The Core Definition

“Coercive control” describes Russia’s main governance technique perfectly. Like an ultraviolent spouse or the evilest monarch imaginable, Russia conjured up a state of desperation inside its victims’ minds, usually through physical, economic, psychological, or sexual violence (and often all four). Then, Russia would offer conditional access to a sub-standard escape route from the terror its own actions had wrought. Russia would always look for credit for salving the pain it has caused. If any damsel Russia’s violent coercive control strategies had distressed had the temerity to refuse their persecutors’ proffered assistance, then Russia used that refusal as an excuse for further violence against its subjects.

Source: Bridge to the House of Lies

Russia, like any grievance-mining gaslighting wifebeater, also blamed its victim Ukraine for the consequences of Russia’s own law breaking. In promoting the troll that someone else was responsible for the choices Russia made to continue its unlawful and violent occupation of Ukraine’s land, Russia were executing one of its main objectives in Ukraine: the creation and entrenchment of physical and mental separation between previously united Ukrainians either side of the Donets.

Source: Disinfolklore Inculcates Rules

This specific model of power exercise through Coercive Control permeates all Russian interrelationships at the micro- (within the family), meso- (within organizations), and macro- (in politics) levels. The Mana of Coercive Control is immanent in all Russian state activities, from Putin’s rhetoric down to the lowliest torturer in dozens of torture chambers uncovered whenever Russia retreated from occupied territory.

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