About “Information war” in Russia.
In Russia there are many loyalists with believes that can be described as “Yes, we agree that people in the government are sons of a bitch but they are our sons of a bitch.” Or “Yes, we agree that all government media are liars but all media are liars.” For all examples of bad deeds of the regime they have some example of something similar in the West. (Example: “Kremlin is persecuting participants of peaceful meetings”—“Ha-ha, Canadian authorities do the same with convoy protesters”.) Often these people are interested in western news more than in Russian news.
Also there is a “paradox”. One of the main lines of Kremlin propaganda is a statement: “In Russia we value non-material things and the West agents teach people to value only money and base pleasures.” (This inherited from the Soviet Union.) But it seems to me the most Kremlin supporters don’t trust in somebody’s altruism absolutely (excluding maybe members of their families or very intimate friends).
So Kremlin has big difficulties when it needs to force people to do something. For example Russian vaccination campaign was failed despite the propaganda. But it is much easier to force people not to do something.
About Kamil Galeev.
Twitter thread sounds reasonable for me. A little remark: Post in the Account Chamber after the governorship hardly can be treated as a promotion. Orlova lost the election and it seems to me that people in Kremlin was disappointed. But for now Kremlin don’t practice hard punishments for their people and sometimes it moves they to unimportant posts.
As far as I know about 70% people in Russia don’t have an international passport. And I think many people who have it visited only Egypt or Turkey.