Oh, dear, we're going to be getting this cute-Internet story for at least a news cycle or two and it's going to appear in every little paper in America as "proof" that there is some sort of authentic change-upheaval in Russia.
Putin -- who got managers at Kommersant fired over a picture with swear words ridiculing himself -- has fought back now against the opposition by getting his minions to doctor a photo of popular anti-corruption blogger and political hero Navalny.
Given the vasty crowd-sourcing capacities of vasty Russia, soon somebody in...Vladivostok, was it?...ferretted out the fake photo.
In the FSB active-measures version, Navalny is shown in a photo with the exiled oligarch Berezovsky.
But it turns out in the original photo, he was with the domiciled oligarch Prokhorov, i.e. he lives in Russia.
Berezovsky=bad oligarch, abroad, doesn't like Putin, works with ex-FSB agents who got poisoned like Litvinenko, etc.
Prokhorov=good oligarch, owns a sports team in New Jersey, gets along with Putin.
The situation is reminiscent of the famous book The Comrade Vanishes which documents how Stalin used to airbrush out of photos his various former comrades as he had them executed or banished when they fell out of political favour.
Except in our story, it's the oligarch as a phenomenon who will vanish from the entire discussion as everyone enjoys that gleeful-gotcha feeling of having gone one-up on Putin (now, was that so hard to do!)
See, the real issue is that most Russians aren't going to make the distinction between at home/abroad, good/bad, evil/good. They will think, big filthy rich guy, not good for communism, not good for social benefits, no thanks. And that's deliberate, and that's what Prokhorov is being groomed for.
So this may be Surkov propaganda that is too clever by half. What better way to get most of the lumpen of Russia to really, really believe that Navalny, that anti-corruption guy, is actually just like the rest of those fancy Muscovites and not to be trusted?
If they showed him with an oligarch, everybody in the hinterlands would cry "photoshopped!" even if they weren't on the Internet.
But this way, it is thoroughly validated -- the photographer has come forward and even provided the previous shots.
So there we are.
Another hypothesis: sealing the relationship between a coopted Prokhorov who will be made Prime Minister or something, and the popular anti-corruption guy who is not electable but popular.
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