I New Yorker skriver Masha Gessen om Putins tilltagande isolering och försök att styra hur ryssarna ska se på kriget, som inte ens får kallas krig: ”How Putin Wants Russians to See the War in Ukraine”. Gessen skriver också om de ryska protesterna mot kriget, som tyder på att Ryssland inte är en hermetiskt tillsluten propagandabubbla. Putin har däremot levt i en hermetiskt tillsluten COVID-bubbla och det har tydligen satt sina spår. Minns att Macron var tvungen att ta tre COVID-test innan han fick sitta mittemot Putin vid hans absurt långa bord:
”‘This is a huge factor,’ Mikhail Fishman, who hosts a political-analysis show on Russia’s last independent television channel, TV Rain, said. ‘He is alone with only his most loyal people, who basically live with him—his adjutants, his servants in a way, who make his way of life possible. . . . They are in the same pool, sharing the same vision, and there is nothing else. They, of course, think he is sent by heaven to save the world.’”
Logiken blir ordentligt skruvad:
”This time, more than ever, they know that their hardship stems from sanctions imposed by the West. The whole world is conspiring against Russia—and that is why, according to Putin, Russia is doing what it’s doing in Ukraine in the first place.”
Ola Wihlke
BearBooks 