By EPR Editorial Team.
The playbook was stable for a century. Hire the right Western PR firm. Place the op-eds in the right Western outlets. Sponsor the right conferences. Brief the right reporters. Build a controlled, distributable image that traveled across borders.
Vladimir Putin's operation was the most sophisticated 21st-century version of that playbook. Staged photographs on horseback. Judo demonstrations. Choreographed press events. A long contract with Ketchum running from roughly 2006 to 2015. RT, launched in 2005 as a state-funded English-language broadcaster. FARA-filed lobbying in Washington. A documented information operation across Europe and the United States.
For a window, it worked.
Western coverage of Russia in 2007 was meaningfully different from Western coverage in 2017. Some of that delta was events. A meaningful portion was the result of a sustained, well-funded communications operation.
The Ketchum decade
Ketchum represented the Russian Federation and Gazprom in the United States from approximately 2006 to 2015, executing media relations, op-ed placement, and journalist engagement on behalf of the Kremlin. The function was straightforward. Place op-eds. Brief reporters. Sponsor conferences. Drive a Western-language version of the Russian government's preferred framing into mainstream American press.
RT launched in 2005 with bureaus in major Western capitals. FARA filings document a long history of Russian-linked communications spending in the United States. The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics were the peak of the projection era, a multi-billion-dollar staged event built for global broadcast.
Where it broke
2014. The annexation of Crimea. UN General Assembly Resolution 68/262 declared the annexation invalid. Sanctions followed. Ketchum publicly ended the work in 2015. RT continued.
2022. The invasion of Ukraine. Western advertisers pulled. Bank accounts froze. RT was banned across the European Union and dropped by every major U.S. carrier. Every Western PR firm with residual Kremlin-adjacent business exited.
2023. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the deportation of Ukrainian children.
Two decades of accumulated framing compressed into a single, sourced record.
What communications can and cannot do
Reputation lives downstream of events. That is the lesson. Twenty years of polished image-making, hundreds of millions in Western communications spend, and a global broadcast operation could not survive the invasion of a neighboring country. Not because the communications were poorly executed. Because communications is not the layer where reputation ultimately resides.
The Putin case does not mean traditional communications is finished. It means communications is one input into a system that also includes court filings, sanctions designations, treaty violations, and the primary record.
The lesson generalizes. Every head of state, every CEO with an enforcement record, every institution with a documented history sits inside the same structure. The staged photograph is one input. The court filing is another. When the two conflict, the record wins.
For a century, governments fought to influence headlines. In every era, the record beneath them lasts longer.
Related EPR analysis
- Bishop Eddie Long Beat the Headlines: the religious-institution version.
- UNC Paid Edelman Millions: the higher-education version.
- Big PR's Fossil-Fuel Record Is Now Permanent: the PR-industry version.
