Vladimir Putin is to be shielded from memes that depict him as a “bald dwarf,” “a crab,” or “a Hitler want tobe” by Russia’s central media watchdog, according to its spooks.
According to information leaked from Roskomnadzor, the principal organization in Moscow in charge of online censorship, which blocks information on the ongoing invasion of Ukraine and any negative comments made about the Russian president.
The Kremlin and Russia’s security services are briefed on all of the despot’s detractors by the agency, according to analysis of the leaks, which compiles reports on all “negative publications” and sends them “upstairs” to them.
Independent Russian media outlets that have investigated the leaks claim that Putin’s online reputation is being watched almost always.
Numerous employees at Roskomnadzor, who number in the thousands, are required to work on weekends and during holidays.
It is thought that they are specifically looking for anything that casts doubt on Putin’s macho image, his health, or his intelligence.
A gang of Belarusian hackers claimed in late 2022 that they had been able to enter an internal Roskomnadzor network and copy a sizable amount of internal data, leading to the leak of thousands of pages of the agency’s papers.
After being given this information, independent Russian journalists, the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, and other western news organizations used it to produce this week’s results.
Roskomnadzor employees log on at 8.30 a.m. every morning to search the internet for any activity that could be a danger to Putin and his reputation, including memes, according to iStories, an independent Russian news website.
The stolen documents indicate that one meme style that is keeping Roskomnadzor employees busy is one that refers to Putin as a crab. Putin’s face is frequently painted over the body of a crab, or the words “Putin is a crab” are written over an image.
Putin famously remarked that he worked “like a slave” while serving as president from 2000 to 2008. Slave and crab have similar pronunciations in Russian, which is how the Russian president’s online moniker came to be.
Other prohibited memes compare Putin to the Nazi ruler Adolf Hitler (and call him “Putler”) and refer to him as a “bald dwarf” (Putin is 5ft 7in, and is widely believed to use platforms in his shoes to make him appear taller).
If you type “dwarf Putin” into Google, you’ll get a number of manipulated pictures of the smaller Russian dictator holding meetings with authorities.
The employees of Roskomnadzor are also tasked with finding material that links Putin to undesirable characters (aside from Hitler), such as pedophiles and serial killers, as well as representations of him in pornographic scenarios or as a “homosexual.”
A caricature depicting Putin wearing makeup and placed on a rainbow, which was made popular by activists in protest of Russia’s homophobic laws, was previously prohibited in Russia. In Russia, the image is regarded as “extremism.”
The spooks are also attempting to put an end to rumors that Vladimir Putin’s health is in “critical condition.” Employees at Roskomnadzor provided a few instances of their discoveries in a paper outlining the agency’s attempts to stop the “destabilization of Russian society.”
Putin definitely has dementia! The elderly man has gone insane! and ‘Will a sane Russian support a president with mental illnesses?’ were among the questions included in the paper that was forwarded to Kremlin officials.
Additionally, censors cited Telegram channel messages. Putin has cancer, but he will live, according to another example from a report.
According to iStories, Roskomnadzor operatives utilize Brand Analytics, a program that keeps watch of media and social media, to find criticism of Putin online.
According to the outlet, they also manually type search terms like “bald dwarf,” “puilo,” “PutinVor,” “Little Tsakhes,” “chief corrupt official,” “Putler,” and “Pynya.”
According to iStories’ analysis of the leaks, Putin received the biggest online criticism at the end of September for his partial mobilization for the invasion of Ukraine, in which he enlisted an additional 300,000 men to serve in his war.
Additionally, there were peaks in criticism when he turned 70 and when an explosion struck the Crimean bridge, which connects the peninsula to Russia.
In June 2022, news about Putin’s health reached its peak.
The source claims that Roskomnadzor also keeps an eye on unnamed Telegram groups critical of the Putin administration, including General SVR, as well as mainstream media sites in the West, such CNN, Fox News, and the Financial Times.
Putin is supposedly dying, according to the channel, which once reported that the Russian leader had soiled himself after falling down some stairs.
The revelations also imply that Yandex, the most popular search engine in Russia and a Google rival, filtered away search results that were unfavorable to Putin and the Kremlin.
According to a corporate spokeswoman who refuted the charge, the engine does not eliminate results on its own, according to independent Russian news outlet Meduza.
Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin, claimed that the purpose of monitoring online activity was to ‘quashing unrest’ in an interview with iStories.
The security forces will eventually just get rid of you because you will be useless to them if you are despised by your own people, he claimed.
Popularity is extremely important to the country’s leader, especially Putin. Any dictatorship can only remain in power if it has a sizable base of supporters, Gallyamov continued.
A leader must decide how to stop and handle an information threat when they become aware of one. He said, “either with the aid of technology means, developing a substitute agenda, or with the aid of an administrative scenario.
Since the start of the conflict, Roskomnadzor has been harshly repressing any protests against the invasion. The penalty for openly opposing the war is up to 15 years in prison.
According to iStories, since Putin sent his troops into Ukraine, the war has been the main focus of criticism of the Russian president.
Agents look for references to “starting a war,” “illegally invading,” and “killing Russian soldiers.”
Even now, when addressing the Russian public, Putin and other Kremlin leaders refer to the invasion as a “special military operation.”