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The World According to Putin review – sex, lies and state-approved videotape

This surreal look at Russian TV showed a foreigner-bashing propaganda machine in full swing – just the thing to distract from a nation in chaos

This is the era of the dead cat. It’s Boris Johnson’s fault. Back in 2013, he wrote an article advising that if you are a politician facing embarrassment over, I don’t know, allegations you funnelled public money to a pole-dancing American businesswoman, slap a dead cat on the table and your problems are over. Noticed how few cats have crossed your path recently? Now you know why.

In The World According to Putin (Channel 4), a beguiling compilation of foreigner-bashing, fiercely nationalistic Russian state telly, we were told that Theresa May is a virtuoso at dead cat politics. It was she who ordered the poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury last year, to misdirect the British people from her Brexit debacle. Or so Dmitry Kiselev, whom Vladimir Putin appointed in 2013 to head the new Russian government-owned international news agency, told viewers of his popular evening news show.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2N27jXI
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