The ambition to achieve impact for Russia on public opinion abroad has never left Vladimir Putin. He understands that international influence these days is secured indirectly through the media and commerce, so-called soft power, as well as the hard and direct power of the armed forces. He also recognizes that his administration is more attuned to Russian society than to attitudes around the world.
In 2006 he enlisted the assistance of Ketchum, a New York public relations company, to bring a fresh approach to its requirements. That Ketchum and its Brussels-based partner GPlus lacked staff with expertise on Russia did not discourage the Kremlin, which wanted a firm of proven international standing on board. One of Ketchum’s first steps was to recruit the former Sunday Times Moscow reporter Angus Roxburgh – who ironically had been deported from the USSR in 1989 in retaliation for Margaret Thatcher’s expulsion of a group of Soviet spies. At Ketchum, he joined the unit working alongside Putin’s press spokesman Dmitri Peskov.1 The company reportedly received a total of $30 million for its services in improving official Russia’s image abroad and generating foreign direct investment. Two years into its assignment, the worldwide criticism of the Russian war in Georgia had a convulsive impact on its work. The further annexation of Crimea, the downing of a Malaysian passenger plane by Russian rebels and the deployment of Russia’s troops in eastern Ukraine made Ketchum’s task impossible.
But Ketchum had achieved an impressive success on 12 September 2013 when they placed a piece by Putin in the New York Times headlined ‘A Plea for Caution from Russia’.2 Albeit ghost-written, it was a plea for the United States to analyse Russian foreign policy more sympathetically. Putin welcomed the ‘growing trust’ between himself and Obama, even though he criticized what he saw as Obama’s presumption of ‘American exceptionalism’. The article’s thrust was towards finding a way for Russia and America to work together for an end to the Syrian civil war, and won approval from those in the United States calling for a less frosty approach to the Kremlin after the icy exchanges about American allegations of fraud in the 2012 Russian presidential election. The final words borrowed from American religious and political culture: ‘There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.’3
Roxburgh’s unvarying advice to the Kremlin had been to ‘open up to the press’. The idea, conventional enough in the West, was that the more politicians gave interviews, the more people would listen to them. Laws, decrees and printed announcements had less impact than leaders willing to discuss policies with reporters. The snag was that few ministers liked the prospect of scrutiny by the media. Western reaction to the murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, Roxburgh noted, had the effect of making the political elite even edgier about explaining their case.4 Another problem was that Peskov and his team assumed that the way to obtain improved coverage in the Wall Street Journal or The Economist was simply to pay for it. It was further assumed that the best way to deal with reporters who carped about Kremlin policies was to ban them from press conferences. Russian officials failed to comprehend the harm this would do to public relations.5
As the Ketchum unit saw it, Kremlin leaders had to abandon the idea that what worked in Russia would be effective everywhere. Ketchum’s team wrote draft speeches for ministers, only for the ministers to get them rewritten by their intimates. Sergei Lavrov in the Foreign Affairs Ministry refused to allow the team even to send him a draft.6
Ketchum complained that the Russian official attitude frustrated their capacity to achieve the impact on international opinion their contract demanded. But were the Russians so ineffective in changing the attitudes of millions of Westerners? Putin, Medvedev and Lavrov received a share of favourable media coverage even after the Georgian war and through to 2014. Though they never ceased to be controversial, they could usually count on a respectful hearing. Whereas Ketchum focused on the world, Russia’s rulers had to remember about Russia. Putin’s Deputy Chief of Staff Alexei Gromov told Roxburgh that ‘we have to think about domestic public opinion, which is generally positive about the Soviet Union. We have to think about political stability inside the country first and foremost.’7 Work in public relations was always going to be a strain for any Western company, something the company’s directors can hardly have failed to expect. The only consolation for Ketchum was that the Russians honoured the financial terms of the contract. Money rolled in at the rate of nearly $1 million a month.8
But events in Crimea delivered a hammer blow to the collaboration. Ketchum attracted such opprobrium in America that in 2015 it withdrew from its lucrative contract – Peskov saw this made sense for both the company and the Kremlin in the light of the international atmosphere. Just then no amount of public relations cleverness was going to rescue Putin’s reputation in Western countries.9
Putin also had a technique of his own to spread Russian influence, which was to invite foreigners – former leading politicians as well as foremost journalists and academics with a professional interest in Russia – to an annual event known as the Valdai International Discussion Club. Meeting annually near the little town of Valdai to the south-east of Novgorod, the conferees discuss global affairs around a theme Putin chooses for them. Visitors over the years have included many ex-national political leaders from abroad: Thabo Mbeki, Dominique de Villepin and Hamid Karzai have been enthusiastic participants. Invitations have even gone out to a few reporters known for their antipathy to Putin. The main contributions are screened online to show the Russian president in the company of foreigners who treat him with respect, and transcripts of admiring comments are posted on the presidential website. At the end of the event, Putin rounds things off with a speech and a Q&A session. Though he can be quizzed about sensitive matters, the tacit rule is that questions are put in a temperate fashion: direct criticism is considered bad form. The idea is for everyone to come away intoxicated by a president who goes out of his way to show off the affable, thoughtful side of his nature. He offers this rationale for the Valdai proceedings:
