Russia's chief propagandist

Russia’s current propaganda is all the more striking in contrast to Ukraine’s own television coverage

Mr Putin’s decision to dissolve RIA Novosti shows that the Kremlin has become intolerant even to the modest liberalism within its own ranks.  Ever since the Kremlin started to centralise its control over the media, RIA Novosti became a shelter for journalists who were squeezed out of the private media space. The choice of Mr Kiselev as the face of Russian propaganda abroad is a sign that Mr Putin no longer sees any need to preserve even a veneer of European values. But it is also a sign of the extreme degradation of the Russian media.

In 1999 Mr Kiselev deplored such degradation. At the time, he moralised about TV journalists and their difference from “agitators”. A true journalist, he explained, is someone who shows the whole picture. “People will, of course, swallow anything. But if we keep lowering the bar and drop morals we will, one day, find ourselves splashing in the dirt like pigs and eating each other, along with this dirt, and then we would not be able to sink any lower”. Mr Kiselev’s appointment indicates that this day has come.