Kremlin has Created a New Anthropological Type – ‘the Putin Liberal,’ Yakovenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 6 – The Kremlin has created a new subspecies of “the useful idiot” – “the Putin liberal,” whose task is to discredit liberalism as such by making those who identify as its followers laughable in the eyes of the Russian population and thus to “deprive them of any hope for public support,” Igor Yakovenko says.

            The Putin regime has taken this step because liberalism is “the most dangerous” thing as far as it is concerned, the Russian commentator argues; and so it has to be undermined by using those prepared to cooperate with the regime against liberal ideas (obozrevatel.com/russia/21121-poleznyie-idiotyi-russkogo-mira.htm).

            The strategy the Russian state media use to achieve this end is well illustrated by the case of “’Putin liberal’ Boris Nadezhdin,” Yakovenko says.  Earlier this week, on the “60 Minutes” program, Nadezhdin said that “’now we need to think what to do so that the entire world will recognize that Crimea is ours!’”

            Such “Putin liberals,” the Russian commentator continues, have an “amazing” ability to offend “at one and the same time both Putin’s supporters and his opponents.” In this case, Nadezhdin offended the former by suggesting such an effort was necessary and the latter by suggesting that a liberal would want to make it.

            In this way, Nadezhdin like others similarly situated who allow themselves to be used in this way became “an antibody” in the bloodstream of Russian life and thus “strengthening the immunity of the Putin regime to real liberalism. One could cite numerous examples of this kind of “useful idiot” within Russia and beyond its borders.

            Another subcategory of such “useful idiots” are Ukrainian “hawks” whose views, marginal in Ukraine, can be presented to Russian viewers as examples of what most Ukrainians think, be it hatred of the Russian language or hostility to one or another candidate there because of how they talk about such people.

            Two of the most cited Ukrainian commentators on Russian television after the first round of the Ukrainian presidential election have been Irina Farion and Dmitry Korchinsky. Fario was quoted as saying that Zelensky should be put in jail, and Korchinsky was cited as believing that Zelensky’s money came from “satan.”

 Moscow hosts implied that these two represented mainstream views in Ukraine. In fact, they are very marginal figures and their views have little resonance among Ukrainians.  It helps the Kremlin for Russians to think otherwise and that there can be no reasoning by Moscow with such people – and that force and violence are the only appropriate responses.