Canada's Russian envoy returns with advice on how to hit back against Putin

Canada's outgoing ambassador to Russia has returned with advice for crafting a response to Moscow's "cognitive warfare" campaign against the NATO alliance and why keeping sanctions on oil and gas can frustrate Vladimir Putin's struggle to finance his war machine. 

Sarah Taylor's three-year tour of duty in Moscow, which ended Oct. 8, was defined by the Russian president's invasion of Ukraine from her first day in the country to her last, and that conflict, she says in a rare interview with CBC News, has all but returned the country to a Cold War mentality. 

Taylor says that while many in NATO, particularly in Europe, worry about a conventional invasion of their territory by Russia, she doesn't see that happening "at least in the short to medium term."

"But I do think already we are effectively under attack in a form of cognitive warfare and we maybe don't really realize just how bad that is," she told CBC Radio's The Current, in an interview that aired on Wednesday.

LISTEN | Outgoing ambassador to Russia on life in Moscow:

Taylor says Russia's use of propaganda is widespread and effective because it uses its knowledge of how the West works and key language skills to ensure its campaigns will have maximum impact.  

She says the large Russian dissident community, including independent journalists, that are now outside Russia could be an effective counteroffensive on the cognitive battlefield. 

"I think part of Putin's power lies in an ability to sort of project inevitability and to say, 'Well, you know, it'll always be Putin and only Putin. And this is just the way it is,'" she told host Matt Galloway. 

"To have an active, open discussion that's going on, particularly if some of it is in Russian and can filter back into Russia to say, 'No, Russia doesn't have to be like this. There are alternative futures.' That's really important."

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Another vulnerability Taylor sees is Putin's ongoing struggle to fund Russia's war machine.

"One of their weaknesses in this war is financing it," Taylor said. "It's become a hugely expensive undertaking for them, lasting much longer than the Russians expected … and part of the way they are funding this is through their sales of oil and gas."

Frustrating Putin's war machine

She says that while some sanctions on Russia are more symbolic in nature, such as the ones targeting people who "visibly support the war," others have a deeper strategic impact — like those on oil and gas, which U.S. President Donald Trump has moved to lift with his recent diesel deal with Putin.

"I do believe, personally, that it's very important to try and maintain those as much as possible because the more you do that, the more you increase the dilemma for the Russian government about how they are going to fund this war going forward," she said.

While the cost of invading Ukraine has been steep for the Russian government, Taylor says the state has "made a huge effort to make life feel as normal as possible" in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.

That reality held largely true, she says, until the last six months when Ukraine began targeting oil refineries, the warehouses of Russian e-commerce giants Wildberries and Ozon that some call the "Russian Amazon" and more recently, large data centres. 

Smoke billows into the sky following Ukrainian drone strikes on warehouses of Russia's online retailer Wildberries, in St. Petersburg, Russia, in July. (The Associated Press)

"Those are starting to have an impact, a bit more impact on daily life," she said. "It's obviously nothing like what, say, our colleagues in Kyiv are living every day … but it does feel like you're in the middle of a Cold War."

While admitting she did not mix with a "completely representative sample of Russians" while serving in Moscow, she says support for the war is paper thin. 

"I have yet to meet a single ordinary Russian who was enthusiastic about the war. And most of them just want it to end, really," she said.

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But wanting, and having the capacity to do something to feed that want, are very different, she says. 

"The vast majority of people who have in any way either demonstrated against the war, or even … supported Ukraine by making donations or anything of that sort are now almost all in jail," she said.

"It's very telling that there are now as many, if not more … political prisoners in Russian jails than there were in the Khrushchev era of the Soviet Union. So we're really back to a Soviet-like feeling of repression, of dissent."