Look, this is a real temnik (a Kremlin media talking-points memo). You’ve read about these a million times in the media: the presidential administration puts together short, simple briefing notes that even the dimmest employee at a loyal newsroom can understand, explaining how a given event is supposed to be covered.
Yesterday I set up a feedback channel on Telegram, and so far I’ve mostly been getting two kinds of messages:
Screenshots, messages, voice notes, etc., showing how people are being forced to go to the “reset vote” (the vote on resetting Putin’s presidential term count). There’s a massive campaign underway. All state employees and workers at major companies will be marched there, no question. Interestingly, no one is being told how to vote. Vote however you like — that’s not the issue.
A whole pile of messages and screenshots about how the Kremlin is trying to make its feeble “Navalny insulted a veteran” campaign look like a mass movement.
This brilliant idea came from Gromov and Simonyan after I called those backing Putin’s “reset” lackeys and traitors. That’s why they stuffed that poor old man into the video. Now a thief who makes 6 million rubles per episode of the show International Sawmill (about $65,000 at recent exchange rates) is cashing in on his past.
There are paid posts in regional VK communities all over the country. Sponsored articles in the media. And this delightful little temnik. I especially liked the part saying that Opinion Leaders are supposed to provide “responses, opinions, and rebukes” in which I am to be “nailed to the wall with words.”
This particular *temnik* is from Moscow, but there’s no doubt it was devised in the Kremlin, because it’s being circulated nationwide and the end result is supposed to look like this:
But the most interesting part is that feedback is already coming in saying that veterans’ organizations are outraged and refusing to take part. Take Omsk, for example.
In Tomsk, the organization *Volunteers of Victory* refused to do this paid-for propaganda:
Quite apart from the fact that it’s obviously interesting to see how this whole *temnik* system works, this “technical brief” clearly shows how baseless Putin’s main political technique really is: the privatization of Victory (the Soviet victory in World War II as a state-owned political symbol).
They are literally building a single chain: Grandfathers — Victory — Sacrifice — Eternal Putin. If you are against eternal Putin, then you are against veterans. After all, the vote for eternal Putin is being held between the Parade and the Immortal Regiment march.
But now, with Putin sitting in a bunker, having shown himself completely incapable and ineffective during a time of crisis, and actually willing to endanger veterans’ lives by dragging them to polling stations during an epidemic, this no longer works.
All that remains are paid posts, instruction manuals for the “social media accounts of municipal authorities,” and other great media technologies in the Russia Today style, with an audience smaller than their own staff roster.