- A filmmaker who documented Russian propaganda said Trump fits "neatly" into the Kremlin's anti-West narrative.
- Maxim Pozdorovkin said Trump was seen as the only US leader not "trying to destroy the Russian way of life."
- He noted that Russia has been "fully and artfully" waging an information war for the past decade
A filmmaker who has extensively documented Russian propaganda said this week that, of all the US leaders, former President Donald Trump fits "neatly" into the Kremlin's anti-West narrative.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Maxim Pozdorovkin — whose award-winning documentary "Our New President" follows Trump's election in 2016 as depicted by Russia's state-linked media — gave his take on Moscow's longstanding propaganda campaign against the US and the West.
Pozdorovkin told The Post that Russians had been fed the same message "over and over" for the past decade that the West is constantly attempting to "stifle and destroy" their society. He noted that Trump "fits neatly" in Moscow's propaganda efforts because he was the "one American leader who wasn't trying to destroy the Russian way of life."
According to Pozdorovkin, it was also widely believed in Russia that Trump faced a backlash in the US only because he was not trying to harm Russian interests, per The Post.
"It's been an information war — a totally one-sided information war — and it has been waged so fully and artfully that it's made a lot of what's happening now preemptively possible," he told the outlet.
"The Russian media has been totally shadowboxing for years; no one was fighting back. But that doesn't really matter. If you ingrain this message of victimhood so completely, what it does is when there's any kind of Putin aggressive action, as there is now, a lot of people in Russia don't see it as aggressive," he added, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin, per The Post.
"They just see it as standing up for their way of life."
Trump and Putin have met five times, although details of these meetings were handled secretively, according to The New York Times. The former president was accused of colluding with Russia during the 2016 presidential election, and an investigation was launched into Trump's campaign.
Amid Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Trump has made several statements on both Putin and Russia.
Most recently, Trump said that he would send nuclear submarines to go "up and down" Russia's coast to pressure Putin if he were in power. He has also suggested that the US put Chinese flags on its fighter jets to "bomb the shit out of Russia."
Prior the invasion, Trump also praised Putin's justification for sending his forces into Ukraine, calling the Russian leader "savvy," "smart," and a "genius."