27 June: Vladimir Putin addresses the audience at the United Russia party congress. (c) Ivan Sekretarev / AP / Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Over the weekend, Brexit revealed (or created, depending on your opinion) another crack in Europe’s fundament. Roughly speaking, the regional working and middle classes pushed back against alienation, of being written out of the conversation. In so doing, they aligned themselves with one strand of elite interests.
As the shockwaves traveled through the UK and beyond, they also made their way eastwards through the continent to Europe’s other frontier, where hybrid conflict, economic downturn and social fragmentation has led to a discord of a higher magnitude in the post-Crimea era.
Across Eurasia, representation in politics and in the media are deeply connected — and the same is true for the UK. We’ve long seen what happens in Georgia, Russia, Ukraine and beyond in isolation — as part of a distant realm beholden to geopolitics and propaganda, rather than local dynamics.
