Peter Pomerantsev and Harri Tiido

Peter Pomerantsev (1977) is a Kyiv-born Russian-Jewish English journalist and writer, one of the most prominent experts in Russia’s information warfare and disinformation. Several important works by Pomerantsev have been published in Estonian. Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, published in 2014, is an autobiographical insight into the absurdity of post-communist Russian state television and, thereby, the both comical and threatening undertones of the absurdity of public life, illustrated by the author’s encounters with all kinds of influencers of this world ranging from oligarchs to models. This year, Pomerantsev’s new book How to Win an Information War? was published in Estonian, masterfully intertwining recent history and the present. He uses the biography of Denis Sefton Delmer (1904-1979), a British journalist and propagandist, to illustrate the state disinformation and post-truth nature of the current era. Delmer was the first English journalist to interview Adolf Hitler and spent several years in the Führer’s entourage, which he later put to use in the service of the British government. This way, Pomerantsev explores opportunities to learn from history to survive in today’s information wars – a particularly pressing issue issue for us who live in the shadow of Russian aggression.