This in itself is Kremlin's propaganda 101.

Kremlin's most effective propagandist media and influencers are never as blunt as "Putin is good".

It's more like "we never know the truth". "One side says that, another says that", "we don't know who's credible". "Truth is somewhere in the middle". "Politicians are dirty everywhere". "Everything is propaganda".

It's effectively the leutmotif of Russian media that aims to disorient and pacify domestic audience and they use it a lot on Western audience as well.

A great example was their media strategy on MH17 downing.

First they made sure their network of influencers spat out dozens of theories, no matter how contradicting or bizarre they are. "The plane was already filled with corpses". "Ukrainian jet fighter shot it down" (look up their military briefing on it, it's absolutely hilarious with disproportionally huge fake jet fighter pasted on a satellite image). "Spanish dispatcher saw it". "Ukrainian Buk shot it down". "There was no plane".

Afterwards give airtime to all the theories by saying "we're not claiming it's truth, but sources say this". Make your head spin, make you doubt everything. With such overload you have no other option but to just tune out, turn it off. There is no truth. Any voice is propaganda.

Peter Pomerantes had a great book "This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality"[1] on their tactics, a recommended read.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/This-Not-Propaganda-Adventures-Agains...

Thanks for the info, given how Facebook and Google were used for spreading propaganda by various state actors in the recent past, if people were unable to get their news through these platforms, maybe that would be a good thing?

I read this book [0] recently, and I was astounded by how widespread it is around the world. The Duerte chapters are an eye opener.

[0] https://www.amazon.com.au/This-Not-Propaganda-Adventures-Aga...