like allies in a new world order.

One day in 2002, while Russias new young president, Putin, was at work in his Kremlin office, his adviser on strategic affairs, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, was in his nearby office, talking with a U.S. journalist about his hopes for Russias new close relationship with the United States. Sergeyev, who had commanded Russias nuclear forces and served as defense minister, hoped the two nuclear superpowers would succeed in preventing terrorists from obtaining poorly secured nuclear weapons and materials around the world. (Yep, he was talking with me. I was writing a 2003 book and was managing editor of a PBS television documentary series, both titled Avoiding Armageddon.)

We talked about a most unusual and optimistic collaboration: U.S. Gen. Eugene Habinger, commander of Americas strategic forces, and Sergeyev, his Russian counterpart, had a series of meetings that culminated in the two top generals touring each others top-secret nuclear facilities. Sergeyev tells me that in his Soviet military days, he had no doubt, any American was an enemy for me. But now, he said, he and Gen. Habinger had bonded: Today our best friends in America are the strategic commanders of the strategic armed forces I saw many things in common between us.

Sergeyev envisioned a grand future that he once could not have imagined. A future of global security that is assured by the permanent strength of what he called an Arch of Stability. The United States, Russia and China that is the Arch of Stability.

Fast-Forward: Sergeyev didnt live long enough to see his former boss, Putin, erupt in a fit of rage and yank the keystone that was Russia out of that Arch of Stability that Sergeyev believed would be his dream-come-true.

In 2014, the late marshals former boss, Putin, felt enraged when independent Ukraine began a close trade relationship with Europe. In a flash fit of rage, Putins military seized Ukraines Crimea. Now Putin is making war on the rest of Ukraine.

As we all know, an arch that loses its keystone quickly becomes just a pile of rubble. Today, as a sadder world watches, Russias militarily aggressive Vladimir Putin seems intent upon achieving just one grand global goal. To borrow Winston Churchills famous phrase, todays Putin seems determined to make Marshal Sergeyevs Arch of Stability rubble bounce.

Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive. Readers may send him email at martin.schram@gmail.com.

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Putin, Russia and what might have been | Daily Gate City - Keokuk, Iowa | mississippivalleypublishing.com - Mississippi Valley Publishing

In the wake of the March 22 deadly Moscow terror attack by Islamic State Khorasan, a reactionary Islamist outfit, Russian President Vladimir Putins regime is targeting Muslim immigrants from Central Asia. The Kremlin is conducting police raids across the country at the same time that its trying to blame Ukraine for the attack on the Crocus City Hall entertainment venue.

Leaving 144 dead, the carefully planned assault is the deadliest IS operation in a European country. Some 360 more people were injured.

Four gunmen accused of the attack are from the predominantly Muslim country of Tajikistan. A dozen other suspects, from Tajikistan and other Central Asian countries, have been arrested.

Putin dismissed alerts Washington and its European allies gave Moscow about an imminent attack. But he also ignored a warning from Tehran, one of Moscows military allies, about a big terrorist operation. Iranian interrogators had gleaned this from Islamic State operatives who were Tajik, captured after deadly twin blasts in the city of Kerman Jan. 3.

Tajikistan is the poorest country in Europe and Asia. Nearly a million Tajik immigrants work in Russia. Some 2 million more immigrants in the country are from the mainly Muslim former Soviet republics, including Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

Russias population has been shrinking since 1993. Today young adults aged 25 to 30 are 5 million fewer than a decade ago. The only offsetting factor is a net immigration from Central Asia of over 200,000 last year.

Nine people suspected of links to the Islamic State Khorasan terror group were detained in Tajikistan two days after the attack. Families of the four alleged gunmen were also rounded up.

In Blagoveshchensk, a city in the Amur region of Russias Far East, a shopping center used by Central Asian migrants was set on fire. In Kaluga, southwest of Moscow, a group of people beat up three Tajik citizens, hospitalizing one. At least 30 similar cases of violence against immigrants have been reported.

Police raids on dormitories, apartments and workplaces where Central Asian immigrants live and work have sharply increased. Large-scale deportations have begun.

On March 27, cops and the national guard raided a huge warehouse on Moscows outskirts, demanding to see the passports and work permits of 5,000 workers. Police used batons to beat those who tried to resist. Some 40 people were detained.

An operation in St. Petersburg called Anti-Migrant was launched to identify and deport foreigners without residency papers.

Human rights lawyer Valentina Chupnik told the Moscow Times she got over 3,000 requests for help in the first 72 hours following the terror attack. There are 118 people who were beaten by the police and more than 400 people who were subject to tortuous conditions, she said. Many are held with no food, no water and no access to the toilet.

Immigrant workers are a vital source of cheap labor and big profits for Russias capitalists. They fill jobs from factories and construction to supermarkets and food delivery, as well as taxi and truck drivers. Putin is using the terror attack to intensify assaults on immigrant workers to try to deepen divisions among working people as a whole and to shore up dwindling support for his regimes war to conquer Ukraine.

Tajiks are really afraid that the Russian authorities will start sending Tajiks to the front en masse to fight as a sort of revenge against our people, Saidanvar, a Tajik rights activist, told the New York Times.

Young men from Muslim minority ethnic groups in the Russian Federation already make up a disproportionate number of Russian army soldiers fighting and dying in Ukraine. Putin made it easier for immigrants to become citizens at the start of the war to expand the Kremlins pool of potential military recruits. As police raids surge today, more immigrants are being taken to military registration offices or deported.

Over the last 18 months Putin has avoided a new round of forced service for the front. The last one in September 2022 triggered widespread anti-war protests. But on March 31 he signed a decree calling up 150,000 men for military service to back up his depleted forces in Ukraine.

The Kremlin claims the Islamic State gunmen admitted to links with Ukraine after the use of torture. The Ukrainian government vehemently denies this. The Russian governments Investigation Committee said its now probing the organization, financing, and conduct of terrorist acts by the United Sates, Ukraine and other Western countries directed against Russia.

Putin has a long record of utilizing terrorist atrocities as a pretext to attack political rights. In the wake of the seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002 by Chechen forces, he pushed through laws strengthening government control.

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Putin regime cracks down on Central Asian immigrants The Militant - The Militant

Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures during the Expanded Board of the Interior Ministry on April 2, 2024 in Moscow, Russia. President Putin proposed to change migration policy in the country and to identify the "ultimate beneficiaries" of the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall, at the annual meeting at the federal police agency. Credit - Getty Images

The conspiracy theories hit my phone before I even knew what they were about.

"Its a false flag."

"Its a covert U.S. op."

