The FT Weekend Podcast, supported by Ledger, the secure way to buy, exchange and grow your crypto.

From beginner to an expert trader, Ledger has everything you need to buy and grow your crypto securely, all in one place.

Reclaim power over your money. Learn more at Ledger.com.

The minute that Russian tanks started rolling into Ukraine, we knew that a lot of this story would be about narrative.

Not just because all wars are fought with words alongside troops and planes, but because this was Russia.

A country famous for hiring internet trolls during the 2016 US presidential elections, for setting up fake Facebook pages halfway across the world.

A country that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on outlets like RT to undermine real news outlets outside of Russia.

It won't surprise you that for years, state-funded Russian media have been working overtime in former Soviet countries.

And ever since it invaded Ukraine in 2014, Russia has been using Ukraine as a testing ground to spread disinformation.

It's a repeated refrain from Vladimir Putin and his acolytes in describing Ukraine's democratically elected president Volodymyr Zelensky and Zelensky's cabinet.

This gang of drug addicts and new Nazis that has settled in Kiev and taken hostage the entire Ukrainian people.

As you may know by now, Russia's president Vladimir Putin has vowed to, and I quote, de-notsify Ukraine.

Here's the problem though. Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky is hardly a Nazi. He's actually Jewish. His grandparents survived the Holocaust.

And over the last three weeks, he's also proven to be incredibly brave.

So where does Putin get this idea about a drug-addled neo-Nazi enemy? And what's the point of spreading a narrative that is so false it barely makes any sense?

One important thing to understand is that, you know, as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned, everything is information war. His podcast is information war.

Right? Our conversation right now is information war. I mean, the Kremlin establishment thinks of everything as information war.

That's Natalia Antalava. She's a longtime journalist for the BBC who comes from the former Soviet country of Georgia.

In 2016, Natalia co-founded a website called Koda Story. It takes a long view on the spread of disinformation across the globe.

She's its editor-in-chief. And reporting on Putin's powerful disinformation machine has been Koda's bread and butter this entire time.

Without doubt, Putin and his inner circle and the incredible propaganda machine that he has built are absolutely capable of the most outrageous,

incredible lies that you can possibly imagine. But where they really win is where they exploit the truth.

...