Reports that the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies is responsible for masterminding the Kremlin’s information warfare were dismissed by Mikhail Fradkov, the institute’s recently appointed director, as a product of a “conspiratorial mind-set,” the New York Times reports.
The same report notes that Fradkov’s predecessor at the Institute, Leonid P. Reshetnikov, also a former spy, was famous for his conservative, anti-American statements.
“World War II was orchestrated by the same forces now trying to rule the world, forces located in the United States,” Mr. Reshetnikov said in a February 2016 interview. “I’m talking about international companies and the upper crust of the Anglo-Saxon elite.”
“Conspiratorial mind-set” indeed.