I have two purposes. The first is to listen to what clever people – experts – have to say. I am really interested in your opinion; this is useful both for me and for my colleagues. And the second is to relay our opinion in person to you and through you. That’s the whole thing. I think this is important.10
Whether he takes account of what the audience says is open to doubt, and at any rate nobody to date has put a very aggressive question or objection to him. Valdai permits Putin to polish his self-image as a straight-speaking leader trying to do the right thing in the world despite all the mud that is thrown at him:
I want to say in this respect that I will also not let you down and will speak directly and frankly. Some things might seem unduly harsh. But if we don’t speak directly and speak honestly about what we genuinely and really think, then there’s little point in meeting in this format. It would be better in that case to keep to diplomatic get-togethers, where no one says anything sensible and, recalling the words of a famous diplomat, you realize that diplomats have tongues so as not to speak the truth.11
Some Russians suspect that foreigners are gulled by the cosseting experience they have at Valdai. Surely, they ask, guests from abroad ought to be able to see that chauffeur-driven limos, plush hotels, cordon bleu meals and visits to beauty spots are provided with a political purpose?12 Putin is a busy man and Russia’s economy is in a troubled state, so the Kremlin’s calculation must be that the foreign guests will return home with a good impression of Russian politics – and, the hope is, an influence on public opinion outside Russia.13
But Putin has reason for satisfaction that some Western reporters have conveniently dropped the approach they usually apply to examining their own leaders. In October 2014 Seumas Milne, a trenchant critic of mainstream politicians in the United Kingdom, turned pussycat in Putin’s presence:
I would like to ask a two-in-one question. First, Mr President, do you believe that the actions of Russia in Ukraine and Crimea over the past months were a reaction to rules being broken and are an example of state management without rules? And the other question is, does Russia see these global violations of rules as a signal for changing its position? It has been said here lately that Russia cannot lead in the existing global situation; however, it is demonstrating the qualities of a leader. How would you respond to this?14
The prize for the most fawning performance, however, had to go to Peter Lavelle, an American reporter who worked for the RT television channel. Lavelle offered a prepared encomium:
I am very happy to see you, Mr President. I would like to ask a question on behalf of the media, because all the questions were very interesting. For several days, we discussed many of the issues that were mentioned here today. However, I would like to talk about your image in the world. I am an American, as you can tell by my accent. There are quite a few Americans here.
The air filled with the intense scent of obeisance:
You are possibly the most demonized politician in the world today. We now see a demonstration of various levels of ignorance, of inability to speak out and to establish necessary contacts. On the other hand, if we take a global view, you may be one of the most popular people in modern history. I would even say that from a distance – from the Eurozone and from America – you are seen as a saviour, a man who is saving the situation. What do you think about this?15
Putin’s press spokesman Dmitri Peskov told the Ketchum team, however, that Putin sometimes despairs at the limpness of the questions that are put to him. A natural warrior, he would evidently like the sparks to fly a lot more.16 Presumably he liked it, then, when Neil Buckley, eastern Europe editor of the Financial Times, broke the obsequious pattern:
Mr President, as I heard, one of your international colleagues said that you do not consider Ukraine a real country. You see Ukraine as a country formed out of what were pieces of other countries. Could you confirm this view? Is this your view? Do you think that Ukraine has the right to exist as a sovereign and independent state, and is it indeed a real country?17
Putin shimmied round the question by concentrating on the number of times the borders of Ukraine were redrawn in the twentieth century. He omitted to say whether he regarded it as a real country, and Buckley had no right to a follow-up question. These are the rules at Valdai: guests are there at the president’s pleasure and on his terms.
Another instrument designed to enhance Russia’s image was a network known as Russkii Mir (Russian World). Founded by presidential decree in 2007, it took Germany’s Goethe Institutes and China’s Confucius Institutes as its model in an effort to popularize the Russian language and culture. To begin with, funding was promised for centres in a couple of British universities, with the idea of providing a mixture of evening talks, a daytime library and a general ambience for learning and discussion without an overt political or economic agenda. Vyacheslav Nikonov, a well-known nationalist politician, was chosen to head the operation.
