I am not sure that Putin's approach to media control can really be considered as "soft" or an example of "persuasion" and "cooptation" unless one wants to consider the murder of journalists, like Politkovskaya, as well as the ruthless harassment of others through sham prosecutions for "unpaid taxes" or other fabricated transgressions, to be "soft."
I think the reality is different. There isn't a real substantive difference between the approach of the two regimes. What seems different in Belarus is only so because Lukashenka had an advantage of 6-7 years. Putin arrived at a scene whose quasi-democratic and quasi-liberal features he deeply loathed but which, simply because of Russia's size and significance to the world (as well as being under much more scrutiny that Lukashenka ever was), he could not roll back immediately. But make no mistake: this isn't because of consciously pursuing different policies. Imagine if Putin had started his tenure in 1994. None of the "gray zone" would have ever been allowed to exist. In this sense, Putin is now arriving exactly where he always wanted to be and where he would have been if the 1990s, which he so detests, had never happened.
I am not sure that Putin's approach to media control can really be considered as "soft" or an example of "persuasion" and "cooptation" unless one wants to consider the murder of journalists, like Politkovskaya, as well as the ruthless harassment of others through sham prosecutions for "unpaid taxes" or other fabricated transgressions, to be "soft."
I think the reality is different. There isn't a real substantive difference between the approach of the two regimes. What seems different in Belarus is only so because Lukashenka had an advantage of 6-7 years. Putin arrived at a scene whose quasi-democratic and quasi-liberal features he deeply loathed but which, simply because of Russia's size and significance to the world (as well as being under much more scrutiny that Lukashenka ever was), he could not roll back immediately. But make no mistake: this isn't because of consciously pursuing different policies. Imagine if Putin had started his tenure in 1994. None of the "gray zone" would have ever been allowed to exist. In this sense, Putin is now arriving exactly where he always wanted to be and where he would have been if the 1990s, which he so detests, had never happened.