How Putin failed to scare the world
Why did the Russian president decide to show off nuclear weaponry at his state-of-the-nation speech?
In terms of pathos, Putin’s weapons presentation matched that of Apple unveiling iPhoneX, but the quality of the graphics dragged it down. Russia Today Managing Editor Margarita Simonyan said that the people who created the video “did not really study design but how to effectively blow themselves up [and the enemy] with a grenade.”
In this case, Simonyan said the truth. In Russia, indeed, there is quite a lot made and done by people who were taught how to blow up grenades. Perhaps some are working in Russia media, too.
Reddit says Russian propaganda was shared by ‘thousands’ ahead of the 2016 election
Reddit didn’t find any Russian ads about the 2016 election, but there was plenty of non-ad content being shared.
Huffman says that tweets from @TEN_GOP on Twitter, a fake account run by Russians and masquerading as the Republican party of Tennessee, were “amplified by thousands of Reddit users.” That’s from just one Twitter account. There were thousands of Russian-controlled Twitter accounts tweeting Russian propaganda ahead of the election.
“Sadly, from everything we can tell, these [Reddit] users are mostly American, and appear to be unwittingly promoting Russian propaganda,” Huffman wrote. “I believe the biggest risk we face as Americans is our own ability to discern reality from nonsense, and this is a burden we all bear.”
Russian spy: Boris Johnson warns Kremlin over Salisbury incident
The UK would respond “robustly” to any evidence of Russian involvement in the collapse of former spy Sergei Skripal, Boris Johnson has said.
Mr Skripal – a former Russian agent convicted of spying for Britain – and his daughter were found slumped on a bench outside a shopping centre on Sunday afternoon.
Earlier they were seen walking through an alley leading from a Zizzi restaurant, which has now been “secured” by police. The Bishop’s Mill pub has also been cordoned off “as a precaution”.
Scientists at Porton Down – the UK’s secret weapons research facility in Wiltshire – are studying the “unknown substance” that is thought to have made the pair ill.
