WHEN Russia was preparing to annex Crimea a year ago its television broadcasts, portraying the protesters who had recently overthrown Ukraine’s regime as a neo-Nazi rabble, softened the peninsula’s defences as effectively as any artillery assault. One month later, when Russian-backed rebels overran Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, one of their first acts was to seize control of the television centre and replace Ukrainian broadcasts with previously banned Russian ones.
The Kremlin’s propaganda machine has been a key component of the “hybrid warfare” that Russia has waged in Ukraine, and has helped shore up Vladimir Putin’s support at home. But it spreads …read more
Source: The Economist
