Long after Boris Nemtsov’s killers are caught and Putin is gone, we’ll still be dealing with the legacy of the current media climate.

Detoxing Russia
by Barbara Frye

As Russia watcher Mark Galeotti has written, we don’t know who murdered Boris Nemtsov, but we can’t ignore that his killing took place in an “increasingly toxic political climate that clearly is a product of Kremlin agency, in which people like Nemtsov are portrayed as Russophobic minions of the West, enemies of Russia’s people, culture, values, and interests.”

Long before the gunmen pulled up in their little white car near the Kremlin, it was time to worry about the stew of paranoia and violent rhetoric that Russia’s official message-makers had been cooking up and ladling out via the country’s airwaves.

As director of the state-owned Rossiya Segodnya news operation, Dmitry Kiselyev is arguably the face of Russian TV propaganda. He leads the charge against homosexuals, the Ukrainian government, the West, and other perceived enemies of Russia. Image from a video by Vesti Nedeli.

The most basic ingredient has been the idea that the West does not want a strong Russia and that those who speak out against the regime of Vladimir Putin really seek to prevent the country from taking its rightful place as a superpower – whether they be hawks in the U.S. State Department or their lackeys in the creative classes of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Added later was the idea that Putin is fighting to preserve Russia’s traditional cultural values against a tide of European degeneracy that threatens to spill over its borders.

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