Social media and these few independent news sources provided real information about a regime that had no qualms about lying; indeed, the KGB regarded the concept of truth itself as a ludicrous bourgeois construct. In the Kremlin’s relativistic universe, what mattered was the story you told. Control that story and society would surely follow. Putin’s onslaught against Ukraine threw up new challenges, however. His sovereign version of what was going on next door was wildly at odds with reality. To shore up this far-fetched account, the presidential administration resorted to drastic measures,
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