Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo: Wiki Commons.

Observer – Since the beginning of the year, Putin’s propaganda industry, feeling the economic crisis, has had to tighten its belt. The Russian Information Agency TASS announced a 25 percent staff reduction and 20 percent salary cut for its employees. Rossiyskaya Gazeta, which holds the monopoly on the official publications of new laws and government decrees, fired 10% of its staff. Similar examples are innumerable, as Bloomberg reported in January.

Despite all the economizing, the level of anti-Americanism in Russia has reached its all-time high, fluctuating from 70 percent to 73 percent of negative and strongly negative feelings towards the US this year, according to the respected polling institution Levada-Center.

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