Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Credit: Reuters Photo
The demonising of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which spread through the international media after Russia started its military operations in Ukraine, has run out of steam. The Western media is unable any longer to window dress the nearing end of the road for Ukraine. Russia’s pugnacious president is using this opportunity to bolster his image as a steady, determined, and unwavering fighter for protecting — even advancing his country’s core interests in a predominantly hostile global public relations environment for the Kremlin.
Here is an example. On December 6, the entire world — 198 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — was assembled in Dubai for the 28th UN Climate Change Conference (COP28). Heads of state and government from the United Kingdom’s King Charles III to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had just a couple of days earlier held the global stage in thrall attending the high-level segment of COP28. Their ministers were picking up the threads from the leaders and the world was focused on these deliberations to protect our planet.
In flew Putin escorted on his VVIP outfitted Ilyushin-96 aircraft escorted by four ultra-modern Russian Sukhoi-35S fighter jets. It was sight unseen in the decades since the Soviet Union ceased to be the ‘other’ superpower. Emiratis gazed in wonder at their sky as the UAE Air Force trailed the colours of the Russian national flag in their fly-past as a welcome gesture for Russia’s President. The huge international media gathered in Dubai — an estimated 15,000 journalists — was flummoxed and scrambled to make sense of what Putin was doing in the Gulf. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, Putin’s second whistle-stop destination, kept the visit secret until it unfolded with the paraphernalia of a guard of honour and associated protocol. Putin hogged global headlines for the next two days.
The Western media gloated when Putin did not travel to Johannesburg for the BRICS Summit in August and insisted that he would have been arrested and tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) if he ventured to attend the summit. The same media said Putin’s days of international travel were over when he skipped the G20 Summit in New Delhi. But when Putin went to the Gulf, he kept the media guessing, and led them like the Pied Piper in the famous German folk legend.
Putin is now addressing more press conferences than any Western leader except for United States President Joe Biden. Biden has little choice in the matter because his itinerary is institutionally embedded with frequent media appearances. Look at Putin’s schedule in the last week. Russia’s President held a marathon, four-hour press conference billed as a year-end appraisal of his 2023 record in office. He skipped this annual event last year as the Ukraine war was raging and its outcome was uncertain. The tide had then not yet turned to the Kremlin’s advantage. It has since. Again, on December 19, Putin took questions from the media after honouring troops fighting on the Ukraine front with ‘Hero of Russia’ medals. Last week, Putin also announced his re-election bid which made headlines throughout the world. When the Kremlin’s media management pushed Russia to top news spots globally for days on end — and less unfavourably than a year ago — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was forced to respond. He hastily did his year-end press conference. Comparisons with Putin were inevitable. Zelenskyy’s below-par performance — given Ukraine’s declining fortunes on the battlefield — only heightened Putin’s image.
On Russia, the Western media owes its readers an apology of the kind that sections of it belatedly offered after it accepted as the gospel truth Washington’s fabricated stories about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). At the start of the Ukraine conflict, the Western media peddled lies that Putin was critically ill and dying, that Russia was pleading with China for military help in the war, and that Russia’s economy would collapse because of Western sanctions. When the Wagner Group militia revolted, they described the mutiny as the last nail in Putin’s political coffin, as it were.
The threat to the free flow of truthful information is that Western media is synonymous with the global media. Their stories are used worldwide through syndication networks. In many countries, resources are lacking for their media to do independent stories. This is compounded by sanctions which prevent much of the world from accessing the Russian media for the other side of the story.
(KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.