Putin's 'chilling' war rally was really an 'elaborate display of smoke and mirrors': reporter
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday held a giant pro-war rally in Moscow that was intended to show Russian unity in the face of international condemnation and economic sanctions.
The Daily Beast's Julia Davis, a longtime observer of Russian state media, describes the rally as both "tone deaf and chilling," but also as an "elaborate display" that turned out to be "yet another example of smoke and mirrors, produced by the skillful propaganda puppeteers," given that many participants told the BBC's Will Vernon that they were coerced into attending.
In fact, Davis believes that the rally was Putin's way of denying just how poorly his invasion of Ukraine is going.
"At its core, it symbolized Putin’s apparent desire to superimpose the nearly universal domestic approval of his unlawful annexation of Crimea upon the ongoing bloody war against a once-brotherly nation," she writes.
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That said, she also noted that cracks have been forming in Russia's propaganda operation, highlighted by journalist Marina Ovsyannikova's decision to interrupt a Channel One broadcast in the country while holding up an anti-war sign and telling viewers to not believe the propaganda they're being fed about that war.
"Everyday Russian citizens are likewise skeptical of the official polling, with some claiming that according to their own anecdotal polls, most of the people they know don’t support the war, except for the over-60 crowd," writes Davis.
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