Vladimir Soloviev Continues to Be the Craziest and Most Virulent Propagandist in Putin’s Service.

The presenter multiplies rants and outrages.

Defeatism has no place in his talk show on the state channel Rossiya 1. As the Russian army was swept out of the Kharkiv region by Ukrainian forces, Vladimir Soloviev reminded his guests doubting a victory that “Stalin demanded to shoot those who panic.”

A fixed idea: on the social network Telegram, he proposed to pass “by firing squad” the defaulting officers.

The most ardent propagandist of Vladimir Putin's policy sees himself as a soldier on a mission, which is reminded by his singular outfit, a dark jacket with a military cut and a Mao collar. His style? “Hate speech, hysteria, shouting, personal and direct insults, humiliation,” summarizes the independent daily Novaya Gazeta.

Yet, before the 2010s, he was a democrat and a liberal in Russian media. Now he denies the existence of Ukraine, whose inhabitants are, according to him, “Russians to be freed from Nazism.”

Soloviev plays the role of putting into account certain events and mediation near the population. He is an essential relay of the Kremlin's propaganda to keep the Russian population in the lies of Vladimir Putin. And when it proves to be more radical than the official discourse, it allows testing certain elements of language with the opinion.

Soloviev allows himself the most sinister antics and likes nothing more than to use a dubious German accent to vilify Chancellor Olaf Scholz, compared to Adolf Hitler. He also claims that Volodymyr Zelensky “is not a Jew”, but “the devil” and insists that Russia “will never disappear on its own,” constantly raising the nuclear threat.

His rants have brought him under Western sanctions - his Italian villas have been seized.

Soloviev's unwavering loyalty to the Kremlin dictator has made him very rich and earned him many decorations, including this summer's Merit for the Fatherland. But it is beginning to cost him dearly. Russian authorities say he escaped an assassination attempt in April 2022, and he recently appeared with a bruised face.

In Putin's Russia, he knows that nobody is safe.