It was the night of March 22 and I was pulling into Kyiv on the long trip from the Polish border. The connection was patchy. I had to scroll back through the sound and fury of social media to find out what was happening: shooters in an upmarket Moscow mall were slaughtering civilians. Dozens were already dead. The former Russian President, Medvedev, was already blaming Ukraine.

Though ISIS quickly took all responsibility in the coming days, and though the Americans had publicly warned the Russians an attack was coming, Russian propaganda has only increased claims that Ukraine and the West were responsible. There has even been a video on Russian news showing the head of the Ukrainian national security council claiming Ukraine would be arranging more such fun in Russia. The video was an AI deep fake. The Ukrainians I met thought the propaganda predictableof course Putin would push these conspiracy theories and use the atrocity to further attack Ukraine. In the next days the attacks on Ukrainian civilians and energy systems were particularly bad. Russia used the terror attack to fuel more terror.

But I wondered how people inside Russia would react. Would they be persuaded by the Kremlin propaganda? Could one, and was it worth, communicate the truth to them? After all the terrorist attack is a moment of potential vulnerability for Putin: the supposed strongman who promises to keep his people safe, who does so much to insulate Moscow elites from the consequences of war, has allowed a massive terror attacks to take place in an elite Moscow shopping mall.

Two weeks since the atrocity some polls show a majority of Russians say they agree with the government line that Ukraine and the West were behind the attack. But polls can be difficult in a dictatorship. Other studiesby the same researchershave shown that many Russians will often go along with whatever Putin tells them, saying that the government is right, solely because it is the government and it has power.

Read More: Putin's Myths About Ukraine, Debunked

When I lived in Russia in the 2000s, I was always struck how people could hold different versions of truth at the same time, revealing them depending on how private the conversation was (or how much had been drunk). In the 2000s there were several such terrorist atrocities. In private Russians would often speculate that the Kremlin itself was behind themand Putin certainly used these moments as an excuse to introduce harsher rule and wars. Some even speculated that the Kremlin itself put out the conspiracy that it was behind terrorist attacksits better for Putin to seem murderous but all powerful, than so weak he can allow terrorists to murder easily around Moscow. In a political system as murky as Russias, such multi-layers of conspiracies flourish. But that also means that its easy for the Kremlin to push conspiracy theories, including the latest one.

If what you say you think is less about the truth and more about signifying your loyalty, then perhaps a better way to explore the relationship between propaganda and the Russian people is not polling, but looking at the dynamic between propaganda and behaviour, both physical and discursive (what people do and how people talk).

In a new report for Filter Labs that I have been advising on, data scientists fused Russian economic, social, and online discursive data. They found there were vulnerabilities to the Kremlins propaganda.

Take the issue of inflation. Inflation is rising hard in Russia. Costs for cars, for example, have gone up 15% since 2022. While Russian propaganda pushes out stories saying about great salary levels, online discourse shows that people feel their salaries are insufficient. Because of the lack of belief in the future of the currency, people are taking out a high amount of debt, thinking it can be paid back cheaply later: household debt has been increasing 17% in 2023. Government propaganda encourages people to save and not take on more debt; however, peoples behaviours shows that they dont buy this.

Even when government campaigns are successful, they struggle for momentum. For example, Russian propaganda has been pushing stories about how wonderful the Russian medical care is- despite problems with quality medicine since the start of the war. Such propaganda campaigns work for a few weeks, but then the conversation around this topic on social media becomes negative, and the Kremlin tries to drive it up again. Likewise with mobilisation: the Kremlin pushes campaigns promoting recruiting soldiers, the sentiment online to the policy goes up for a few weeks, before going negative again.

This pattern shows how important it is to the Kremlin to control behaviour and the tenor of discourseand how it struggles to keep control. Perhaps this is the best way to approach public opinion in Russia. Rather than about belief it should be measured in the extent to which the Kremlin can get people to agree to parrot the official narratives. Indeed the less they believe the lies yet repeat them, the more in control the Kremlin is. This need for control goes deep for Kremlin elites: they worry about losing it in the way the Soviet leadership did in the late 1980s.

That was always the threat the Alexey Navalny posed to the Kremlin. There was little surprising about his videos about Kremlin corruptioneveryone assumes officials are corrupt. What was powerful was the way he dared to say the unsayable. So powerful the Kremlin had to kill him.

With Navalny gone who else can deliver such campaigns that question the Kremlins grip? Is it time for the West to try them instead? Such campaigns are not about persuading Russianstruth in and of itself plays little role in this system. Its about showing the Kremlin it has less control than it hopes over the information space.

We should view information the same way we see military production, sanctions or drone strikes. When Ukrainian drones hit Russian oil refineries, they are signaling that Russia doesnt have control over its main sources of profit. If Ukraines allies were to show that we have the resolve to outproduce and sanction Russia effectively, Moscow would start to change its calculations around the risks its war involves.

If we show that the Kremlin cant keep its grip on what people say and do in Russia, they will also start to think about whether the risk is worth it. Sadly, with the exception of Ukraines strikes on Russian oil refineries, we are currently unable or unwilling to do any of the above. The Kremlin is outproducing us militarily; sanctions are weakly enforced; the Kremlins hold over the information space does unchallenged. Putin will calculate accordingly.

Contact us at letters@time.com.

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Do Russians Believe Putin's Propaganda? - AOL

Konstantin Kalachev, the pro-Kremlin head of the Political Expert Group, claimed the 87% vote for president Vladimir Putin stemmed from the regimes alignment with the desires of the majority, the most important of which is Russias identity.

Demands for well-being, justice, and freedom are also important, he wrote in a post on the Nezygar Telegram channel. But they should not clash with the ideals of greatness, dignity, sovereignty, state power and national identity.

The values listed by Kalachev have been cultivated through propaganda for decades and served as a convenient rationale for war. Putin has repeatedly justified his aggression as necessary to safeguard Russias sovereignty, and pro-Kremlin outlets publish articles arguing that sovereignty and warfare are essentially indivisible.

Historian Ivan Kurilla, who opposes the war and was dismissed from the European University of St Petersburg at the beginning of March, has observed that the search for an over-arching mission contrasts with the early Putinism of the 2000s, which tried only to foster widespread cynicism and had little pretense of an ideology.

Propaganda sought to persuade the populace that truth didnt exist, that everyone lied to achieve their objectives so that any values were merely a facade for the real agenda. Kurilla wrote that this stance directly contradicted any attempt to promote an ideology that relies on widespread trust and encouraged ideological opportunism.

