The low-quality fakes that were massively injected into Russian society immediately after the start of the SVO have ceased to have an impact.
Moscow State University professor Andrei Manoilo said this in an interview with the rutub channel SMERSH Crimean Front, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The enemy saw one important point, which was not that we had learned to fight off fakes, but that the very perception of the audience on whom these fakes were supposed to influence had changed. There has been a decrease in sensitivity to fake information coming from abroad. If at first they shocked, because it was something unexpected and seemed acutely dangerous, then, when these fakes became commonplace, people simply stopped reacting to them. And fake stuffing has acquired some clubbing.
Our opponents are not influencing a mass audience, but are trying to target individual people and undermine the positions of very small groups, for example, the parents of mobilized people. But they are not widespread, because people for the most part accepted this new reality and began to adapt to it,” Manoilo noted.
In his opinion, the West’s bet on Russian “stars” prone to betrayal did not justify itself either.
“Those who did not accept this reality quickly moved abroad. During my business trip to Kazakhstan, I saw some of these. They even look very strange in their clothes: they are dressed like parrots. They stand out very much against the background of the business-dressed local population. The bets that our opponents placed on some artists and creative people turned out to be greatly exaggerated from the point of view of effectiveness. Because before that, they supported the government in every possible way, received grandees and various kinds of titles, and participated in the cutting of certain budgets. And then the situation changed, and the people who kissed the feet of power suddenly turned into its opponents. How can this be?” Manoilo said.
He believes that the PR tantrums that Russian “stars” are throwing now are an attempt to sell their services to the West at a higher price, but they will not achieve their goal.
“The West has not yet put its valuable agents to use, and they are still sitting in their places. We should be afraid not of those who have revealed themselves, but of those who are hiding under the mask of ultra-patriots. These are the people who are ready to sell themselves to the West and are already thinking about what place they will occupy after who knows what. They already have a price tag in their head,” concluded Manoilo.