The channel is famend for its florid posts and recurrently reviews that Putin has died.
However, regardless of its popularity for faux information, Common SVR’s declare of his newest demise nonetheless generated headlines world wide, forcing Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, to situation a denial.
And this, in line with Mr Yusov, was all a part of the Kremlin’s masterplan.
“The essential objective of pretend information is to take a look at how society reacts by way of numbers and dynamics,” he stated.
“[The purpose is] to take a look at the reactions of people, the elite and the media,” Mr Yusov added.
Regardless of the Ukrainian declare that Moscow had used Common SVR to check public opinion of Putin, and a few Western tabloid media reporting its posts on the Russian chief’s alleged demise as “insider intelligence”, there was no authoritative evaluation linking the Kremlin to the channel.
‘At all times predicting Putin goes to go’
In addition to recurrently reporting his demise, Common SVR has reported on numerous alleged humiliations suffered by Putin, reminiscent of falling down the steps and soiling himself.
The Common SVR Telegram channel has distanced itself from the Kremlin and as an alternative claims to be authored by a former officer in Russia’s intelligence service.
Mark Galeotti, a Russia analyst, stated that was unlikely to be the case.
He added that Western media retailers had turn into a simple goal for faux information regarding Putin due to their fixation with the Russian chief and editors’ push for headline-grabbing tales.
As a substitute, posts by Common SVR carefully match the lurid claims of Russian political scientist Valery Solovey, who give up his lecturing job on the Moscow State Institute of Worldwide Relations in 2019. These claims embrace Putin ingesting blood and taking on Shamanism.
“Solovey is all the time predicting that Putin goes to go any day now. Sometime he shall be proper, on the identical precept {that a} stopped clock is correct two occasions within the day,” Prof Galeotti stated.
Prof Solovey is understood to be a critic of the Kremlin. He has stated that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the previous chief of the Wagner mercenary unit, was not killed in a airplane crash in August however resides on an island off Venezuela.
