The Toppling Of Cheburashka

President Putin of Russia is a powerful man ....

You Would Think President Putin Would Like
Loveable Soviet Children's Character Cheburashka

... his powers have grown over the decades with little hint of them diminishing, although the coronavirus has knocked the Russian economy, and public confidence in his leadership somewhat.

In Russia he has been credited with restoring national pride after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the chaos of the Yeltsin years. Of course it was Yeltsin who brought this former KGB officer in to a position, whereby he could seize power in the vacuum. Something he has retained ever since by various constitutional manoeuvrers.

He has also exerted that power outside the borders of the Rodina (motherland), with his military interventions in Syria, and the Crimea, and tacit support for the separatists in the Ukraine. There are also allegations that he has exerted increasing soft influence in elections and referendums in other countries, notably in Europe and the United States.

They achieve this via organizations such as the Internet Research Agency (IRA), based in Saint Petersburg, which has been described as a 'troll farm', which creates thousands of social media bot accounts, that pretended to be Americans/Brits/French  etc, supporting some group, or cause, in other countries.
 
These charges of interference in foreign countries. range from claims that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election against Hillary Clinton, and thereby supporting the candidacy of Donald Trump (and that they and others such as China and Iran, are planning to do so again), to claims of Russian interference in the UK Brexit referendum. There are also claims of interference in France, Italy, Austrian, and even the last EU elections.

Oddly, given Russia's communist past, the support is always alleged to be for right leaning parties or causes. So allegedly millions of dollars of Russian money to fund Matteo Salvini’s party in Italy. Russian funding for Marine Le Pen’s French far-right party, National Rally in France .... which seems rather counter intuitive to me.

How much credence you give to these claims, and as to whether the social media campaigns had any significant  impact, depends to some extent, on which side of the arguments/elections you were on. The winners dismiss the influence as insignificant or at worst minimal. The losers claim it changed the result or outcome. Speaking as a voter, I have to say that social media has zero impact on my voting habits, and that it has far less influence on other peoples, than influencers would like to think.

But I have seen one possible instance of Putin's powers outside Russia. A while ago I was reading this BBC story which had a link to a cartoon that Mr Putin may not have liked, on a Twitter account (Of_Cheburashka) he also may not have liked either. The cartoon was said to be of Vladimir Putin reading a children's book, about a little Russian tank, to a crying German Chancellor, Angela Merkel while Putin says: "And then the little tank decided to go to Berlin."

I clicked on the link to the Twitter account and the cartoon and got ....

Account Suspended ......

....."This Tweet is from a suspended account."

Now I  don't know about you, but I immediately drew one conclusion. Twitter have been got at, and an opponent of Mr Putin has been silenced. Its probably not true, and there is some other reason for the account suspension ... but it sure looks that way. Also, I tried searching for the cartoon and it is nowhere, not a re-tweet, or a German website, simply gone as though it never existed .....

Now if he has managed that, then that really is exerting your influence abroad ....