Anne Applebaum: What is Putin’s Version of Reality?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: What is Putin’s version of reality? What would a Russian victory look like for him, for Ukraine, for the world? Today, he seemed to dig in further to Orwellian logic, insisting that Russia would actually benefit from the unprecedented sanctions that have been levied. But his unprovoked war has produced the unintended side effect of an international community united in a way that seemed impossible just weeks ago. So, for more, let’s bring in the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, historian Anne Applebaum. And she’s joining me from Washington. So, Anne, let’s just try to answer a couple of those questions that I that I posited. It looks, to us, anyway, that Vladimir Putin is — keeps creating this alternative reality for himself, and I guess for the people. How much of that is resonating? And how long can he keep that up, so to speak?

ANNE APPLEBAUM, “THE ATLANTIC”: Yes, Christiane. You’re exactly right. He’s trying to create an alternate reality, one that exists in his own mind. And he’s trying to spread it and keep it, and so that the Russian population sees the same thing. The most frightening aspect of it is that, in his alternate reality, there is no such thing as Ukraine, there is no Ukrainian nation. The kind of rhetoric and language that he’s been using about Ukraine is genocidal. He’s talking about eliminating them, removing them from a map, talking about them as if they didn’t exist. And, of course, this is the rhetoric that’s behind the bombardments of civilian infrastructure, apartment buildings, kindergartens, hospitals that we have seen over the last few days. Russians are seeing none of that. None of this is on Russian television. And the Russian authorities are now cracking down one by one on all kinds of Russian independent media and foreign media in the country. So the idea is going to be to create an alternate world in which Ukraine magically disappears, and the Russians have nothing to do with it.