Controlled questions, crafted lies: inside Putin’s year-end messaging machine

This report analyses Vladimir Putin’s 19 December 2025 ‘Direct Line’ broadcast as a component of Russia’s Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) efforts, identifying techniques such as appeal to emotion, false equivalence, whataboutism, projection, repetition, and cherry-picking. It argues the event was scripted to humanise Putin, dismiss external criticism, recycle Kremlin narratives about Ukraine and the West, and signal economic and military resilience—messages amplified by state media and FIMI actors to normalise aggression and erode trust in Western institutions.