Occidental College's Agnia Grigas and the Cicero Foundation's Marcel Van Herpen wrote that Russian propaganda "has insinuated itself into and been internalized by the Western media, complementing Russia's military tactics in achieving Putin's expansionist goals." Canadian Estonian activist Laas Leivat also found that Western media were "internalizing" Russia's portrayal of Ukraine as an "irreparably dysfunctional" and "deeply divided" country. Interpretermag.com's Catherine A. Fitzpatrick said mainstream media ignored allegations that Russian reporters had committed serious violations of journalism ethics. In March 2015, Garry Kasparov said "Western media inexplicably continue to air, unchallenged, statements by [Putin's] cadre of propagandists." According to a May 2015 report by the Atlantic Council, Moscow had succeeded in "setting the terms of the narrative for the Ukrainian conflict: international media typically refer to the separatists in Ukraine as if they are a distinct party to the conflict rather than an instrument of the Kremlin. When the Ukrainian government or even Western governments discuss the presence of Russian weapons or soldiers in the east, the media present their statements and then the Russian denial as if they were of equal value, but they are not."
