The looming potential for World War III has become a regular topic on Russian state propaganda shows.
This week, Sergei Kurginyan, a pro-Kremlin political expert close to the secret services, accused the West of tearing Russia apart by creating a fifth column in the Far East, where thousands of Russians have been marching in anti-Putin rallies for two months.
A popular newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda announced in plain language on Friday that: “The world is under a threat of the Third World War over the Russian COVID-19 vaccine.†The paper claimed the European Union and the U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also suggested this week that the order to poison Navalny came from senior Russian officials, the pressure grows on Putin to explain the poisoning or face yet more sanctions.
The age-old theme of a “conflict of civilizations†between East and West has been resurfacing on state media outlets.
If the West continues to punish Vladimir Putin’s allies with economic sanctions and block Russian movement around the world, they say, Moscow will come up with a new strategy building on alliances with other Western antagonists.
The propaganda outlets portray Putin and his allies withdrawing from the world, as if in a besieged castle, to isolate and defend themselves.
But the last two decades of Russian history show how strongly Putin resists any demand imposed by the West.
Nonetheless, Markov explains that Moscow is expecting incoming rhetorical fire during the height of the American election season: “Russian intelligence has informed Vladimir Putin earlier this year of rough attacks on him personally coming up,†he said