After 2014, when Moscow illegally annexed Ukrainian territory, Kremlin propaganda began promoting geopolitics hard-headed political realism as a primary reason for its actions. For those unwilling to swallow propagandistic myths like the claim that there are no Russian military personnel in Ukraine, their presence was justified by geopolitical benefits.

Pro-Kremlin ideologists began asserting that Russian geopolitics served as a driving force for transformation to a multipolar world, with some openly advocating that geopolitics should supplant ideology.

In doing so, they infused the term with ideological content, arguing that geopolitics is a worldview, with the primary criterion being the confrontation between maritime and land civilizations (which sounds like a 100-year-old Russo-Germanic attempt to differentiate themselves from the maritime realm of the US and Britain.)

On the one hand, the assertion that a policy is beneficial for us is inherently cynical, particularly when it comes to starting wars and killing civilians. On the other hand, the target audience for such propaganda is expected to possess a fervent belief that such conduct on the international stage is advantageous to Russia.

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Six years ago, I termed this phenomenon ideological cynicism the establishment of a cult of geopolitics which, while cynical, remains fundamentally ideological in nature.

Even with the rise of this cult, Russians didnt immediately associate it with notions of national greatness. Surveys in 2018 indicated that the majority prioritized economic prosperity over national prestige.

Political scientist Kirill Rogov now living in exile suggests that in recent years a new Russian ideology has emerged that can be tentatively labeled kleptofascism. According to Rogov, this doctrine combines traditional methods of elite consolidation, based on kleptocratic mercantilism, with the demand for unwavering loyalty to a militarist-nationalist anti-Western ideology.

He argues that the loyalty of the elite isnt achieved through ideologization but rather their complicity in war crimes and the assets stolen as a result. The Kremlins confidence in the general populations support is also shaky, and the fictitious support of 87% for Putin in the election stems from this uncertainty, he said.

From the regimes standpoint, there are real issues to worry about. Opposition, real or potential, resides among several significant and identifiable groups.

Kurilla observes that ideological opportunists are fundamentally unhappy with forced ideologization, particularly when it involves their children. Alongside liberals and a dissatisfied faction of conservative coalition supporters, they may eventually voice dissent against the authorities actions.

Another group likely to express dissatisfaction is residents of the occupied territories of Ukraine. Russian and Western observers consistently report how Ukrainians are coerced into acquiring Russian citizenship without which they face the denial of pensions, benefits, and even medical assistance.

Additionally, there is an active policy of population laundering, where citizens and children in the occupied territories are pushed to go to Russia, while these areas are simultaneously repopulated with Russians. Practices such as torture, abduction, and a refusal to rebuild destroyed housing are inflicted on disloyal residents. Its clear that if the repressive apparatus weakens, the discontent of the occupied population will surge.

The regimes kleptocratic nature also hinders ideologization. Laws proposed in the State Duma in February, except for a handful of repressive measures, were all developed to benefit specific deputies.

While this may not faze the cynical majority in Russian society, it can instill doubt among young people who have not yet been inoculated with cynicism. Those ordered to sacrifice themselves at the regimes behest, only to become disillusioned, will undoubtedly form a significant portion of the future coalition of the discontented.

Kseniya Kirillova is an analyst focused on Russian society, mentality, propaganda, and foreign policy.The author of numerous articles for CEPA and the Jamestown Foundation, she has also written for the Atlantic Council, Stratfor, and others.

Europes Edgeis CEPAs online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or viewsof the institutions they representor the Center for European Policy Analysis.

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Putin and the Superiority Myth - Center for European Policy Analysis

Image: Thomas Kronsteiner ( Getty Images )

If you thought the current landscape of video game consoles and handhelds was already packed, the entirety of Russia has something to say about that. At the very least, Russias president Vladimir Putin does, since hes issued a mandate: produce Russian video game consoles to compete with the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Bit of a tall order there.

Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger

Per a report from the Russian newspaper Kommersant, the order was handed down from the Kremlin to consider the issue of organizing the production of stationary and portable game consoles and game consoles. Kommersants sources tell the nationally distributed Russian paper that the VK Group, a major Russian tech company behind the similarly named social media service VK, will be largely responsible for the project. The production of consoles will be handled by the GS Group, which was previously known as General Satellite and is the single largest Russian developer of set-top boxes.

As part of the order from the Russian government on March 25, the VK and GS Groups will be responsible for producing both home and portable consoles for Russian consumers by June 15, 2024. The order has only grown taller. This move isnt Russias first in the video game industrythe country tried to penetrate gaming communities last year, and considered creating its own game engine the year before that. But it does mark a remarkable shift since the majority of the games industry cut off relations with the country amidst its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russias government is now trying to effectively kick off its own games industry, likely to offset the financial sting of those sanctions.

As an additional measure of Russias order, these developers have also been tasked with the creation of an operating system and a cloud system for delivering games and programs to users. Again, the government and these developers have been ordered to realize this by the middle of June. Of this year. Our own functional cloud services, like Remote Play and PS3 game streaming on PS5, still falter, leaving the possibility of realizing this in a matter of months unfeasible.

Per the Kommersant, analysts are already saying that there is no competence to produce their own PlayStation and Xbox consoles, and creating such a system from scratch will take up to ten years.

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Vladimir Putin Pushes Russia To Make Consoles To Compete With PlayStation And Xbox - Kotaku

A new collection of essays called War on Ukraine, edited by Hal Brands, and published by Johns Hopkins University press, marks the two-year anniversary of Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It covers all aspects of the war from its origins to its conduct, to the impact of economic sanctions and the role of China. It is a terrific resource, with excellent chapters, and can be downloaded for free.

My own contribution to it considers Vladimir Putin as a strategic fanatic, reflecting his persistent fixation with Ukraine and tendency, when faced with the dire consequences of each decision, to double down in the hope that even more extreme measures will give him the result he seeks. This is more than just being a bad strategist. There are certainly elements of this underestimation of the enemy, over-reliance on hunches about how others will act, and not thinking through the likely effects of a course of action. Fanaticism goes beyond this. To quote myself:

Its a refusal to accept that the problem as framed cannot be solved, a pattern of error that stems from obsession and a readiness to go to extraordinary lengths to satisfy that obsession, even as satisfaction remains elusive. Dictionary definitions of a fanatic refer to someone with extreme beliefs that lead them to behave in unreasonable ways. Putins fixation with Ukraine, almost as soon as he began his second stint as president in 2012, has led to calamitous errors of strategic judgement.

