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With new media guidelines, the Kremlin seeks to make Putin’s Valdai Club speech into the foundation of a Russian-defended ‘new world order’

Source: Meduza

On Thursday evening, Vladimir Putin spent more than three hours treating a crowd at the Valdai Discussion Forum to his usual litany of criticisms of the West for its “neocolonial policies” and the destruction of “traditional values.” As he’s done many times, the Russian president talked about the emerging “multipolar world” and argued that “Russia’s existence” guarantees the survival of the globe’s “diversity, variety, and complexity, which is a key to successful development.” Meduza’s Andrey Pertsev explains how the Kremlin hopes to etch Putin’s Valdai Club speech in history.

When fielding questions from the audience and moderator Fyodor Lukyanov, Putin publicly congratulated Donald Trump on his electoral victory in the U.S., praising the president-elect for demonstrating courage after his first assassination attempt. Putin also said he doesn’t reject dialogue with Washington and repeated his readiness for potential peace talks — but not on the “basis of Kyiv’s demands.”

After Putin’s participation at the Valdai Forum, his administration distributed guidelines to Russia’s state-run and pro-Kremlin news outlets (and to “experts” who act as the national media’s pundits) explaining what they should tell the public about the event. Meduza obtained a copy of these guidelines, which don’t mention the president’s comments about Trump or potential peace talks. In other words, the Kremlin neither ordered nor prohibited reporting on these topics.

Instead, the Putin administration’s coverage guidelines frame his Valdai Forum speech as “the event of the year in the realm of ideas and meaning” and depict the president himself as “a major global leader” spearheading the “doctrine of a new world order.” In fact, Russia’s propagandists have been told to lay it on even thicker by arguing that Putin’s speeches demonstrate “a breadth of political and philosophical thought” and that the “depth of his understanding of processes” distinguishes him from his cruder Western counterparts.

According to the Kremlin’s media guidelines, Putin’s ideas belong to a “philosophy of universal development and security,” and the Russian president himself has become “the voice of the world’s majority — and at the same time, the voice of the ordinary man.” 

The administration breaks Putin’s “new world order doctrine” into six points:

The Kremlin’s guidelines tell the media to emphasize that “Russia in the Putin era” has a special role in “building the new world order.” Russia’s grand contribution, says the presidential administration, is to “protect the rights and freedoms of humanity.” At the same time, the Kremlin’s guidelines ignore the many rights and freedoms that Russian officials have legally revoked in recent years.

Pro-Kremlin media outlets have already started acting on these instructions. For example, the website Vzglyad.ru lifted several quotes from the administration’s guidelines in its report on Putin’s Valdai speech, calling it the “doctrine of a new world order” and evidence of the president’s “broad political vision.”