i saw it coming, but i didnt

when i accepted a job "representing" the russian media in western europe, i went into it with my eyes open, i thought.
everyone knows Russia doesnt have a free media, and hasnt for many years now. my division focuses on financial/commodities reports, so i didnt think this would matter. in any case, i needed the money, badly.

what i didnt expect was what has happened over the past week: a war in georgia, allegedly over two sad strips of land, and a massive propaganda campaign. i didnt expect that every time CNN or SKY news called me i would be given a script to read from. i didnt expect that i would be required to lie publicly, to clients, to the western media, and to investors. and lie i have. i have read out statements from the ministry of foreign affairs with a straight face, knowing perfectly well they consist of fantastical misrepresentations of the truth, some have been absurd to the point of comical. and i have listened as my friends in Gori, in tbilisi, and in sukhami have called me and held their phones in the air so i could here the shots and the screaming. at least the phones lines stayed open.

but most of all, i have concluded russia is weak and putin as scared as ever. this has nothing to do with the war itself, the situation in south ossetia and abhazia is not what i am getting at here (although i have been to both regions and know them well, i have been trying to tell people about the potential for conflict in abhkazia for YEARS now). rather, what is the most telling from my perspective is the way in which the russian leadership fears the media. the way in which it is apparently worried enough about the reality to restrict access to it. if you read the western media in the early days of this conflict, you probably noted all the western news stories were coming from the georgian side. you could say this reflects western media biases, but that is bullshit. the problem is russia restricted access of western journalists and prevented them from representing the russian side of the story. at the start of the conflict, my company and one other (also russian) were the only ones allowed in, giving us complete control over the media....or rather giving the russian government complete control over the media, since they are, ultimately, our bosses. now part of this is the result of endemic corruption (ie we can pay to make sure we are the only ones allowed to cover a story) but it is also the result of fear. what were the russian authorities so scared western journalists would find? that the russian troops were poorly trained and dreadfully fed? we all know this already. i think instead it was because of a mania for controlling the news, in any form, whether it is necessary or not. even if a western journalist wanted to write of the heroic efforts of russia in the region, they probably still would have been restricted, since the authorities trust no one over whom they do not have total control and veto powers.

so the stories that emerged are slanted on the georgian side, and the media filled with endless images of poor elderly georgian pensioners with destroyed houses behind them. russia might have succeeded militarily, but it has lost the image war in the west, and it has only itself to blame for that.