A thick sheaf of administrative and financial affidavits had to be completed by the foreign recipients of Russian World’s benefactions – Moscow’s way of preventing it from becoming a slush fund for Nikonov’s staff or the host institutions abroad – and under its bureaucratic weight the project only limped along. Another lame initiative of Putin’s second term involved the creation of the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation in New York and Paris. The overtly political purpose was to promote Russian policy and argue that democracy and civil rights were better protected in Russia than anywhere in the West.18 In 2015 the New York Institute, blighted by the indifference of most Americans, announced it was closing. The Russian authorities pretended its work was fulfilled because official respect for civil rights in America had improved. A more credible conclusion would be that the Kremlin had pulled the plug on an utter waste of money.19
The Russian leadership had greater success with the global television news station Russia Today, founded in 2005 and quickly known just by its initials RT. This was a free-to-air channel for news and discussion that was friendly to the official Russian line. Western media were no longer to enjoy an unchallenged run as the RT network set about changing things in the Kremlin’s favour. Editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan noted with displeasure how few people outside Russia gave credit to the USSR for the victory over the Third Reich, remarking that 50 per cent of Americans thought the United States alone achieved the victory whereas only 14 per cent saw the Soviet contribution as having been decisive. Twitter and Facebook campaigns were projected to correct attitudes about Russia past and present. Videos were prepared. It was going to be an uphill task, but Simonyan dedicated herself to reaching the summit.20
The RT channel achieved an impact that many in the West have both envied and deplored. In the Kremlin there was manifest delight that official Russia was finally getting its message across to foreign viewers. Putin gave the credit to Simonyan while maintaining to an audience of visitors from abroad that the whole project drew on only modest resources. ‘I’ll tell you now, friends and colleagues [sic],’ he told the Valdai conference in 2016, ‘I would really like to have such a [Western-style] propaganda machine in Russia, but unfortunately this is not the case. We have not even global media outlets of mass information such as CNN, the BBC and certain others. We simply do not have this kind of capacity yet.’21
In fact RT broadcasts on its TV cable channels and supplies online content in English, Spanish and Arabic; and with a growing number of Russians living abroad, the station also broadcasts in Russian. A French station has recently been added. These ventures, which are supervised by the old news media giant RIA-Novosti, have a strategic importance for the Russian authorities. To anyone interviewed on an RT station the hand of Moscow is immediately discernible (as I experienced in person during the first year of the London station, when the presenter blatantly favoured a fellow guest who toed the Kremlin line).
Despite this, Jeremy Corbyn MP, before becoming leader of the British Labour Party in 2015, cheerfully accepted RT’s invitations for a considerable period, and the ex-leader of the Scottish National Party Alex Salmond hosted a regular news show, something viewed askance by his successor Nicola Sturgeon. In the United Kingdom, the football manager José Mourinho was an RT pundit during the 2018 World Cup, and the former England centre forward Stan Collymore was given his own show. During programmes the channel screened banner sublines with a political cast. In the United States RT producers found notable figures harder to recruit: no leading politician or sportsperson there has so far accepted an offer of employment.
This has not stopped Simonyan and the rest of RT from poking a sharp stick at the Western political establishment, tirelessly pointing out breaches of democratic and judicial procedure and highlighting police abuses, drug addiction and widespread poverty. Decadence and hypocrisy, runs its refrain, start west of Russia. The US Department of Justice reacted by instructing RT to register as a ‘foreign agent’, in line with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) introduced in 1938 to counteract the propaganda distributed by organizations operating on behalf of the Third Reich. The reality was that, since the Second World War, registration was only rarely ordered. Now RT was being required, as a condition of continuing to operate in the United States, to label the contents of its output, making clear that it was working for the Russian state.22 In return, Vyacheslav Volodin, the Duma Speaker, indicated an intention to bring forward legislation to make it difficult for the American media to operate in Russia.23
Behind closed doors in Moscow, Russian leaders applauded RT for prodding an arm of the American government into a clampdown, however slight, on the station’s freedom of expression. Simonyan had always said America’s liberties were a mirage, and now the Justice Department was making her case for her. With growing confidence, the Kremlin’s spokesmen began to show a sense of humour. In 2017 jokey posters were displayed in the London Underground which read: ‘Missed the train? Lost a vote? Blame it on us!’ Another one went: ‘Watch RT and find out who we are planning to hack.’24 The following year the jesting continued when video screens at Moscow’s international airports carried messages like ‘The longer you watch, the more upset Hillary Clinton becomes’ and ‘The CIA calls us a propaganda machine – find out what we say about the CIA.’25
The series of interviews Putin granted to Oliver Stone between July 2015 and February 2017 saw him in relaxed mood. Stone, a Democratic Party supporter and an advocate of rapprochement with Moscow, asked pat-a-cake questions and seldom followed up when Putin became evasive. It was easy for Putin to present himself as a decent, thoughtful leader whose purpose was to make Russia great without disturbing peace on earth. At their parting, Putin advised Stone to prepare himself to take a public beating in the United States for his efforts. Stone agreed: he knew he faced criticism at home.26 The interviews, cut and edited into four shows, were broadcast in America in summer 2017. Most reviewers saw that Stone had let off Putin lightly. Even so, by achieving an atmosphere of unprecedented informality, Stone pulled off something none of Russia’s TV interviewers had managed for more than a few seconds: he got Putin to smile and keep smiling.27
By ‘humanizing’ Putin, Stone did his international reputation a favour that most of Ketchum’s efforts had failed to achieve. But the problem remained that Putin the politician had undertaken a land grab in Ukraine, something no amount of soft-focus conversation with Stone would remove from the minds of most in the West.