Interfax: Kremlin may not renew contract with its Western image makers – Putin spokesman

(Interfax – Moscow, September 2, 2014) The Russian president’s press secretary, Dmitriy Peskov, has said that at the end of its contract with American company Ketchum, the Kremlin will have to decide on the future of their cooperation.

“Communication services are largely useless now,” the Russian president’s press secretary said in an interview with [Russian-language] Forbes magazine (http://tinyurl.com/p9xko9j). “At a time when the USA and NATO countries are engaged in undisguised propaganda, the usual laws of communication and information do not work.”

He said that by the end of the contract with Ketchum, the Kremlin will have to decide “whether we should continue cooperation in full or take a pause”.

The Forbes article reported Kathy Jeavons, a Ketchum partner in Washington, as saying that American PR agency Ketchum had ended cooperation with Gazprom and cut the number of employees dealing with Russia from three dozen to 10. “Unless the sanctions war between the USA and Russia ends, the American PR consultants will soon lose their main customer in Russia, the Kremlin administration,” Forbes said.