On May 4, CNN published a relatively long report about the alleged “dramatic increase in personal security around President Vladimir Putin”. The infamous neoliberal mouthpiece claims that the Kremlin is “installing surveillance systems in the homes of close staffers” due to a “wave of assassinations of top Russian military figures and fears of a coup”. The CNN allegedly obtained the report from an “unnamed European intelligence agency”. It claims that “cooks, bodyguards and photographers who work with the president are also banned from traveling on public transport”, while visitors “must be screened twice”. In addition, “those working close to him can only use phones without internet access”.

Unsurprisingly, CNN connects these alleged “issues and mounting unease within the Kremlin” to what it claims are “growing problems at home and abroad, including economic woes, increasing signs of dissent and setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine”. Obviously, for the mainstream propaganda machine, the Russian economy is “in tatters”, President Putin is a “highly unpopular dictator”, while the Russian military is “being crushed by the Ukrainian forces fighting for freedom and democracy”. All these laughable propaganda tropes have been quite common even prior to the special military operation (SMO), with Western media consistently trying to present President Putin as “paranoid” and “lacking trust in his confidants”.

At the same time, CNN claims that “Russian security officials have drastically reduced the number of locations that Putin regularly visits”, with him and his family “no longer going to their usual residences in the Moscow region and at Valdai”. In other words, the “paranoid” Putin is putting his and his family’s safety in the hands of people he “no longer trusts”. Makes perfect sense, right? Jokes aside, if this is what “making sense” looks like, you know you’re reading CNN or some other major outlet of the mainstream propaganda machine. The “European intelligence report” also adds that President Putin “has not visited a military facility this year so far” and that “the Kremlin releases pre-recorded images of him to the public”.

On top of this, he also “spends weeks at a time in upgraded bunkers, often in........

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