It is possible to follow the development of Putins Ukraine policy from the moment he took power at the turn of the century, through Ukraines Orange Revolution of 2004-05, and then the more aggressive turn once he returned to the Russian presidency in 2012. He has been consistent. He wants Ukraine to be firmly in the Russian sphere of influence with a supine government. His fallback position, when that seems out of reach, is to encourage the fragmentation of Ukraine, with contiguous pieces of land acquired for the Russian Federation. This secondary objective contradicts the first, as it encourages Ukraine to turn even more to the West for support and security.

One can go back deep into history to explore the origins of the conflict, as Putin often does, but a good starting point to understand how we got to where we are is the summer of 2013. This is when Putin decided to put an economic squeeze on Ukraine to deter its government from signing an association agreement with the EU, reflecting his determination to prevent Ukraine falling into a Western sphere of influence. Nato membership was not on the table at this time. In fact Ukraines then-president, Viktor Yanukovych, was as pro-Russian as Putin was ever going to get. Nonetheless this singular act of independence led to him being completely undermined by blatant coercion. With the economy in a desperate situation Yanukovych walked away from the EU agreement. The counter-reaction was intense, with large protests in Kyiv and elsewhere. Yanukovych eventually ran away from Kyiv and a pro-Western government took over.

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One thing led to another. Putins reaction in March 2014 was to seize Crimea and encourage rebellions in eastern Ukraine, prioritising Ukraines dismemberment. Then, through the Minsk agreements, he sought to use the Russian-sponsored rebel enclaves in the Donbas region as levers to influence the Ukrainian government and prevent it from taking anti-Russian positions. It was when that effort failed that he decided, in February 2022, to invade the country and instal a puppet government in Kyiv. And when that also failed, he was back to dismemberment, to the point that he now refuses to countenance any peace deal that denies him the four Ukrainian provinces he is currently trying to occupy in addition to Crimea. As this would still leave the non-occupied 80 per cent of the country deeply hostile to Russia, the primary objective has by necessity come back into view. Hopes have revived in Moscow that Ukraine might be so weakened by the loss of US support that Putin can return to its original plan and occupy the major cities, including Kyiv.

As I have argued many times, Russias inability to achieve its objectives and so win the war is not the same as a Ukrainian victory. Ukraine has suffered a lot and continues to do so. A ceasefire based on the current lines of contact would be seen in Kyiv as a defeat because it would leave sovereign territory occupied, with those trapped inside subject to harsh measures and Russification. But it would hardly be a victory for Russia, which would be left with ruined, depopulated territory, full of unexploded ordnance, with a demanding internal security situation, a long border to defend, and a hostile government in Kyiv working to get into the EU and Nato. For this Russia has sacrificed thousands of people dead, wounded and living abroad. Economic activity and industrial production is now geared to the war effort, with little left for public amenities or productive investment. It has lost its European energy markets, become a junior partner to China, and depends on Iran and North Korea for armaments.

The obsession has led Putin down a path of total commitment to war. He has abandoned the pretence that this is a limited special military operation. The stakes have continued to be raised. The consequences of an association agreement with the EU, certainly compared with everything that has happened since, would have been marginal. Once a pro-Russian president, who ruled out Nato membership and promised protections for the Russian language, was gone everything that followed was bound to be more hostile. Putin went further, building up the new government into something truly menacing neo-Nazis and the legatees of the worst strains of Ukrainian nationalism. This was used to justify the annexations and incursions and cyberattacks and economic pressures of 2014 and 2015.

Because Kyivs defiance was intolerable to Putin, he tried to quell it with a full-scale invasion. When Kyiv remained as defiant as ever, the Ukrainian government was subjected to even more evidence-free denunciations, with drug addiction and a variety of personality disorders thrown in for good measure. Still more defiance and Ukraine was elevated into a civilisational threat, marked by decadence bordering on paganism. When this was not enough, and it became necessary to explain why mighty Russia could not overcome a smaller and inferior power, the role of Nato, and especially the US and the UK, was highlighted. And once these were identified as the real enemies then the whole struggle acquired an existential aspect.

All those aspects of the Western way of life that Putin despises must now be banished from Russia. This goes beyond crushing political dissent and the propagation of patriotic and militaristic themes, but also an assertion of the superiority of Russian civilisation. Those wanting to see where this has led might consult a document released by the Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate, for approval by the World Russian Peoples Council in Moscow on 27-28 March. This affirmed that Russia is fighting a holy war. This is presented as an imperialist project, to create an expanded homeland for all Russian people, including the sub-groups of Belarussians and Ukrainians, where their culture and spirituality will be honoured, and also as a defensive struggle against the globalism and satanism that has gripped the West.

Putin goes along with this. He appears to be at one with the Church in its determination to resist what is described as the international LGBT movement, and has now been designated as terroristic. Crackdowns have begun. This is not a new theme for Putin. As early as 2013 the Kremlin banned the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors. After the full-scale invasion any public reference to LGBT lifestyles became illegal. The sinister Patriarch Kirill, head of the Orthodox Church and reportedly a former KGB man, has identified gay pride parades in Kyiv as one reason why the invasion was vital. Additional items on the list of extremists and terrorists are followers of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Jehovahs Witnesses and the tech company Meta.

It is easy to dismiss this as deranged nonsense but that would be a mistake. It illuminates the ideological underpinnings of Putinism. It takes us far away from attempts to understand this war as the result of Nato enlargement and the Wests supposedly unreasonable policies which allegedly goaded Russia into otherwise unnaturally aggressive behaviour. The inability to grasp Putins deeply reactionary and obsessive views, with his idiosyncratic view of history, could be seen in Tucker Carlsons increasing bewilderment as he attempted to interview Putin in early February.

However complex and fanciful this narrative, it has become sufficiently internalised by the Russian elite and media so that they can cope with most eventualities. But occasionally something happens that the narrative cannot accommodate, something that doesnt quite fit.

This happened on 22 March when an attack came from another direction as Islamist terrorists mounted a horrific attack that left 144 people dead, and many more wounded,as they attended a concert at Moscows Crocus City Hall.

The perpetrators were members of Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), the groups Afghanistan and Pakistan arm. Russia has suffered from Islamist terrorism in the past. This particular group had recently attempted attacks that had been foiled. Nor was there an issue with motive, although Putin sounded perplexed that Russias anti-Israel stance over the Gaza war hadnt satisfied Islamist groups. (Russia, he noted, stands for a fair solution to the escalating Middle East conflict as if that would impress radical Islamists.) Motives could be found going back to the Chechen Wars, Russias role fighting against IS and related groups in Syria and West Africa, and now backing the Taliban in Afghanistan. A number of Tajiks have been arrested, including the four alleged perpetrators who have appeared, showing signs of beatings and torture, in court. Tajikistan has been a source of a disproportionate number of recruits for the war and therefore casualties, and that helps explain the attraction of Islamism.

