Thanks for this highly informative article. What's depressing is how the US Republican Party is basically also following the Russian playbook. Your comment "Lie about everything, as if you really live in a world where your words are true" could easily have been written about Trump and all his craven enablers in the neofascist Republican party. No wonder in the West we're incapable of standing up to Russian aggression: we're equally incapable of standing up to toxic lies and insurrectionist violence within our own countries.