Fullofbias

The regime likes talking about information wars waged against it, largely to justify its own “counter-offensives”. Here is an example of what back in the KGB days they dubbed “information surge”.
This morning, news broke about two women who had been killed in Kazan. Arriving at the scene, policemen found the words “Free Pussy Riot” written on the wall with victims’ blood.
I first spotted this story on a ultra-nationalist website, linked to the Orthodox church. It was preceded by five or six stories of fallen crosses, vandalized churches and broken icons – mysterious incidents that began happening almost daily after Pussy Riot trial, according to government-linked media. 
By the afternoon, the Russian Internet filled up with headlines directly or indirectly putting the blame on the imprisoned Pussy Riot girls. The liberal blogosphere was united in the opinion that the whole story smacks of provocation. 
Later during the day, a senior cleric in the Orthodox Church and a senior member of the ruling United Russia party both linked the murder with Pussy Riot’s performance in the Moscow cathedral. Lyubov Yarovaya of United Russia said Pussy Riot have created a breed of “moral freaks” capable of committing such heinous crimes.
I happened to chat with a major public figure from 1990’s about it. “Does it remind you of all the explosions in the mines and plants that preceded show trials in the 1930s?”, I asked.
“It reminds me of Ryazan exercise”, he said, referring to an incident in 1999, which led to some people accusing Putin’s government of staging the apartment bloc bombings that killed hundreds in Moscow and helped Putin’s rise to power.
“Mind you, the initial agency report did not contain such a minor detail as something written in blood on the wall. It only came up later”, he added. Reports that I read later seemed to confirm it.
Putin’s former spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky wrote this today: “There are three undeniable facts – the murder, the inscription on the wall and the full-out media offensive, which leaves no doubt that all the government-linked media are operating under the same instruction. The unsolved murder should be blamed on Pussy Riot supporters”.
Popular blogger Andrei Malgin quotes Agatha Christie: “A murder is announced”.