Russian authorities were therefore aware of the risk. But the FSB, Russian intelligence service, is stretched. Before 2014 Islamist terrorism had a high priority but now the bulk of its activity is connected to the war with Ukraine, as well as new tasks such as persecuting members of the LGBT community (identified as terrorist on the same day that the attack took place). In the past the US, which worries about and watches the same groups, had passed on warning to Moscow of imminent attacks, for which it was thanked. When it did the same on 7 March, including a public warning to US citizens to stay away from concerts, this was derided by Putin as a subversive provocation. (One is reminded of Stalins refusal to accept warning of the prospective German invasion in June 1941 because he assumed that his sources were simply trying to stir up trouble between the Soviet Union and the Nazis.) After the attack the warning was cited in the Russian media as evidence that the Americans were in on the plot.

When the attack came the response of the authorities was slow. Security forces had been on heightened alert up to the presidential election on 17 March, including at the Crocus City Hall, but this had been relaxed once Putins victory had been proclaimed. That may help explain the timing of the attack.

Somehow the attack had to be made to fit with the approved narrative. Sure enough Ukraine was soon being blamed. The head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, had warned last October that IS-K had more than 6,500 members and could initiate attacks outside Afghanistan in the near future. Yet after the event he reported that the attack was prepared by both radical Islamists themselves and, naturally, facilitated by Western special services. According to this theory, the main efforts of the CIA and MI6 are focused on forming a belt of instability along the CISs [Commonwealth of Independent States] southern borders. To this end, fighters keep being recruited from international terrorist organisations operating in Iraq, Syria, and some other Asian and African countries and transferred to northern Afghanistan.

Putin only spoke up three days after the attack. Then he acknowledged that it had been carried out by radical Islamists, but he still insisted on Ukraines likely role.

Even after the perpetrators had been arrested and IS had claimed responsibility (releasing a grisly video to make their point) there was no wavering. Indeed IS became so irritated by Russias attempt to deny them their triumph that they put out a statement in one of their newspapers, Al-Naba:

After its resounding defeat, Russia found no choice but to direct accusations of collusion against its opponents in the Western camp to evade admitting its major failure in the face of the mujahideen.

More doubt was put on Russias claims when the Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko observed that the only reason the fleeing terrorists had turned on to a road towards Ukraine (vital evidence in the Russian case) was that they had been diverted away from Belarus, where they had been heading, because Lukashenko had just shut the border at Putins behest.

Faced with belief systems very different from ones own and factual claims that are easy to falsify it is tempting to assume that everything is fabricated, that stories contrived to sway the masses are not taken seriously by those in the know. After all Putin and his closest cronies grew up in the world of spies, where evidence and opinions are assumed to be readily manipulable, and this is a world they have never really left. Sometimes the lying is very clumsy and transparent. The FSB also have a clear interest in blaming the West and Ukraine to deflect criticism of their inability to prevent the attack and deal with it as it unfolded.

Yet for the Kremlin the lying and fakery are in the service of a higher truth. They help reinforce the message that all Russias enemies are in cahoots with each other so that there really is a Nazi-Islamist-globalist-satanist axis that colludes in striking against Russian civilisation. If so then every measure necessary must be taken to alert people to the danger and mobilise them to fight back. The Ukrainians must be led by Nazis because, irrespective of their backgrounds and actual statements, anyone fighting Russia must be a Nazi and Russia is at its best when battling Nazis as they did from 1941 to 1945.

After considering Putins statement blaming Ukraine for the Crocus City Hall attack, the historian Tim Snyder came down on the side of belief, noting: This is no longer the nimble post-truth Putin who is capable of changing out one lie for another as necessary, with a wink to the insider along the way. This now seems to be a Putin who actually believes what he says or, in the best case, lacks the creativity to react to events in the world.

There is an old sociological maxim (known as the Thomas theorem) that if something is believed to be real it is real in its consequences. This can also be the case with deliberate lies that are allowed to substitute for reality or serve the higher truth embedded in the prevailing ideology. In Soviet times the authorities were capable of an abrupt turn from one dogmatic position to another if the old position had become inconvenient. Perhaps, as Snyder suggests, Putin lacks that sort of flexibility. This is why I have described him as a strategic fanatic.

The real consequences of Putins belief system could be seen in the heavy missile strikes against Ukrainian cities that followed the Crocus City Hall attacks, as if this was somehow an appropriate retribution (with some of those doing the firing writing for Crocus on the missiles). It might be seen later should Putin need to justify yet more mobilisation.

Yet events that do not quite fit with the official narrative can have a disruptive effect. The perpetrators came from the predominantly Muslim Central Asian country of Tajikistan. Nearly a million Tajiks (population ten million) were registered in Russia as migrant workers in 2023. As with other groups from Central Asia, they ease the labour shortages caused by the war, both at the front lines, where they die in disproportionate numbers, and in the domestic economy. This creates a tension. The document released by the Orthodox Church looked forward to Russia quadrupling its population to 600 million over the next 100 years by encouraging large families (Putin has designated 2024 the year of the family reflecting demographic worries made worse by the war). Yet the Church also opposes allowing in migrants who do not share Russian values, push down the wages of indigenous people, and encourage crime and terrorism.

This is a regular theme of far-right and nationalist groups, and security agencies and police anxious to prevent more terrorist attacks. By contrast the Kremlin, aware that the migrants are needed for both the war and the economy, is nervous about where this might lead, especially if ethnic tensions get out of hand. The New York Times quotes a pro-Moscow analyst: Its a contradiction. And this terror attack has sharply aggravated this problem.

The other problem is that the security services are so stretched that they cannot cover such a vast range of disparate enemies. If large numbers of people are monitoring social media accounts for evidence of perversions and dissidence, then there are fewer keeping an eye out for Islamist activity. A recent article in Foreign Affairs by Timothy Frye, Henry Hale, Ora John Reuter and Bryn Rosenfeld, based on polling, demonstrates the combination of widespread support for Putin and growing war fatigue. Even staunch Putin supporters, they note, are largely ambivalent about the war.

Among Putin supporters, opposition to the war is particularly concentrated in groups that are more likely to be recruited for military service and facing economically precarious circumstances less-educated Putin backers are more likely to oppose continuing the war than their counterparts with advanced degrees.

The authors urge that the West conveys the message to Russia that the economic and military costs of continuing the war in Ukraine outweigh the benefits. They are aware of the difficulty of ousting an autocrat at a time of war. Putin has crushed all opposition. Yet he should now worry about the dissonance among his base.

