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Russia: Vladimir Putin, lies as a political tool?
In February 2023, François Hollande declared at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University that Vladimir Putin had an “unlimited capacity to lie”. Decryption.
(franceinfo)
In February 2023, François Hollande declared at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University that Vladimir Putin had an “unlimited capacity to lie”. Decryption.
Since taking power in March 2000, Vladimir Putin has used false information to improve Russia’s image. He first manipulated history through the rewriting of school textbooks, which were too harsh towards Stalin according to him, or by proclaiming the return of the Soviet anthem. He tries like this “to build a new national novel”analyzes Nicolas Werth, emeritus research director at the CNRS.
This arrangement with reality also concerns the present. The heads of state who have encountered him testify to this, such as François Hollande, who told in February 2023 at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University that Vladimir Putin has a “immense, unlimited capacity to lie”.
According to a researcher, “Putin does not always understand that he is lying”
The latter allegedly assured him that he did not know the Wagner group, a paramilitary organization financed by the Russian state for several years. Vladimir Putin always denied his links with the militia despite the evidence, before finally admitting them. “We were the ones who fully financed this group”he declared in June 2023.
Lying as a political tool, a method revealing a particularly cynical relationship with the world? “I would say that Putin doesn’t always understand that he is lying. His attitude comes from the fact that he thinks that everyone is hypocrite, that everyone is lying”analyzes Vasily Gatov, researcher at the University of California (United States).
For Vladimir Putin, lying is therefore only one means among others to achieve his ends, namely the exaltation of Russia’s past greatness.
