Putin’s Puppets

The enemy within

Russia’s world showcase, the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, opened today with a typically warm welcome from Ukraine. With seemingly no air defences on offer, swarms of drones swept in to set fire to the vast oil terminal close to the ExpoForum Convention Centre. Plumes of black smoke swelled up before the eyes of the thousands attending from 130 countries.

Among those guests getting their first sight of Ukrainian retribution were a motley crew of Far Right influencers and politicians from the US and Europe, including Candace Owens, her husband George Farmer, the former CEO of Parler, US actor turned Russian citizen Steven Seagal, representatives of Germany’s AfD, the misogynist Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, who are facing human trafficking charges, and more.

Trump also sent the man who’s overseeing his ballroom extension, Rodney Mims Cook Jr, the first time the US has been in attendance at the forum for nearly a decade following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Owens has spent her time since her arrival regurgitating Russian propaganda to her online audience, including what a wonderful Christian country the orphanage-bombing Russia was, how clean and beautiful, and how it should be a close friend and ally of the US. She wasn’t alone. It was almost as if all those who had been invited were working to a Russian script.

Marjorie Taylor Greene parroted the same lines in the US.

Whether they know it or not, these people are weapons in Putin’s war against the West. Russia’s strategy has always been to weaken its opponents socially as much as economically and on the battlefield. Divisions within a society make a country more frail, destabilising governments while forcing an inward-looking agenda.

And on this front, Putin has been remarkably successful. He wanted Brexit to weaken the EU and the UK, he got it. He wanted Trump in power. He got that too.

Funding channelled to anyone who can create those divisions is money well-spent. It costs virtually nothing to buy politicians and influencers in the US, UK and across the EU, certainly not as much as arms spending or intelligence networks.

The money trail is always hard to uncover, but we know it’s there. In 2024, US prosecutors alleged that Trump-supporting Right Wing influencers — including Tim Poot, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson — worked for a media company secretly funded by Russia to churn out English language videos to amplify “US domestic divisions in order to weaken US opposition”, as the indictment said.

The DoJ didn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers. They were simply easily-manipulated pawns, which is how Russia likes to operate.

And there’s an endless parade of people prepared to spout the propaganda because it’s so lucrative. The indictment said one unidentified influencer received $400,000 a month, a $100,000 signing fee and performance bonuses.

It’s an effective way to operate because most people take at face value what the influencers and politicians say. But it’s easy to see the parallels in all the messaging everywhere.

Putin’s aim is to weaken what he sneeringly calls Liberal Western Values. The Far Right jump on this, thinking that Putin is a fellow conservative. He doesn’t care about it at all. He understands that those liberal values have powered the success of the US, UK and EU. Their moral underpinning is a direct threat because it excludes the corruption where Russia, and MAGA, thrive. You don’t want equality and fair play. You want authoritarians doing what they desire.

In St Petersburg, Candace Owens will speak at a session on “balancing parenthood in a large family with a successful career”. She’ll be speaking alongside the kidnapper of Ukrainian children, Anna Kuznetsova, and Yulia Baranovskaya who has been sanctioned by the EU for her role in Russian disinformation campaigns.

“I have been wanting to go to St Petersburg for a very, very long time just as a Christian in general just to see some of those cathedrals and churches,” Owens simpered ahead of her trip.

It’s got so bad that even Far Right activist Laura Loomer is speaking out. “This week it hit me hard just how much Russian propaganda we have been subjected to on the right for the last five years. Especially as it pertains to the religious divide and the absolute gaslighting we get from right wing influencers who use religion as a shield to be a terrible person.”

“It freaks me out to see how many people I’ve known for years who are involved in this op and how their minds have been warped,” she added. “It truly is propaganda and I should have detected this much sooner. The Left wasn’t entirely wrong when they called some people Russian puppets…

“Now I’m just wondering how long some of these people I’ve known for years have been activated as foreign agents and who their handlers are.

“I’ve come to really dislike a lot of people I thought I liked years ago over what I’ve learned about them and their ties to certain foreign interests meant to destabilise the West while they pretended to be the biggest defenders of the West.”