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Hacking Through Putin’s Media Cult

Jean-Michel Scherbak, a young actor and model from Moscow, has turned into perhaps the most unlikely dissident hero in the current crisis. His Instagram posts, and now Telegram stories, are educating multiple generations of Russians about what’s really going on in Ukraine.

Putin
Photo by Sasha Mordovets/Getty
Julia Ioffe
March 22, 2022

Jean-Michel Scherbak is a young actor and model from Moscow. I’ve never actually met him in person because my friend started dating him after my last visit to the Russian capital, and then the pandemic and now the war have kept me away. I started following him on Instagram, where he posts photos from his modeling shoots and videos from his travels. He was always funny and upbeat. He danced, he gave people witty tours of the cities he found himself in, including Kyiv. And then, as for so many Russians and Ukrainians, everything turned dark.