To defeat Putin, we must support the brave Russian journalists telling the truth

Despite a Soviet-style clampdown, we can help the exiles who are preserving independent journalism for Russians back home

• Mark Rice-Oxley is a former Moscow correspondent

Battlefield tanks are really only half the battle. Beyond military might on the ground in Ukraine, there is another critical confrontation in which the Kremlin has a superiority that must be challenged. The information war.

Russia's media space has reverted to a grotesque parody of the Soviet-era model. (In fact, it's far worse, as in the latter Soviet years at least, most people knew they were being fed lies). Television and the domestic press is utterly captured. Millions are fed a daily diet of Ukrainian fascists", western pederasts, and nuclear revenge on Anglo-Saxon civilisation.