Plenary meeting of the Federation Council. Photo: Sergey Fadeichev / TASS. All rights reserved.The Russian state currently lives for two problems — its relations with the US, and the upcoming presidential elections. Society is worried about something slightly different — the state of the healthcare system, rising taxes and reducing incomes. But it’s the authorities who set the priorities in Russia, and they don’t often consult citizens.
If you ask Google News, then Russian websites devoted 167,000 articles to the recently announced “tax on modernisation”, and for the recent legislation on foreign media - 223,000. With fresh controls on the media landscape, the Russian authorities are successfully manipulating the news agenda.
Indeed, the Russian parliament is working hard, having stamped out a response to the US registration of an RT production company as a “foreign agent” in record time. America’s Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) is clear: if an organisation carries out PR for a foreign state or company, then it should be registered as a lobbyist. There’s a “principal”, and then there’s its “agent” in the United States.
