WILLIAMSBURG — Students, faculty and community members gathered at William & Mary last Thursday to hear Nina Khrushcheva, a great-granddaughter of former Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev, speak on how Vladimir Putin’s propaganda shapes contemporary Russia.

In a lecture titled “Russia 2025: Failures and Successes of Vladimir Putin’s Propaganda,” Khrushcheva — an author and international affairs professor at The New School in New York — described Putin’s Russia as “schizophrenic,” operating through contradiction, nostalgia and fear. Understanding modern Russia, she said, requires abandoning rational frameworks.

European sanctions and American analyses fail to affect or accurately reflect Russia, said Khrushcheva, because Russia is a “Potemkin village” — a constructed facade meant to d

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