Russia cracks down on dissent as propagandaboasts economic and military success | BBC News

"The situation now in Russia in similar to Nineteen

Eighty-Four," librarian Alexandra Karaseva tells BBC's Steve Rosenberg.

"Total control by the government, the state and the security structures."

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Party manipulatespeople's perception of reality, so that citizens ofOceania believe that "war is peace" and "ignorance is strength".

Russia today has a similar feel about it.

The state media here claims that Russia's war inUkraine is not an invasion, but a defensive operation;that Russian soldiers are not occupiers, but liberators;that the West is waging war on Russia, when, in reality,it was the Kremlin that ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.