Nothing is True and Everything is Possible cover"Everything is PR" is the favorite phrase of Russia's elite, wrote Peter Pomerantsev in his wonderful new book, "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible," about Vladimir Putin's wonderland of illusions, where former gangsters are now members of the ruling elite and state media spews lies.

The British producer sketches a devastating profile of "Russia Today," which is nothing more than the Kremlin propaganda outlet lavishly funded at $300M per-year to pass itself off as a 24/7 news channel counterpart to the BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera.

Young western journalists and producers flock to RT, but quickly become disenchanted with its outright bias and exit.

Those English speakers are nothing more than window dressing at RT, where stories are fabrications used to discredit the west and lionize Putin. For instance, RT was in the vanguard of fabricating startling fictions about fascists taking over the west in a desperate bid to justify Putin's grab of Crimea and aggressive posture toward the west, according to Pomerantsev.

RT hires "establishment stalwarts" such as Larry King to provide a veneer of editorial legitimacy. It ran ads for King's show, playing up words like "reputation," "intelligence," and "respect" and hopes viewers will associate those attributes with the rest of RT.

The TV/online network then splices in images of Putin with King or Wikileaks leader Julian Assange to reach a broader audience. "This is the new type of Kremlin propaganda, less about arguing about the west with a counter-model as in the Cold War, more about slipping inside its language to play and taunt if from inside," wrote British producer Pomerantsev who worked for Russian TV.

Journalists who leave RT often scrub its reference from their resumes, saying they "no longer want to be Putin's pawns."

Those who stay "are so ideologically driven by their hatred of the west they don't notice (or don't care) how they are being used, those so keen to be on TV they would work anywhere, or those who think 'well, all news is fake, it's all just a bit of a game—isn’t it,'" wrote Pomerantsev.

Read the book. Things are worse than you thought.

Ketchum does PR for Putin and the Russian Federation.