The pen, but also the sword 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 neighbor. 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…
