Foreign Desk Report
MOSCOW: The United States and other Western countries are waging a psychological war on Russia to try to undermine President Vladimir Putin and state institutions, an adviser to Russia’s defence minister said.
The aide, Andrei Ilnitsky, also said in comments widely reported by Russian media that Washington also wanted to alter how Russians think in a “war for people’s minds”. Moscow’s ties with Washington are at a post-Cold War low, with U.S. President Joe Biden saying he believes Putin is a killer who deserves to be hit with sanctions for meddling in U.S. politics, charges the Kremlin denies.
Russian authorities have also suggested jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is a Western puppet on a mission to destabilise Russia, an allegation Navalny has dismissed. “A new type of warfare… is starting to appear. I call it, for the sake of argument, mental war. It’s when the aim of this warfare is the destruction of the enemy’s understanding of civilizational pillars,” Ilnitsky, who advises Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, told the Spas TV channel.
