“Hungary is hardly the most powerful member of the European Union, the party of Marin Le Pen is hardly the most influential political force in France, and Giulietto Chiesa is hardly the most respected journalist and politician in Italy,” Oreshkin writes. But Moscow now “doesn’t have any other” allies.
And second, there is a sense that even reaching out to these people is “not a counterattack but a purely defensive” move. It is clearly “an effort to disrupt the unity of the European Union from within, to find some weak link.” But the best Putin can hope for is to “slow the formation” of an anti-Moscow “political front.” He is not in a position to reverse it.
“This is a defensive strategy which to a significant degree is asymmetrical,” Oreshkin continues. Western governments understand that Moscow can always find useful idiots to push its line in second-tier media outlets or second-tier states and thus dismiss them as unimportant.
Putin consequently is taking these measures primarily for domestic consumption.
If you are a reader of only the Russian press, he continues, “you see [as a result of such campaigns] that the Dutch are unhappy with Ukraine, that Urban supports and approves of Russia … and that the entire European Union is collapsing because it cannot withstand the influx of migrants.”
The message this sends to Russians is this: “’we are having difficult times, but we are going from victory to victory” abroad.
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