I have had to explain, more than once, that Putin thinks not in the categories of war and negotiations, but in those of the special operation — which is entirely logical given his chekist education and training. And now we are watching yet another special operation: an anonymous general and a not-so-anonymous billionaire warn us of consequences terrible for the world and for Russia itself if the war does not end soon. And — the cherry on this cake — some anonymous sources in the Kremlin inform our colleagues at Reuters that Putin, despite all these risks, is prepared to continue the war, and that escalation actually invigorates him.

What conclusions is a sober-minded person supposed to draw from this mass of information? That Russia is rapidly approaching a genuine abyss, one that threatens unknown consequences and destabilization, as well as a strengthening of China’s role — and that Putin has no intention of paying attention to any of it and wants to keep fighting. Obviously, then, efforts must be made to stop the war before Russia goes over the edge. And if Putin cannot be persuaded of this, then Zelensky must be persuaded instead. It is Ukraine that must make every possible and impossible compromise in order to save the West and give Putin as much as he desires.

This special operation is so simple and so primitive that it does not even need deciphering — a first-year student at the Andropov Institute would see through it. What remains unclear is why our colleagues fall for this hook every single time.

There are several reasons. The first is the attempt to apply the laws of Western journalism to what happens in Russia. It is very hard for a Western journalist to admit to himself that three sources in the Kremlin are not at all the same thing as three sources in the White House. And even if he does admit it to himself — how, then, is he to prove his usefulness to his own corporation? That is why colleagues accredited in the Russian capital have spent decades deceiving themselves and their employers — turning from people who obtain information into an informational instrument in the hands of the FSB.

The second is the use of influencers confident in their own competence. This is, in essence, the Israeli mistake. In Israel, people may believe they know Iranian society, because that society is studied by people who come from Iran, who speak the language, who follow the processes. And they may fail to grasp, to the very end, how radically the fabric of that society itself has changed since the victory of the Islamic revolution. The same thing is happening with the Russian emigration. It is no accident that for the transmission of narratives meant to persuade the West, it is precisely émigrés who are used — people certain that they truly understand the internal situation and possess exceptional sources. If they were to say to themselves that no general will talk to them without a go-ahead from the Lubyanka, and no billionaire will give a major interview or write a column without that column being cleared with the relevant services or the presidential administration of Russia — then the question would arise of their own usefulness, their journalistic authority, the interest of audiences and corporations in their professional skills — the very corporations that continue to regard them as specialists on Russia and the post-Soviet space. And so these people, too, turn from journalists into instruments of information warfare. And they will never admit it to themselves.

One may marvel that people who grew up in a totalitarian state, or who were forced to emigrate from a new totalitarian state, refuse to acknowledge the rules by which information functions in such a state. The main thing they ought to have understood is this: in such a system, there is no such thing as uncleared information. And that the clearing of information is itself part of the special operation.

That is why the chief task of a journalist is not to propagate the theses offered by the author of a special operation, but to try to understand its purpose.