Five months following the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, media reports, especially in the West, focus on Vladimir Putin, but ignore that the Russian president is not acting alone, but is surrounded by a circle of people equally eager to deceive the West.New York Post“American.
The paper says that these “followers” are not only cunning, but are very well compensated for their closeness to Putin, and he owes them to help him achieve his terrifying goals.
The newspaper singled out seven personalities as the “circle of evil.” The first of them is Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council, Putin’s closest adviser and longtime personal friend, and the Kremlin hawk who might easily take over Russia, at least temporarily, if Putin becomes incapacitated.
Patrushev wields significant influence in the Kremlin bureaucracy and is one of the main architects of the Putin Doctrine, which seeks to return former Soviet-era countries (such as Ukraine) to Russian control.
Patrushev likely helped plan Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, and Putin’s attack on the rest of Ukraine last February.
The second person on the list is Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary. Peskov has been Putin’s spokesman since 2008. His task is, essentially, to create an alternative reality in which Russia’s geopolitical activities are seen as benign, while covering up the atrocities committed by Putin and the Kremlin.
The newspaper points out that Maria Zakharova, the third on the list, is the 46-year-old spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry. She is the first spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry and has held this position since 2015. Zakharova is known for her combative style of communication and quick stinging criticism that she likes to publish. once morest Western officials, which are often laden with sexual innuendo.
Zakharova’s briefings are filled with Putin’s lies, such as portraying Ukraine as being overrun by the Nazis and in need of immediate liberation by Russian forces.
As for Putin’s “Queen of Propaganda”, Margarita Simonyan, 42, is officially the editor-in-chief of “Russia Today”, the global Russian network of television channels, websites and social media accounts broadcast to non-Russian-speaking audiences in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, German and Russian .
Russia Today is a state-funded and directed Russian news outlet, created with the primary objective of disseminating pro-Kremlin content to influence foreign, especially Western audiences, regarding Russia and Putin.
The circle also includes Arkady Rotenberg, 70, a billionaire Russian businessman who has been Putin’s friend since 1960. A $38 million yacht, a luxury hotel in Rome, a large property in Surrey, England, and several villas in Italy and France.
And the circle is not without oligarchs, and it is represented in Vladimir Potanin, 61, another friend of Putin, a hockey partner, and the richest man in Russia, whose fortune is said to be $25 billion. Potanin was one of the “Big Seven” Russian oligarchs who helped re-elect Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, to the Russian presidency in 1996.
Sergey Pavlovich Roldugin, 70, is a childhood friend of the Russian president, a professional cellist, and Roldugin’s artistic background is the perfect cover for protecting part of Putin’s personal fortune – including as much as $2 billion managed through Roldugin’s brother that was revealed by the Panama Papers. .
The report ranked Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov among the second generation of Putin’s sycophants, and the Russian leader recently promoted Kadyrov to the rank of first lieutenant in the Russian army as a reward for his role in the Ukrainian invasion.
Like his father, Akhmad Kadyrov, who fought for Chechnya’s independence but later changed his mind, young Kadyrov is a staunch supporter of Putin.
In 2015, he was implicated in the murder of prominent Putin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead on a Moscow bridge while reporting on Russia’s role in the Crimean conflict.
The newspaper says that Kadyrov is preparing to send four Chechen battalions to Ukraine to help replenish the exhausted Russian forces.