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Outlook
SUNDAY, MARCH 6 , 2022. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/OUTLOOK. SECTION B EZ BDINSIDE BOOK WORLD
William Barr defends himself while taking jabs at Tr ump. B8The death of the Soviet Union, and Putin’s
autopsy of the corpse, helps explain why he
has risked a European conflict — and a
confrontation with Washington — by
launching a brutal assault on Ukraine. The
U.S.S.R., he continued in that interview more
than two decades ago, collapsed because it
was suffering “a paralysis of power.” If the
phrase sounds familiar, that’s because Putin
repeated it in a defiant speech justifying his
new war. The demise of the U.S.S.R., Putin
stated on Feb. 24, “has shown us that the
paralysis of power... is the first step toward
complete degradation and oblivion.” The end
of the Cold War, in his view, was not a matter
of ideology or economics but of attitude and
will. The Soviets blinked, and the Americans
seized the opportunity. “We lost confidence
for only one moment, but it was enough to
disrupt the balance of forces in the world,”
SEE PUTIN ON B3The moment is etched in the
lore of Vladimir Putin: The
Berlin Wall had just
succumbed to hammers,
chisels and history, and a KGB
officer still shy of 40 and
stationed in Dresden, East
Germany, was in a panic,
burning documents and
requesting military support as a crowd
approached. “We cannot do anything without
orders from Moscow,” Putin was told on the
phone. “And Moscow is silent.” In an
interview appearing in his 2000 book, “First
Person,” Putin recalls that dreadful silence. “I
got the feeling then that the country no longer
existed,” he said. “That it had disappeared.”
Two years after the wall went down, the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics did, too. A
decade after, Putin would ascend to power in
Russia, talking about a revival.Carlos
LozadaHow to read
Vladimir Putin
The Russian president’s writings and speeches reveal
a growing resentment toward Washington and a
longing to restore his nation’s Cold War statusM
any in the U.S. government have been
ignoring the bleak warnings of the
Baltic states about President Vladimir
Putin’s malign intentions since 2008, when
Russia invaded Georgia. Then in 2014, when
Putin annexed Crimea from Ukraine, Baltic
leaders warned that he would not stop there.
“The U.S. policy community underestimated
Putin’s intentions,” lamented Chris Skaluba, a
former Pentagon official who is now director
of the transatlantic security initiative at the
Atlantic Council. If Putin succeeds in
Ukraine, there is the threat of a spillover or a
wider war, and the Baltic leaders are worried
once again about what Putin’s next target will
be. The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth
interviewed President Gitanas Nauseda of
Lithuania and President Alar Karis of Estonia
by videoconference this past week as the war
in Ukraine ground on. Edited excerpts follow,
first from the interview with Lithuania’s
Nauseda:Q. How do you see the situation in Ukraine?
A. The situation is terrible. This is really a
tragedy to witness: The Russians are target-
ing not only military infrastructure but also
SEE BALTICS ON B4How two Baltic
presidents view a
war t hey’ve long
warned was coming
The P ost’s Lally Weymouth talks
with Lithuania and Estonia’s leadersW
hile Vladimir Putin’s military lays
siege to Kyiv, his propaganda organs
at home are waging an impossible
war to simultaneously hide and justify the
invasion of Ukraine. Despite the Russian
president’s reputation as a master media
strategist, his government is losing the propa-
ganda war — and fast.
As a scholar studying the memory of war in
Putin’s Russia, I’ve been tracking for years
how the state promotes its preferred histori-
cal narratives on social media. Today, state
social media and television channels are
working overtime to present an unchallenged
narrative of righteousness. Yet the govern-
ment’s messaging is impersonal, abstract and
unappealing. On widely watched political
shows — which now seem to be airing around
the clock — and on the popular Telegram
channels of news organizations such as RIA
Novosti, Russians are being bombarded with
ahistoric screeds about the country’s anti-im-
perialist intentions. TV presenters make wild
boasts about Russia’s nuclear superiority over
NATO. Putin’s preinvasion speech, broadcast
on state channels, was so detached from
historical fact as to be “surreal” in the eyes of
SEE PROPAGANDA ON B4
How is the war
going for Putin on
Russian social
media? Not great.
The usual propaganda is falling
flat, says historian Ian Garner
SERGIY MAIDUKOV FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTAn artist’s view of Kyiv
llustrator Sergiy Maidukov lives in Kyiv. His family fled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started, but he stayed behind, working with some foreign correspondents
covering the war and drawing what he saw on the streets. He sent scenes from Ukraine’s capital on Wednesday and Thursday. B2