Dmitry’s boss, Alexei Gromov, was one of the most important men in the Kremlin during Putin’s presidency. He was described to me as ‘the only person who could walk into Putin’s office without an appointment’. He saw him every day and was a constant sounding board for policy ideas. He also exercised tight control over the Russian media. I was once drinking tea in his office when the head of Russian state television walked in. Gromov introduced me briefly to him, then waved him through to his back office, asking him to pour himself a drink and wait. This was the regular weekly pep-talk, where Gromov talked through the agenda for the coming period and made sure coverage would be ‘correct’.
Like Peskov, Gromov started out in the diplomatic service, posted to Prague and Bratislava, and was brought back to head Yeltsin’s press service in 1996. He has a penchant for patterned cardigans and smokes Marlboros through long cigarette-holders. As Putin’s press secretary he dealt exclusively with the Russian media, leaving the foreign press to Dmitry Peskov. During one meeting with Gromov I raised one of my perennial themes: the West regarded Russia as reverting more and more to Soviet ways of thinking and behaviour, and in order to combat this it was necessary not only to stop acting like the Soviets (by banning opposition demonstrations, for example) but also to forcefully repudiate the Soviet past in speeches and in documentaries that could be shown on state television. Gromov’s reply was revealing. He conceded that this would have a positive effect on the West’s attitudes, but, he said, ‘we have to think about domestic public opinion, which generally is positive about the Soviet Union. We have to think about political stability inside the country first and foremost.’ I found it depressing that he simply accepted that many Russians, especially older ones, were nostalgic about the past, and that challenging this view could lead to ‘instability’. With his influence over the state media, he could have launched a campaign to change perceptions of the past. After all, this had been done under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and attitudes had changed. Now the government, by its inaction, was allowing Stalinism and communism to enjoy a revival. Worse than that – as we shall see in a later chapter – school textbooks were being rewritten to play down Stalin’s crimes.
Over the years I tried to be as candid as possible in my advice, even if it went beyond the normal bounds of ‘public-relations advice’. This was a period when the authorities began to break up demonstrations staged by a new opposition coalition known as The Other Russia, led by the chess champion Garry Kasparov. I explained to my Kremlin colleagues that no amount of PR would lessen the damage done by a photograph of riot police beating up old ladies. But of course my comments were misdirected. I have little doubt that Dmitry Peskov agreed with me wholeheartedly: but it was not his job to change the police tactics.
I was once asked to comment on an article drafted in Russian for President Medvedev, with a view to having it published in the prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine. This was in 2008, following the war against Georgia. The article was so badly written (as though at least three people with divergent views had contributed to it) that I sent back an excoriating review, suggesting that unless they wanted their president to be seen as a crazy schizophrenic they should tear the article up. The eyebrows of my professional PR colleagues shot up, concerned about upsetting their employers. But Peskov thanked me for my advice.
However much Peskov came to trust my judgement, I came to realise that it made little difference. The Kremlin wanted us to help distribute the message, not change it. They did not entrust us with anything at all in advance. We would ask for advance copies (or at least extracts) of important speeches, for example, so that we could prime the early morning news bulletins, whet the appetite for more, and ensure maximum effect by the end of the day. This is standard practice in Western government press offices. But the Kremlin did not trust its media advisers. We received the texts of Putin’s speeches at the same time as the journalists. As for the public-relations efforts that received attention in the West – Putin’s macho photo-shoots, for example – they had nothing to do with us. We always learned about them after the event.
Ketchum won a prestigious public relations award for its efforts in 2007, but I know the Kremlin wanted its PR consultants to be ‘pushier’ – not just arranging press conferences and interviews, or providing them with briefing materials and analytical papers, but actually trying to manipulate journalists into painting a more positive picture of Russia. I remember a conversation with Peskov’s deputy in which he criticised us for failing to follow up an interview given by a government minister to ensure that the journalist wrote it up in ‘the right way’. Newspapers would describe us as spin-doctors, endeavouring to play down Putin’s human rights record – and, indeed, perhaps that is what the Kremlin wished for. But in fact, Ketchum’s principal role was to inform the Kremlin about how they were being perceived, and to encourage them to take the initiative to change things. What really needed changing, of course, was the message, not the way it was conveyed – but that was a political challenge far beyond Ketchum’s remit.
Other Western approaches
The Ketchum project was not the only ‘propaganda tool’ employed by the Kremlin at this time. Russia Today (later rebranded RT) was set up at the end of 2005 as a 24-hour satellite television station, aiming to give a ‘Russian take’ on world events and to inform worldwide audiences about Russian politics and life. With a budget of $60 million in its first year, it employed Russians with first-class English and also foreign nationals as presenters, and looked as professional as many of its competitors in the global television market. Unlike rivals such as BBC World News, CNN or newcomers like France-24, however, it did not set out to be a dispassionate news source, covering stories on their merits. RT’s mission is to explain Russia to the world, so there is an emphasis on domestic political stories and little attempt to provide comprehensive coverage from other countries. The method used is much less crude than its Soviet precursors, which painted a black-and-white picture of a West riven by class struggle and poverty, contrasted with a Soviet Union free of problems. RT – understanding that viewers also have other sources of information – does not shrink from covering opposition activities and even criticism of Russian policies. It thereby manages to create an illusion of plurality in the Russian media which in fact belies the truth: RT is the exception in Russia’s television system, because it is aimed at a foreign audience. It showed its true colours and purpose during the 2008 war with Georgia, when all pretence at balance was dropped and Russia Today became a full-blooded propagandist for the Kremlin.
The station was founded by a state-owned news agency, RIA Novosti, which grew out of the Soviet-era Novosti Press Agency (APN) and like it combines two separate roles: firstly, it is a news-gathering organisation which provides news reports primarily to foreign audiences (APN’s network of foreign correspondents also included a large number of undercover KGB spies); secondly, its foreign bureaus serve as hubs for the propagation of Russian government information. The latter function overlapped greatly with the role Ketchum and GPlus were expected to play, and this led to a certain amount of friction. I got the impression that RIA Novosti was none too happy about its role as official Kremlin propagandist being usurped by foreigners. Occasionally GPlus, for example, would be asked to set up a press briefing with the Russian envoy to Brussels, Yevgeny Chizhov, only to find that the ambassador was already working with RIA Novosti on the same project – except that RIA, with its enormous resources, was doing it in style, with a video link to Moscow.