Putin's tactics: Censor at home, lying abroad

a year ago, fought the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia for life in a british hospital. The two had been poisoned by Novitjok, a neurotoxin developed by the Soviet union.

Father and daughter Skripal survived the attack. It did not Dawn Sturgess, a woman resident near Salisbury where giftattacken took place. She had come in contact with the bottle that was used. The police investigation was now a murder, and the two culprits could be identified: the Russian agents.

president Vladimir Putin's propaganda machinery to take on the Novitjokattacken in the Uk. One can without exaggeration speak of a kind of berserk. The EU special organization which monitors the Kremlin's propaganda has found more than 150 different Russian versions that flowed out to both a domestic audience and the world. Join now:

the Pair Skripal took an overdose of drugs. The poisoning was an act of provocation by the united states. Georgia was behind. The west wanted to destroy this summer's fifa world CUP in Russia. The uk was behind. It was about russofobi. Skripals had been kidnapped by the british. Julia Skripal was raped and pregnant, and by the way, is both Skripals kill. The british wanted to drag the attention away from Brexit. And so on.

Putin propagandist has found a strategy and stick to it. The truth is drowned in a flood of information, it's the one move falskare than the other, often directly contradictory. The goal is to have recipients to be confused and to fall into a kind of faktanihilism: ”There are so many versions of it there and both sides will find on, who really knows what happened?”

But only one version is true.

the Project can be seen as an ambition to protect Russia from the attacks – but also as a digital iron curtain.

In the case Skripal, the Kremlin has done away properly. Also many russians are laughing at the regime's hack attempt at whitewashing, to how the president is trying to sweep aside the scandal, but neither has a broom or carpet.

As if there would not be enough Putin has other problems. His approval ratings are still above 60 per cent but has long fallen, partly due to an unpopular decision to raise the retirement age.

held its annual televised speech was the face of a mere 6.3 per cent of russians, the lowest figure since 2013. And it is significant. Ever fewer russians get their news via the tv medium, as the president has become so adept at controlling and using for their own purposes.

instead, it takes the internet over, which favors the opposition. It is not surprising that the Kremlin is now groping for possibilities to control. A week adopted two new laws in this area. Prosecutors should be able to stop the ”false news” among other things, if they disturb the ”social order”. The state should also be able to block sites that ”deficiencies in respect towards the society and the state”.

to create an ” independent internet”, independent of foreign servers. It can be seen as an ambition to protect Russia from the attacks – but also as a digital iron curtain, a parallel to ”the chinese nätmuren” guaranteeing the Communist party's control of the network in China.

the Regime Putin is acting like the Russian oligarchs that enrich themselves with the help of the law at home but then live life happy days in the west. The kremlin exploits the freedom on the net abroad for their propagandasyften, but tightens in Russia.

Putin's propagandatroll but very bad for the country's opposition. And it'll hardly stop here. Western internetjättar as Facebook and Google must stand strong against any attempt by Moscow to leverage the internet for information warfare and oppression. So far, unfortunately, their credentials are not impressive.