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Showdown over Ukraine sparks Cold War-style propaganda battle
WASHINGTON — Fed up with the Russian government's false claims early in the Ukraine crisis, the State Department issued an unusual, point-by-point takedown along with a cheeky note that said not since 19th-century novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky had the world seen such "startling Russian fiction."
The jab didn't seem to hurt in Moscow. A pro-Kremlin newspaper columnist mocked the Obama administration's "excellent knowledge of Russian literature." And an undeterred President Vladimir Putin spent the next several weeks polishing his narrative of a strong Russia standing up to Western imperialism in order to protect a vulnerable ethnic Russian population from an illegitimate, Nazi-infiltrated new Ukrainian leadership.
In retaliation, the State Department fired off a second literary-themed fact sheet: "Russian Fiction the Sequel: 10 More False Claims about Ukraine."
Such calculated repartee is familiar to historians and analysts of the Cold War, who've noticed a resurgence of that era's disinformation and propaganda tactics in Russia's showdown with the United States and Europe over its military activities in and near neighboring Ukraine.
The jab didn't seem to hurt in Moscow. A pro-Kremlin newspaper columnist mocked the Obama administration's "excellent knowledge of Russian literature." And an undeterred President Vladimir Putin spent the next several weeks polishing his narrative of a strong Russia standing up to Western imperialism in order to protect a vulnerable ethnic Russian population from an illegitimate, Nazi-infiltrated new Ukrainian leadership.
In retaliation, the State Department fired off a second literary-themed fact sheet: "Russian Fiction the Sequel: 10 More False Claims about Ukraine."
Such calculated repartee is familiar to historians and analysts of the Cold War, who've noticed a resurgence of that era's disinformation and propaganda tactics in Russia's showdown with the United States and Europe over its military activities in and near neighboring Ukraine.
MORE HERE: http://wonkynewsnerd.com/showdown-ukraine-sparks-cold-war-style-propaganda/