Weekly monitor of pro-Kremlin disinformation effort in Europe. We follow best European analysts, best counter-measures and trends.

NEW YEAR, NEW AWARD

You may remember that during 2016, we gave away several Putinversteher of the Week awards. Various candidates contested for the prize and we eventually realized that we miss a tool to compare them and to evaluate, which ones are most friendly towards Vladimir Putin and which ones are just ignorant. This is why this year, we are going to change it up a little. Let us introduce to you…

Putin’s Champion Award

The first (un)lucky winner of this award is the leader of the French National Front, Marine Le Pen.

But first, we would like to briefly explain how the new awards are going to work and based on what they are going to be given out.

What is the Putin’s Champion of the Week?

The Putin’s Champion Award is a tool which indicates the amount of friendliness and appeasement of the Western public figures towards the Russian Federation’s policies which are set to undermine its neighbourhood and the West.

Please notice, that the Putin’s Champion Award is to be taken with a certain degree of hyperbole and satire.

How does it work?

We invite the transatlantic expert community and interested public to nominate their picks on Twitter. You can nominate by tweeting the person or action with hashtag #PutinChampion.

All the nominees are then put into polls on our Twitter account for public voting, from which the winners will emerge. The winners are picked based on the nomination, the amount of received votes, and the collective opinion of the Expert Jury.

What is Expert Jury for?

Due to the sensitivity and complexity of this project, we have asked an international group of experts regarding the Russian influence on the West to joint the Expert Jury.

The Jury can nominate its own candidates and ranks the winner on a scale from zero to five.

The Members of the Jury:

Jessikka Aro

Investigative journalist of the Finnish Broadcasting Company

Anton Shekhovtsov

Fellow at the Legatum Institute

John Schindler

Counterintelligence analyst and author at Observer

Michael Weiss

Senior Editor of Daily Beast

And now back to the Big Question is, who is the first winner?

Tthe Expert Jury decided that the first Putin’s Champion Award goes to:

Marine Le Pen

For relentlessly supporting Putin’s aggressive foreign policy, such as illegal annexation of Ukrainian land in Crimea.

The Expert Jury ranked her Putin-supportive job with

3,6

(of out 5) mark.

The next Kremlin Watch Monitor comes out next week. In the meantime, please do not hesitate and contribute with your nominations for our Expert Jury to evaluate. You can do it by e-mail or Twitter via hashtag  #PutinChampion.