This is on the media's midweek podcast.

What follows is the story of one woman's painful effort to de-program herself.

This weekend marks five months since Russia invaded Ukraine with no end in sight, and in

Russia, support for the wars remained high, 77% to prove of Putin's actions in Ukraine,

according to a survey conducted in late May by the Lavada Center, Russia's only remaining

independent poster.

The war, at least in its neatly repackaged, cremated and approved form, is somewhat

popular amongst the Russians.

This is the Russian media's version of atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

They've labeled videos of slaughtered civilians, fake.

And even claimed the massacre in the town of Butcher was perpetrated by Ukrainian forces.

The cremline has continued its attack on any and all forms of independent press.

Last week, Putin signed a law that effectively criminalizes accurate reporting about the

war, even the war itself is banned.

This fake news law, signed in March of this year, threatens imprisonment for any journalist

to deviate from the cremline's depiction of the war, effectively shielding the operation

of its efficient and enduring propaganda machine.

Independent journalist Anastasia Carrier was born and raised in Yoshikara, in what she

says is a poor province in Western Russia.

She spent the last few years in the US working as a reporter, and actively wrenching herself

away from the propaganda she'd imbibed all her life about Russia's unequaled prominence,

probity and purity.

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