One of the more arresting 30-second spots [on newly installed TV monitors in city taxis, shown above] is an enigmatic ad for a pro-Kremlin Web site, russiatoday.ru, and magazine, Russia Today; it offers a surprising spin on the proverbial Butterfly Effect: a soccer ball kicked through a scientist’s window eventually results in a handsome New Russian couple waiting impatiently on a snow-covered tarmac for a private jet that fails to arrive. The tag line, “Dare to Be Different,” doesn’t explain much, but it does convey a Putinesque disdain for Western efficiency.

-- The New York Times, December 15th

And here's a Russia Today billboard (via a local LR reader) from inside the Washington DC subway:

If you can figure out what their point is, you're a better man than we are, Gunga Din.

Of course, we mustn't forget about their Stalin campaign:

Russia is really an impressive place, isn't it? How can they but rule the world?

Classic Emperor's New Clothes stuff. Just as in Soviet times the whole world is laughing uproariously at Russia, but because Putin has cut the country off from the flow of real information, just as in Soviet times nobody knows it.

It's beyond pathetic.