Putin has no obvious way of bringing this war to an end. As Roderic Lyne noted in a recent post: The war will shape Putins dying years in power. He cannot step back from his objective of emasculating Ukraine. He may gain more territory, but the Ukrainians will never willingly surrender their freedom and sovereignty. Putin has therefore condemned Russia to a long war, a war with no visible end point, and a conflict for years ahead with the West as well as with Ukraine.

Rather than looking for ways out of his predicament he has been escalating his rhetoric and accumulating enemies, none of which he is able to defeat. His position may be strong enough to withstand all manner of setbacks and embarrassments. But events nibble away at his authority. Despite expectations of progress against depleted Ukrainian forces, progress on the land war is still slow, he is still having to contend with occasional incursions into Russian territory by self-proclaimed anti-Putinist militias, along with Ukrainian attacks on the Black Sea fleet and oil refineries. A one-off IS attack can be contorted to fit in with the narrative; a succession of IS attacks would be another matter.

If ever an argument was needed against unchecked autocracy, Putins Russia provides it. Continuing failure to achieve his objectives has only aggravated his fanaticism. The problem is not that he is irrational but the way that he has framed his Ukraine problem obliges him to act in ever more unreasonable ways, because to do otherwise would require giving in to forces that challenge his idea of the Russian nation and what is stands for. Over a decade he has managed to turn an inconvenient aspect of Ukraines foreign policy into an existential threat. He will stick with a war without end because he dare not admit that it was folly to launch it in the first place. So the war machine must be fed with all available people and resources, independent and critical thought must be suppressed, and Ukrainians must be punished for their insubordination with ever-more devastation and cruelty.

Lawrence Freedman is a regular contributor to the New Statesman. This piece originally ran on his Substack Comment is Freed.

[See also: Wagners next act in Africa]

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Reality is chipping away at Putinism - The New Statesman

With no evidence to support theirclaims, Russian officials are waging an international information campaign to blame Ukrainians and the West for the Crocus City Hall terror attack that left at least 145 people dead and scores more injured.To the contrary, the US government providedRussiawith a highly detailedwarningmore than two weeks before the attack about a terrorism threat.Russian PresidentVladimir Putinpubliclydismissedit as outright blackmail with the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.

Russian President Putin. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), an Afghanistan affiliate militant group of the Islamic State,claimed responsibilityfor the attack, and US intelligence has confirmed it. But the director of Russias Federal Security Service (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov, said three days after the attack, We believe that the action was prepared by radical Islamists, naturally, Western security services contributed to it, and Ukrainian security services bore a direct relation.

These responses are a stark reminder of why Putins Russia has never been and cannot be a credible counter-terrorism partner. There is irony in the duplicitous path Putin and company have chosen to pursue.A radical terrorist group has taken credit for an attack, and Moscow is now refusing to acknowledge this fact.

Twenty-five years ago, the opposite took placeRussian officials rushed to blame militants with no proof. In September 1999, a series of horrific apartment bombings across Russia left over 300 dead and over one thousand wounded. Russian officials immediatelyblamedChechen militants. Moscow rushed to declare war on Chechnya without any transparent investigation into the attack, while crediblereportingsuggested that the FSB had orchestrated it. Putins subsequent perceived tough stance on terrorism drove up his approval ratings and propelled him out of obscurity into power.

Putin and Russian officials may have dismissed US warnings last month due to genuine distrust of the West, a focus on thewar in Ukraine, or both. Russias FSB plays a central role domestically and within the post-Soviet space in security and intelligence gathering, as well asplanningthe war against Ukraine. It is possible that the FSB was too busy cracking down on internal dissent against the Kremlin and the war to focus on genuine security threats, or too scared to tell the Kremlin to take US warnings seriously. Or it could be an even more sinister explanationone that is hard not to raise, knowing what we know about post-Soviet Russia and the 1999 apartment bombings. The Kremlin might have also seen an opportunity to boost the narrative that the West continues to attack Russia using Ukraine, as the war enters its third year. Putin needs to continue convincing Russian citizens that they are under attack from the West, and recruitment to fight in Ukraine hasnoticeably increasedafter Crocus Hall. Thus, pointing a finger at Ukraine and the West appears to have served the Kremlins most pressing priority.

There is little new in Putins Russia when it comes to terrorism and foreign policy objectives, but the West should now know better from experience. At the beginning of his presidency, Putin famously rushed to call U.S. President George W. Bush after September 11, 2001, to offer condolences, which he took at face value. Putin pushed the idea that Russia and the West faced the same terrorist threat. In subsequent years, many Western policymakers continued to believe that counter-terrorism could be one area of shared priority with Moscow. After all, Russia had suffered attacks from Islamist militants on its soil after 1999 and officially opposed ISIS. Presidents Obama andTrumpboth discussed cooperation with Russiaagainst ISIS in Syria.

Such optimism was always unwarranted at best, if not self-delusional. From Chechnya to Syria toAfghanistan, Putin has done more to encourage terrorism than fight it, with Moscow maintaining ties to terrorist groups from Hamas to the Taliban and Hezbollah.Moscow never targeted ISIS with any consistency in Syria, and the brutality of its military campaigns in Chechnya and Syria only encouraged radicalization.

Vladimir Putin observes strategic deterrence forces exercise in the Kremlins situation room.

Russias security services have proven incompetent during major hostage crises, most notably in theBeslan school siegeof September 2004. Their botched rescue operation led to the deaths of over 300 hostages, mostly children. Putin rewarded those involved with promotions and medals.

ISIS, for its part, likely wanted payback due to its alignment against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Russian material support to the Talibans elite units, and because of Russias campaign in Syria.It is thus hardly surprising that it now seized an opportunity to stage an attack in Russia.

At the heart of the issue is that the Kremlin believes the West is its primary adversary. Moscow has been looking for an opportunity to replay the end of the Cold war with an alternate ending. Moscow always played a double game with the West when arguing that they face the same terrorist threat. Over the years, Russian officials accused the US both in public and private of not only seeking to weaken Russia but also inventing ISIS and empowering militants across the globe. Putin indirectly accused the US of instigating the hostage crisis in Beslan. Some would like totear from us ajuicy piece of[a] pie. Others help them, Putinsaidafter the incident, [They] help,reasoningthat Russia remains one oftheworlds major nuclear powers, and, assuch, still represents athreat tothem. Andso they reason that this threat should be removed. Terrorism, ofcourse, is just aninstrument toachieve these aims. It was understood he was referring to the United States. Years later, Russiaopenly accusedthe U.S. of aiding Chechen rebels during the second Chechen war, which was declared after the 1999 apartment bombings.

