I think the fact is that the Russian propaganda is working to a certain extent because Mr. Putin has been in power for so long. They've been changing constitutions, and he plans to stay in power. There has been some minimal protest, I suppose, but by and large his power is unchallenged. Clearly, the Russian propaganda and disinformation works to a large extent within Russia.
In Ukraine, the Kremlin is operating by different means. They're not directly trying to impact Ukrainian media and the population because it would be so blunt and people would see through that propaganda. They're trying to do it through the Russian-controlled oligarchs. For example, channel 112 and channel ICTV are owned by Ukrainian oligarchs who have direct links to Russia. They're trying to approach it in a more subtle way in that they're taking a certain amount of truth, for example, the issue of corruption in Ukraine on the social level, the economic level and so on, and they are trying to put a spin on it, calling for example, for a new Revolution of Dignity, a new Euromaidan, so to speak, to have an impact on the unity of Ukraine and to disintegrate the Ukrainian government.
In that respect, is it working? It hasn't worked yet because Ukraine is still functioning as a country, by and large, but you have seen over the past couple of days there are protests in Ukraine against the current Ukrainian government. They're legitimate claims to expedite the reforms, fight corruption further, and so on and so forth, but the danger is that the Russian agents of influence and the Russian-controlled media and certain politicians will use these legitimate claims to their advantage to manipulate this.
I think the same, to a certain extent, is happening here in the west. We obviously don't see the blunt Russian propaganda here because you wouldn't buy it but there is a certain stretch of the truth here and there that is impacting people. I'm spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C., and even in talking with certain think tanks and media over there quite often they are taking RT reports, Russian reports, at their face value while in reality the truth has been manipulated.
There is a real danger from the Russian propaganda. It's fairly sophisticated. I was born and grew up in the Soviet Union and remember that Soviet propaganda was pretty simplistic in nature, pretty blunt and primitive. It was easy to recognize it, even for a young child like me. What I'm seeing now on the RT, what I'm seeing now in Ukraine or on Russian television and newspapers, is actually a pretty sophisticated operation. I think we have to be very careful that we don't approach it from some sort of a simplistic way, but we do a proper analysis and recognize it as the threat that it is to Ukraine, but most importantly to our Canadian and western interests and values.