Putinist propaganda, researchers debate in Warsaw

(ANSA) - WARSAW, 11 DIC - Resulting from the work of a team of 13 researchers, collaborators of universities and foundations at an international level, the book 'Putin's Europe' was presented in Warsaw. The research project, published by the Polish liberal foundation Projekt Polska and the ALDE think tank, the European Liberal Forum (Elf), aimed at analysing the ramifications of Putinist propaganda throughout Europe and the prospects for the international liberal democratic order.
    According to the editors, 'Putin's Europe' is a unique publication, a compendium of reflections on the new world order and testimonies from the East, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Latin America on how Russia has invested, over time, in information warfare, disinformation, and external interference.
    The book illustrates how this strategy has been implemented with extreme meticulousness - and a certain know-how developed during the Cold War years - to manipulate public opinion and politicians, and to seek consensus among different souls in the European Union and beyond.
    "The Russian president's narrative - explains Fondazione Luigi Einaudi researcher Renata Gravina - has developed around an evolving struggle-defence against the alleged collective challenge to the West and against the liberal model as a whole.
    The West is perceived by Russia as the bridgehead of a democratic export and as a destabiliser of Russia's foreign neighbour'. Gravina identifies the successive stages in the evolution of Putin's ideology as marked by the coloured revolutions of 2003-2005, the Munich conference of 2007, the Arab Spring of 2011 and finally the Dignity Revolution of 2014.
    The Warsaw event is the first stop for the presentation of the printed version of the 350+ page volume. Among the topics analysed in the publication are geopolitical issues and the general ideology of the Kremlin, particular activities of the Kremlin in Europe according to various perspectives; the last part of the essay is a short study on Russian influence on Hungary, Bulgaria and Serbia. (ANSA).