When Peter Pomerantsev was working as a documentary producer in Russia, he observed how Vladimir Putin employed propaganda to spread such deep doubt and division that meaningful political debate became impossible. Since then, he has written two books on the subject– Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, which chronicled Putin’s strategy and tactics; and This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, which looked at similar phenomena employed by despots, ideologues and grifters around the world.

Now, Pomerantzev is a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and co-director of Arena, a research project that explores how media can reach polarized and antagonistic audiences, using insights from on-the-ground research in countries including Ukraine, Italy, Hungary, Germany and Sweden. Tech Police Press spoke to him on Tuesday, February 15th, 2022, about his observations on the role of the dynamics in the information ecosystem in the current conflict on the Ukraine-Russia border.