What Russia’s arrest footage of Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan really tells us

Analysis by Nathan Hodge, CNN

(CNN) — Russia’s pro-Kremlin media know how to create an alternative reality, and last week’s historic prisoner swap was no exception.

On Monday, Russian state-backed media outlets treated viewers to lurid footage of the arrests of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan.

The locations of the videos are not in doubt: Gershkovich was arrested last year at the Bukowski Grill, a steak restaurant in the city of Yekaterinburg; Whelan was arrested at the Metropol Hotel, just across the road from the Bolshoi Theater in central Moscow.

But take nothing at face value from these heavily edited videos. Yes, we see Gershkovich being roughly detained and pushed to the ground. And we see a handcuffed Paul Whelan on a hotel bed, flanked by Russian security officers.

Yet despite the claims of the Russian-language voice-over, there is little here to support Moscow’s case that the two men were engaged in espionage – an allegation strenuously denied by the US government, the families of Whelan and Gershkovich, and their supporters.

What we see instead are classic examples of the Russian art of “black PR”: weaponizing the media to attack individuals and ruin reputations. The arrest videos are thin on information, but rich with insinuation as Gershkovich and Whelan are shown meeting with people before their arrests – suggesting through the power of B-movie imagery that the two men were engaged in some kind of skullduggery.

Russia has long used black PR and kompromat to make life difficult for foreign diplomats it wants to harass. In 2009, the US State Department kicked up a fuss about what it called a doctored video that surfaced on a Russian website that appeared to show a State Department employee having sex with a prostitute.

Russian state TV also loves to amplify a spy scandal: In January 2006, a state television channel aired footage that featured British spies planting a fake rock to conceal electronic equipment, a report clearly timed to embarrass the British government.

But in the cases of Gershkovich and Whelan, the aim of the Russian state was to build a bank of human collateral to trade for its valued agents held abroad. And for a domestic Russian audience, the now-released footage of their arrests is designed to send a message that Russia is infiltrated with foreign enemies – and that its powerful, all-seeing security state never ceases in its vigilance.

The most chilling feature of the videos is the suggestion of entrapment. In both arrests, the footage suggests that hidden cameras were in place and shooting from multiple angles, and that security forces had set up the situation to some extent.

In a statement, Wall Street Journal Publisher and Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour and Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker condemned the video of Gershkovich as a brazen attempt to frame a journalist who was legitimately doing his job.

“Vladimir Putin and his regime in Russia are waging an all-out assault on the free press,” they said. “This video is only the latest evidence that Russia will stop at nothing in its methodical effort to demolish reliable journalism. Evan was doing his job as a journalist, and any portrayal to the contrary is fiction. Journalism is not a crime.”

Certainly, the implements of spycraft supposedly unearthed at the scene of Gershkovich’s arrest – one of the videos shows his notebooks, pens and smartphone – underscore the manipulative nature of the videos.

But the good news is that Gershkovich is out of Russian custody and can now write the definitive and reliable account of what happened during his arrest.

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