The western press is giving Putin what he wants

Why does Vladimir Putin need Russia Today and Sputnik News when the western media are doing such a great job on his behalf? Throughout his two decades in power, Putin has yearned for international respect. Failing that, he’ll settle for fear. And what more satisfying outcome could there be for a serial sabre-rattler like Putin to have his bluff finally taken seriously?

For weeks, British papers and TV have been filled with images of scary Russian tanks, warships and artillery blasting away — mostly provided, if you check the photo credits, by Russia’s Ministry of Defence. Since November, the US and British governments have been issuing increasingly strident warnings that Putin is preparing an imminent and massive attack on Ukraine. All that time, Putin and his veteran foreign minister Sergey Lavrov have been emphatically denying that they will do any such thing. The Kremlin has made no threats or issued any demands on Ukraine itself. It doesn’t have to, because the West is doing such an eloquent job of broadcasting the reality of Russian military might for them.

It’s a perfectly executed information-war pincer movement. The Kremlin poses as a sober diplomatic grown-up, voicing what it regards as legitimate security concerns. Meanwhile the West — and particularly the western media — lathers itself into a state of near-hysteria over how dangerous, unpredictable, aggressive and deadly Putin’s Kremlin could be.

Vladimir Lenin reportedly spoke of ‘useful idiots’ among western leftists who unwittingly helped the cause of revolution. But as Putin has learned, enemies can be useful idiots too. In the British press, the Daily Mail splashed with ‘Frantic 48 hours to save Europe from war’, and its incomparably skilful graphics department has provided a steady diet of History Channel-style maps covered in large red arrows illustrating possible invasion routes for the armchair strategists among its readers.