What are Putin’s Propagandists Thinking in Turning on Him? Inozemtsev Asks

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 13 – One of the strangest phenomena in the wake of Russia’s defeat in Kherson is that Putin’s well-paid propagandists have turned on him, raising questions about who they think they are and why they are doing something that can only harm the Kremlin leader and themselves, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

            “It surprises me that many of these people are taking what is happening so seriously” given their penchant for lying about the situation for so long, the Russian commentator says. Dugin is of course someone with obvious psychiatric problems, but the others aren’t and what they are doing begs for an explanation (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=63709DD6BFC15).

            Such people must understand that “the entire system in Russia” is based on the promotion of illusions so that some can rake in the money, Inozemtsev continues. They had to know that the weapons they talked about didn’t exist and yet until Kherson they talked about them as if they were a reality.

            “If you are being paid to lie,” he continues, “you should be more modest when the truth comes out. Otherwise you will discredit yourself first of all.” Or so one would have thought, but clearly those doing so think they can not only get away with this but get credit for doing so from those they have worked to deceive.

            Inozemtsev continues: “I personally don’t understand what these people are trying to achieve.” After all, their statements “discredit only one individual – Putin himself, their master and their employer … Have they really forgotten their place and now view themselves to be the arbiters of Russian politics?”

            According to the commentator, they must recognize as others do that the current system can’t be fixed and that any sharp moves will only accelerate its demise. The only sensible approach for them, he suggests, is to “pretend that nothing terrible has happened” in Kherson and that nothing would “even if the Russian army retreats to the borders of 1991.”

            Of course, Inozemtsev says, these things aren’t really a concern for serious people but for those in the Kremlin who have to be upset that those it viewed with complete justification as its totally bought “lackeys” are now starting to bark, yet another indication that the vaunted power vertical is in trouble and that the Putin system is as well.