That "source" is Surkov, right?
This guy?
His tentacles, the web into which he has woven today’s cultural and political world in Russia, affect everyone in one way or another. Few people have such an active, powerful, and strange influence on the present-day context.
— from Vladislav Surkov: Spin Doctor of All Russia
Who is Vladislav Surkov?
The many faces and farces of Putin’s most notorious political operative.
There is a puppet master in this country who long ago privatized the political system, puts pressure on the media, and tries to manipulate citizens’ opinions,” Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov declared in 2011. “This puppet master is named Vladislav Surkov. As long as people like him control the process, politics is impossible.”
Publicly quitting his pro-business political party — long viewed as ‘pocket opposition’ under the control of the Kremlin — Prokhorov called Russian politics a “farce” that he was unwilling to further participate in. Though his statement was made to an auditorium full of reporters, it never aired on Russian TV news: the puppet master, it seemed, had made sure of it.
‘Puppet master’ was perhaps too simplistic a summary of Surkov’s job description during Putin’s first two terms (or three, if counting the Medvedev regency, when the true power behind the throne was never in doubt). As the Kremlin’s principal domestic policy-maker and primary ideologist, Surkov effectively functioned as the high priest of Putin’s personality cult, directing performative photoshoots to shape a new public image of Putin as the paragon of Russian masculinity and staging elaborate televised rituals to promote him as the God-sent savior of Russia.
https://medium.com/@wmilam/the-theater-director-who-is-vladislav-surkov-9dd8a15e0efb
Sex tape soon?