Putin’s media crackdown is a sign of weakness

Editorial: The new law against ‘fake news’ in Russia is a sign the regime fears it is losing the battle against the truth in Ukraine

The Russian parliament building looks ever more like the Ministry of Truth (Getty)

It was the last shred of the mask of liberal democracy; now, Vladimir Putin has torn it off. He tolerated independent journalists, both within Russia and from abroad, for some time after he had ceased any pretence of being either liberal or a democrat. For years, the dominant state-controlled media in his country has fed its people a diet of myth and propaganda.

Now, with the invasion of Ukraine, President Putin has abandoned most of the pretence. Until 10 days ago, it was just about possible for him to pretend that the population of Crimea wanted to be part of Russia, and that there were no Russian soldiers in the eastern Ukrainian provinces.

Now, the gap between totalitarian language and the truth is too wide to be bridged. Everyone with access to independent media knows that the Russian invasion is not a “special operation”, that there has been no “genocide” of Russian-speaking people in Ukraine, and that Volodymyr Zelensky, the (Russian-speaking) Ukrainian president, is not a Nazi.