Putin's Russia: When Denial of War Becomes State Policy

In a recent opinion piece for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Russian journalist Andrei Kolesnikov argues that the Kremlin's systematic denial of the war in Ukraine is rooted in a long-standing Russian culture of lies. He traces this tradition from Potemkin villages under the tsars to Soviet-era truth manipulation, and now to Vladimir Putin's regime, which uses linguistic distortion to maintain that there is no war in Moscow because it is officially designated a 'special military operation'. Kolesnikov asserts that what Russian authorities label as 'fake' is almost always the truth. The article, published on an unspecified date, offers a critical perspective on state propaganda and the suppression of reality in contemporary Russia.