| Summary/Abstract |
On March 18, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin strode into the Kremlin’s gold-drenched Georgievsky reception hall to announce the annexation of Crimea. Kyiv was aghast, and western capitals spluttered with indignation, but the applause in Moscow was as thunderous as anything anyone had heard in decades. The takeover of Crimea relied more on influence than brute force. The Kremlin had spent years subjugating domestic media, honing its prowess at cyber operations, dispatching armies of bots to manipulate discourse on the internet, and putting a friendly spin on the news outside Russia with well-produced television broadcasts. In February 2014, Russia used its manipulation machine to pull off the largest land grab in Europe since the Second World War without losing a single soldier.
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