We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong полностью

Putin the judoka-tsar lords it over an army of smaller judokas, all of whom are looking for a chance to get on. Consider, for example, RT, the infamous foreign-language television network. A strange mix of good journalism, opinionated commentary and toxic propaganda, it is one of the tools Moscow uses to get its message out in the world or, more often, simply to undermine others’. Speaking to people who work there, it is clear that, while the Kremlin sometimes steps in and dictates the official line – typically in the wake of some major embarrassment, such as when Ukrainian rebels shot down a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet with a Russian-supplied missile in 2014 – more often it is a much less direct process. Every Friday, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s inflexible-but-affable press spokesman, sits down with the editors of the main government media platforms to lay out the lines and talking points he would like to see covered in the week ahead. He doesn’t dictate copy or set headlines – he expects them to use their initiative, and they expect the same of their people. When a major event occurs, producers and presenters at RT may well have different ideas how best to frame it, to meet what they think what their bosses – and their bosses’ boss – want. These different ideas may then be played out in various programmes, with everyone hoping that theirs gets noticed and approved. Effort, imagination, enthusiasm and ambition are all harnessed, without the tedious need to micromanage everything from the top.

For example, did Russia back Brexit? RT, its news agency counterpart Sputnik and a number of Russian commentators and diplomats certainly did, in addition to the infamous ‘troll farms’, where smart young Russians working to a script and on the clock, pump out social media posts pretending to be Rob from Ramsgate or Sarah from Swindon. Why on earth would they not? After all, it seems to tick so many boxes on the Kremlin wish list, dividing both Europe and Britain itself and creating a colossal distraction for years to come. But setting aside the question of how far they really affected the result of the referendum, it is hard to say whether or not Putin or the Kremlin specifically backed the campaign. They certainly did nothing to stop it, but a consequence of this bottom-up system is that it can often be hard to know where a specific initiative originated.

Does that really matter, though? Yes, it does. If we think of Putin as the subtle mastermind of the geopolitical chessboard, we will all too often give him more credit than he deserves. If people think you are powerful, you are powerful. Consider a deeply frustrating conversation I had with a Czech journalist in 2017, right before the Russians held a major military exercise called Zapad, or ‘West’, in conjunction with their ally, Belarus. At the time, a massive wave of hysteria was washing over the Western analytic community, partly generated by its own paranoia (and also by some alarmist pundits looking for some media attention), but encouraged by the Russians’ own strategic trolling. It was said that it would involve more than a hundred thousand troops (in reality, the number was not even half that), that it was really a plan to occupy Belarus and replace its president with a Russian puppet (nope), that it was a pretext to invade the Baltic states (again, no), and that it was a dry run for an all-out invasion of northern Europe (really, no). At the height of the frenzy, this Czech journalist asked with a straight face what price Putin would accept for a peace treaty. First of all, I pointed out, as far as I knew we were not officially at war. Secondly, what kind of a price was he talking about? He started a list: recognising Russia’s annexation of Crimea, forcing neutrality on Ukraine, and withdrawing NATO forces from front-line states.

I confess that I was astonished: Putin would not believe his luck if any of those massive and unjustifiable concessions were offered, especially on the basis of a long-scheduled and essentially defensive military exercise and some dramatic television footage of tanks rumbling across the Belarusian plain. This journalist, who was neither a moron nor a rookie, was articulating a minority opinion, but one that can often be encountered across the West: the sense that Putin is so dangerous and powerful that it is best to try and buy him off rather than confront him. In Chapter 6 I will go into more detail as to how wrong this is, but every time we portray Putin as the evil genius behind everything that goes wrong, we play to this tendency. The French poet and essayist Charles Baudelaire once wrote that ‘the cleverest ruse of the devil is to persuade you he does not exist’; perhaps Putin’s cleverest ruse is to persuade you that he is behind everything.