This is in part speculation, but a consistent number of facts stand for this theory on why the "West" is in the middle of a wide scale propaganda campaing to smear Vladimir Putin and state clearly and strongly that Russia is the ENEMY.

Many cybercrimes, political meddling, spionage and now poisoning defectors in foreign soil are attributed to Russia and -a point we should stress- directly to Putin. This is worth noting because it's a common practice in propaganda to always point directly at the head of the enemy "regime", the malevolent "dictator", who is named every time and underwritten as the focus of all guilt.

This effort is very important because the regime itself is aware that the foreign power (the US for the last 7 decades or so) will cease if the "head" is removed and the regime come to terms with the Empire, also refered as "open its economy to the World", in doublespeak.

Readers Digest 2016, March "Psychoanalyzing Dictators"

It could fairly be said that propaganda is ongoing all the time and focusing on Russia is nothing new. Correct! But some interesting things happened recently:

Just before leaving office, Barack Obama passed the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act (December 8th, 2016). In an Antiwar.com article from January 12, 2017, I argued that:

The Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act (CDPA), passed last December 8th by Barack Obama, was first presented to the US Congress on March 16th. This effort in information warfare was in the making long before the mainstream media campaign against "fake news", or serious allegations of Russian meddling in US elections, started.

If you have time to give it a quick look, in the article I specify how the "Fake News" hysteria originated, mainly through the Washington Post as first mouthpiece for it, quickly followed by the "Russian Meddling 2016" fiasco.

On a wider context, the encirclement of Russia by NATO and the constant game of threats and military scalation means literally trillions of dollars to the military industrial complex, as for many big players in Washington DC and other centers of power. PEACE IS NOT AN OPTION.

Source

The campaign started with the now infamous "propornot blacklist", where a shady organization listed 200 media as "russian" purveyors of "fake news". The fiasco quickly evolved into a "meddling" scenario where Putin was against Hillary Clinton and in favour of Donald Trump! It was disgusting indeed.

As we can clearly remmember, during the whole of 2017, the scandal for which no proof was ever presented grew in size and loudness: all powerful Putin puts Trump in the White House!! (17 agencies or inteligence think tanks at the service of the Deep State being "highly confident" the "Russians did it" is no proof, since they lie for a living...) As ConsortiumNews explains:

But wait, the fair warning on page 13 explains: “High confidence … does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong. … Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that show something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.”

As the propaganda campaign continued to scalate with more and more FACTLESS journalism and unfounded smearing, this happened:

Russia didn't do it, again no proof... but that's all right for the "WaPo"!

Here's the trick: you put out the news as loud as you can, in the front pages and on CNN, everybody hears about it, talks about it, hundreds of journalists around the world write about it, repeating what the authoritative WaPo said (because it's the WaPo, you know?). A couple days later those who follow the news understand what's going on: there was no proof, it was all a fraud, but only a few readers will read the small Editor's note about it, saying how they messes up, so the propagandistic effect took place perfectly, in the mind of the masses, Russia did it! The paper gets away with it thanks to the editor's note. This happens everyday!

This post isn't meant to cover ALL of this campaign. As I said above, in the first article linked (antiwar.com) I explain how Obama's Counter Propaganda and Disinformation Act created a new bureau to fight "Russian disinformation", which includes basically everything outside the mainstream media and its faux corporate journalism. What we are covering is instead a number of instances or specific propaganda efforts, some of them passed widely unnoticed:

Like our last propaganda piece: Icarus (documentary, Oscar winner 2017)

It shouldn't surprise any student of propaganda that Hollywood is a major player in the game: since its beginnings, movies have been used for indoctrination and "education". It was a common practice to make films about the "dangers of communism" for example, in the 50s, and send them among the "AID" to foreign countries with "receptive" governments (a.k.a. client states). Every year we have to endure war films that propagandize war as heroic, legitimate and source of pride. That's all bullshit: wars mean unthinkable profits for people who live way outside and disconnected from the "nation" logic, who feel no empathy for those unknown men fighting and dying. In those same films, with the likes of Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Jessica Chastain... all the big names, government "assistants" help the producers make the film "more realistic", by advicing them about how it works in the real world and lending them special equipment they could probably not get without their favour, in exchange they get to see the script and in some cases ask to remove things not favourable to the government's image.

Journalists Tom Secker and Matthew Alford requested secret documents regarding the relationship between the CIA and Hollywood films and reported that:

The documents reveal for the first time the vast scale of US government control in Hollywood, including the ability to manipulate scripts or even prevent films too critical of the Pentagon from being made — not to mention influencing some of the most popular film franchises in recent years.

Going back to Icarus...

First, the plot is absurd. A cyclist (Brian Fogel) is looking for someone to help him CHEAT by using drugs without being noticed in a race in France. He wants to show the world that it is possible to run the race high on drugs and not getting caught, stating that Lance Armstrong did it for years... so he contacts the director of the official institution that watches this issue in the US, who after thinking about it (duh...) refuses due to the obvious conflict between his job and cheating an amateur race in France. BUT, the American authority gives Fogel the contact of another specialist, the Russian Director of an analogous institution for detecting cheat in sports! The Russian, unlike the American, takes the job, and does it with unparalleled enthusiasm... why the hell would he do that?

Fogel and Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov. Netflix

Rodchenkov travels back and forth helping his new friend with his urine samples. Fogel claims that one of his bicycle's mechanisms malfunctioned, making him lose many posts in the race, which he ended up finishing worse than years before with no drugs.
A terrible documentary if you asked me, but then something completly unexpected happens: an scandal! the Russians are suspect of doping dozens of athlets since the USSR, and our very own Dr. Rodchenko is the center piece in this puzzle! You need to see the doc for yourself...
The way they go frantically after PUTIN, not the Russian government, its sports delegates, secrete services or any other kind of authority but Putin himself and some guy just below him, a Minister, who ties everything together. There's pressure from the US to put Russia out of Rio olympics, which finally fails! in the end the documentary shows the faces of Russian athlets receiving medals in Rio... the message is loud and clear: they are cheaters. It's as brazen and shameless as propaganda can be. WATCH IT and see for yourself!

Fogel
I found that writer Stephen Lendman also noticed this documentary for what it was... here is a very interesting quote to end this article:

Last year, an al-Qaeda-linked White Helmets propaganda film was honored as the year’s best documentary short. Hollywood disgracefully honored terrorism.

In 2013, the 1979/1980 Iranian hostage crisis was reinvented – Argo propaganda awarded the Academy’s best film of the year.

Last evening, politicized Olympism won top documentary film honors.

The propaganda film Icarus portrayed director/amateur bike racer Bryan Fogel’s sought help from fugitive former Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory/World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) informant Grigory Rodchenkov to use banned substances for an amateur cycling race.

END.