It may be tempting to return to the idea that counter-terrorism is one area where Moscow and the West can find common ground, especially as Western policymakers naively seek off-ramps for Russia in Ukraine. We may not know precisely why Putin chose to ignore intelligence warnings last month. But Moscows laying blame on Ukraine and the West for the terrorist attack should leave no room for doubt that Putin remains committed to a bigger war. He will align with anyone if it helps him achieve his aims. Returning to the idea counterterrorism offers an area of common ground between the West and Russia will continue to be self-defeating.

Anna Borshchevskaya is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of Putins War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of Americas Absence.

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Putin Is No Ally In the War on Terror in 2024 - 19FortyFive

Joseph I. Lieberman was a U.S. senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013 and the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000. Gordon J. Humphrey is a former U.S. senator from New Hampshire. Lieberman drafted this piece with Humphrey in the months before Lieberman died on March 27.

Democracies are taking a battering, the editorial board of The Post wrote in December. Russia and China are running rings around us, asserts former CIA director and defense secretary Robert M. Gates.

The Post and Gates have underscored our failure to go on the offensive in the information war by using counternarrative that asserts our values and ideals and explains the priceless advantages of freedom, the rule of law, a free press and freedom to assemble and express opinion. This failure has weakened national security and emboldened adversaries.

The regime of Vladimir Putin, for example, brazenly floods computers around the world daily with malicious falsehoods. Americans are particular targets of false narratives designed to sow confusion about our institutions including our elections and to undermine American confidence.

Formerly, we thought about national security in terms of battles on land, at sea and in the air. The newest battlefield is the human mind. Our adversaries are fully deployed on that field of battle. We are all but absent. Thus, we are losing the information war by default to malefactor regimes in Russia, China and Iran.

What explains this alarming state of affairs? Lack of leadership and lack of means. No one is in charge of telling Americas still-inspiring story to the world. For three years, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, part of the State Department, has urged the White House and Congress to designate a lead official in the information war. The recommendations appear to have been ignored. This reflects inattention at the very top.

As for lack of means, since 1999, when Congress unwisely abolished the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the United States has lacked the capability to fight back using counternarrative. We have the invaluable Voice of America, of course, but VOAs product is news. News is not counternarrative. It is not the marshaling of truth and fact to tell our story. Putins high standing in domestic polls and in some nonaligned countries is proof we need more than news to achieve victory on the battlefield of the human mind. We need counternarrative as well.

Joe Biden was one of 49 senators who voted against abolishing the USIA. It should be an easy walk for the president to take the steps necessary to get us on the offensive.

The president should immediately require the National Security Council to produce a strategic plan that puts us on the offensive, a plan that includes the use of counternarrative. He should designate the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs with responsibility for executing the plan and ask Congress to fund it robustly. And he should take a personal interest and stay involved.

The personal involvement of President Ronald Reagan in using counternarrative to help win the Cold War is instructive. Reagan appointed a longtime California friend, Charles Z. Wick, who had experience in the motion picture industry, as USIA director. His access was such that Reagan afterward called him my principal adviser on international information.

When Congress abolished the USIA, it simultaneously created the office of undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. The intent was for that office to continue all of the USIAs activities except for news broadcasting. Unfortunately, the State Department has treated that office as an unwanted child for the past 24 years, underfunding it and leaving it vacant 40 percent of the time, rendering it virtually mute.

As a measure of the counternarrative lost when the USIA disappeared, its archives contain 20,000 films it produced. One even won an Oscar. The films were not newsreels; they were documentaries meant to persuade. They served as counternarrative to Soviet lies and distortion. Very little counternarrative in modern form videos that could be disseminated on social media has been produced since.

As an example of what could be, consider the excellent video To the People of Russia, produced by the office of Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Elizabeth M. Allen. It undermines Putins casting of the United States as an enemy by recalling with vivid news clips dramatic examples of Russian and American cooperation, from World War II to the exploration of space. And it supports Russian antiwar protesters. When the U.S. Embassy in Moscow tweeted the video early last year, it provoked a harsh and threatening response from the Kremlin.

The video was produced more than a year ago, and nothing like it has appeared since. That halting effort in counternarrative stands as a metaphor for the larger U.S. failure to engage seriously in the battle for human minds. The president and Congress should take note and act.

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Opinion | Joe Lieberman and Gordon Humphrey: How to counter Putin's lies - The Washington Post - The Washington Post

On April 3, the Russian Supreme Court will consider a cassation appeal against the sentence of Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced to 25 years in a strict-regime colony for five public statements he made against the war in Ukraine and Vladimir Putins regime. Kara-Murza, who is being held in Prison Colony No. 7 in Omsk, was blocked from taking part in the hearing via video link.

Instead, he sent the court the following written statement:

For the first time in my life, I am addressing the Supreme Court. This body has performed different functions in different periods of our countrys history: There was a time when it approved convictions for countless innocent victims, sending them to camps and firing squads; later, it overturned these same sentences for lack of grounds and issued decisions on rehabilitation. Today, we are back in the first of these two phases but we should not doubt that the second one is sure to come.

In its essence, cassation is a purely legal procedure, and our cassation appeal cites a number of undisputed legal irregularities, each of which would be enough on its own to overturn my conviction. I could write a great deal more about these irregularities. I could address the issue that this entire case essentially lacks any grounds or specific crime, because I was convicted solely for publicly expressing my opposition to the Putin regime and the war in Ukraine that is, for exercising my constitutional right to freedom of speech. Or I could make the point that the text of the same articles of the Criminal Code according to which I received my 25-year sentence directly contradicts Russias international human rights obligations, rendering my conviction invalid by virtue of Section 4 of Article 15 of the Constitution. This is not merely my opinion; it is an official finding of the U.N. Human Rights Committee.

Or I could write about the fact that my sentence was imposed by a court of illegal composition, since the presiding judge faced an obvious conflict of interest: He was personally subject to international sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, which I helped to implement. This, of course, was organized deliberately and demonstratively. There is much more I could write about.

But I will not take up paper and your time with this argument. First of all, because you, professional lawyers, understand it all perfectly well and it will have no effect on the decision you will put your signatures to. Secondly, because it is strange and rather ridiculous to provide examples of the illegality in a case that is illegal from beginning to end just as the cases of all Russian citizens arrested for speaking out against the war are illegal from beginning to end. And, finally, because any arguments based on law have no relevance to the reality in which Russia exists under the regime of Vladimir Putin.

