While Putin’s Russian Federation is one of the world’s most corrupt and cruel regimes, it quizzically continues to be obsessed with quasi-legal ‘cover’ legitimise its heinous actions.

Now, it’s about to take its ‘theatre of the absurd’ to its next act in occupied Ukraine, where Russia’s battlefield losses will mount in the next months.

This propaganda practice on Putin’s part has been evident since the start of the escalated war on Ukraine in February, or in its recent approach to opposition leader, Alexander Navalny.

From the beginning, for example, Russia has been adamant that it is running a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine with certain objectives, such as defending against Nato incursions, all of which are fictions. It would have been simpler – and obviously much more honest – for Putin to say that he is pursuing a Russian imperialist agenda and is committed to the subjugation of Ukraine, which he sees as a non-nation.

But, with the exception of a few more candid comments, Putin and his cronies continue their concocted and convoluted narratives. It frankly takes more resources and effort to do so rather than just tell the truth. So why? What is the return on investment?

These questions are ever-more poignant as Ukraine – now with access to more long-range weaponry, mechanised infantry vehicles, and combat-ready forces – moves on to the offensive in the country’s occupied south and elsewhere.

The Ukrainians – for the first time since 2015 – are consistently hitting Russian military targets in occupied territories. Partisan fighters are also wreaking havoc on ammo dumps, supply lines, and administrative capabilities.

In this context, (eg. a likely Ukrainian advance and potential re-taking of Kherson in Ukraine’s strategic south with Black Sea access), Ukrainian resistance activists are advising that there will be a new fraud on the world.

Namely, they report that – as was the case in eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2015 – there will soon be a choreographed ‘referendum’ that delivers an overwhelming (and fully fixed) majority in favour of annexure by Russia.

The Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre, a leading policy NGO, has information from the occupied territories that Russia is transporting its officials to work in occupation administrations, forming ‘election commissions’ through bribery, and engaging in forced passporting of the Ukrainian population.

The work is being done to produce a fake mandate to proclaim some ‘NovoyaRossiya’ (‘New Russia’) that cedes from Ukraine and seeks admission into the broader Russian Federation. Then – bizarrely – any Ukrainian military advances can be framed as an invasion of Russia – the perpetual self-styled victim – itself. Black will be made into white.

If hardly anyone in the international community is likely to recognise the legitimacy of such a manufactured gimmick, there need to be other reasons that it is being done.

First, I suggest that staged and phoney referendums are a central part of the Kremlin’s broader propaganda and disinformation strategy. That strategy isn’t about credibility and convincing neutral players to be on-side to Russia. Rather, there is another clear goal: to foment an alternative reality where there is no actual truth.

Post-truth brings post-accountability. Confusion, discord, and doubt are the propagandist’s prerequisites because they create the factual, moral, social and political gray areas that the propagandist’s tyrannical paymasters love. It’s in the gray that all behaviour – all evil – becomes blurred, inchoate, and relative. Post-truth is the authoritarian’s comfort zone – a comfort zone where murder and brutality are transactions not travesties.

Or as Peter Pomerantzev, a leading British commentator on propaganda, says:

‘It is so important for Moscow to do away with truth. If nothing is true, then anything is possible. We are left with the sense that we don’t know what Putin will do next – that he’s unpredictable and thus dangerous. We’re rendered stunned, spun, and flummoxed by the Kremlin’s weaponisation of absurdity and unreality…’

Secondly, with no prospect of international affirmation, the upcoming bull-dust ballots – and we should expect a falsified ‘support rate’ of around 85 per cent – are cooked-up for domestic consumption.

Putin’s Russia is a manipulative and materialistic place with no binding ideology, and several new generations and Asian minorities with no cultural or historical connection to a mythologised European Russian past. Putin needs stunts, hooks, and tricks to somehow explain the course of questionable events to his own increasingly heterogenous population, including as the pressure of economic sanctions kicks in on people’s daily choices.

Even Putin needs something to say to the nearly 50,000 families who have lost a loved one in the incompetent Russian military’s invasion.

(It is interesting to note that the participation rates of European Russians in military action in Ukraine is lower than 5 per 100 for eligible males in Moscow and St Petersburg. It’s higher than 50 per 100 in Dagestan, which is essentially Asian in its ethnic dimension, as well as economically poor. Putin’s imperialistic project against Ukraine is racist and classist in its internal structure. He dares not introduce a compulsory draft, including eligible European Russians, for this reason.)

Again from Pomerantsev:

‘The last things desired by those who purvey phantom, fabricated pasts are facts… Conspiracy is a way to maintain control. Everyone’s motives are questioned, no one can be trusted. Newspapers, politicians, judges, experts: all have agendas, all are biased. What, then, is the inevitable solution? In this murk, it becomes best to rely on a strong hand to guide you.’

So, every day that you see some Russian military target – a bridge, an airfield and command centre – blown sky high by Ukrainian forces, look also for the Russian spin and further displays of Russian alternative reality. The fake referendums to come may well be the Russian occupiers’ last hurrah, but only if they are recognised for the fakes they are. The Crimea referendum in 2015 carried few consequences for Putin and gave him a sense of impunity for the actions of 2022. The lesson should be learned.

Or, as Serhii Kuzan, Chair of the USCC, said to me:

‘Holding illegal referendums requires Western countries to increase sanctions pressure on Russia and recognise it as a terrorist state. And the delivery of the promised weapons to Ukraine as soon as possible will allow for the faster liberation of all temporarily occupied territories and the restoration of global security.’