(May 22, 2015)

The conflict in Ukraine bears many hallmarks of Surkov‘s work. He even published a short story (under a transparent pseudonym, of course) about the possibilities of what he termed ‚non-linear war‘. In this constructed and stage-managed media landscape, Ukrainian officials and MPs are derided as fascists; the Russian soldiers fighting and dying in Ukraine are actually freedom fighters, defending the creation of ‚Novorossiya‘ – or they are not there at all; and, perhaps worst of all, the whole conflict was actually the result of Western expansion, of US imperialism.