This reality was once described with startling, frightening accuracy by George Orwell in his great novel 1984: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is power. This slogan on the facade of Orwells Ministry of Truth very accurately reflects the principle of functioning of todays Russian government.

For the third year now, my country or, more precisely, an aging, irremovable, illegitimate dictator who has arrogated to himself the right to speak and act on behalf of my country has been waging a brutal, unjust, invasive war against a neighboring independent state. In the course of this aggression, the invader has committed genuine war crimes. In two years, tens of thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed and wounded in Ukraine; thousands of residential houses as well as hundreds of hospitals and schools have been destroyed. These facts are common knowledge and have been documented in detail in the reports of international organizations. It was on suspicion of war crimes that the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for citizen Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

But in our Orwellian reality, the law enforcement and judicial system is not interested in those who commit war crimes but in those who speak out about them, who try to stop them. Today, there are dozens of people in Russian prisons and penal colonies who have openly spoken out against the war in Ukraine. These are very different people: artists and priests, politicians and journalists, lawyers and police officers, scholars and entrepreneurs, students and pensioners people of different views, ages and professions who did not want to become silent accomplices to the crimes of the current Russian authorities. Today, it is common in the world to berate and condemn all Russian citizens, without distinction, to say that we are all responsible for this war. But I am proud that in this dark, despicable, terrible time in Russia, there have been so many people who were not afraid and did not remain silent even at the cost of their own freedom.

This whole case is based on the denial of the very concepts of law, justice, legality. But it is also based on a crude, cynical forgery an attempt to equate criticism of the authorities with harm to the country; to present opposition activity as treason. But there is nothing new in this, either; it is what every dictatorship does. In Nazi Germany, anti-fascist students from the White Rose movement were tried for treason; in apartheid South Africa, civil rights activists were prosecuted for the same crime. In the Soviet Union, one of our greatest compatriots, Nobel Prize laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was also charged with treason.

History has set everything right has it not?

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Opinion | I am proud to have spoken out against Putin's crimes in Ukraine - The Washington Post

With media coverage still dominated by the Ukraine war, you might assume that Vladimir Putins machinations in eastern Europe are focused solely on Ukraine. And you might be right. After all, why would Russias president need to get involved in states where homegrown politicians seem more than prepared to do his work for him?

This is the situation currently unfolding in Georgia. The countrys ruling political coalition, Kartuli Otsneba (Georgian Dream), is pursuing a policy of religious nationalism and social conservatism that brings Georgia in step with the social policies of Putin and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.

More secular Georgians, and those who favour closer relations with the EU and Nato, fear a creeping Russification of society. These fears were crystallised when the government tried to pass the so-called foreign agents law in March 2023, sparking widespread protest on the streets of the countrys capital, Tbilisi.

The proposed legislation was modelled on a Russian law designed to limit the amount of funding that NGOs and other externally funded organisations could accept. Opposition to this measure was fuelled by a fear that its passing would enable the Georgian government to outlaw cultural and social projects deemed incompatible with Georgian values. This would potentially lead to increased harassment of anyone from the LGBTQ+ community to single parents to vegans and vegetarians.

It was also widely believed that other elements of Russian legislation would follow if this first law was enacted. Taken aback by the strength of public feeling, the bill was withdrawn in May 2023. But suspicions that Russia is influencing the actions of a number of Georgian politicians have remained.

The crackdown on culture began when Thea Tsukuliani was named minister of culture, sport and youth in March 2021. Previously, Tsukuliani had been the minister of justice and not shown any apparent interest in Georgian history and culture.

Upon her appointment, Tsukuliani announced that instead of being based in the usual ministry office, she was going to install herself in a suite at the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi. She reportedly had her eye on a wing of the museum that had recently been reopened as the natural history gallery.

This collection had not been publicly available for some years, so the curatorial staff fought the suggestion that it would be closed again almost immediately. Instead, Tsukuliani took the same suite on another floor, thereby dispossessing the National Geographic team who had signed a contract for that space.

In this way, I was made aware of the situation in Georgia long before it gained wider attention. I received a message from a colleague telling me that a project I was running with the Georgian National Museum could no longer host educational events for schoolchildren, as the room we had just refurbished had become an emergency office for National Geographic staff.

Then, on May 24 2022, the cultural purge began and 22 staff members were fired. The 22 had one thing in common: they had expressed disquiet about the apparent politicisation of Georgian cultural heritage, and argued that archaeology and related disciplines should not be controlled by Georgian Dream.

Those who were dismissed were followed by waves of their colleagues administrators and accountants were targeted as well as researchers, archaeologists and curatorial staff. By September 2022, more than 70 members of staff at the Georgian National Museum had lost their positions. Anyone who dared to speak up in solidarity was informed they were failing in their work duties and dismissed with immediate effect.

This quickly began to affect international research partners. For example, archaeologists arrived in Georgia to find there were no permits for excavation, as the staff of the issuing body had also been reorganised. Within a few months, the threat had spread to other cultural professionals, such as those in the theatre and film industries.

The sacked museum staff unionised and captured the attention of the national media. In August 2022, when the first cases for wrongful dismissal came to court, the Ministry of Culture was deemed to have fired staff unlawfully from the Georgian National Museum and other galleries and museums.

Good news, you might think but you would be wrong. In each case so far, the state has been told to pay the employee several months wages in compensation. But the Ministry of Culture has not been required to reinstate the worker to their former role, meaning that generations of institutional and specialist knowledge has been lost.

Many octogenarians had stayed on long beyond retirement to bridge the gap of the lost generations who fled post-communist Georgia for the US or Europe. They had been working for less than 50 a month to pass on their knowledge to a new generation: the born frees who have never experienced communism.

The older group had, over the past decade, started to believe they could entrust their work to this new generation. But it was the oldest and youngest who appeared to be especially targeted by this purge.

Georgians will head to the polls again in November 2024 to elect a new government. Georgian Dream, which has been leading a governing coalition since 2012, is seeking to extend its mandate.

Colleagues of mine who are still in place in the Georgian National Museum are torn between hope that their ordeal will soon be over, and despondency that Georgian Dream appears on track to remain in power. If it wins again, the feeling in Georgia is that nothing will hold back the creeping Russification of Georgian society that this cultural censorship is facilitating.

Right now, Georgian academics, writers, museum staff and filmmakers seem united in agreeing that their best hope lies in a Ukrainian victory that weakens Russia and, as a result, dilutes its stranglehold on the Georgian ruling class.

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Georgia's government plays into Putin's hands as it moves to suppress art and culture - The Conversation