In the Ukraine invasion, though, we are seeing that Russian influence has significant limits — and perhaps the unraveling of the myth of Putin’s mastery over global discourse. Whatever the military and geopolitical outcome in Ukraine, it’s already clear that Russia has suffered a public-relations catastrophe. Repudiation of the invasion has been swift, forceful and widespread — spanning adversaries and even a few Russian allies and acolytes, and crossing from the world of foreign affairs into culture, sports and business. Even Putin admirers like Tucker Carlson and Trump himself have been forced to walk back early praise for Putin’s designs on Ukraine. “They’re just reading the room,” said Todd Helmus, a behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation who analyzes Russian propaganda. “Anyone who’s been watching this can see that Russia has been struggling to build any kind of narrative to support what it’s doing.” There are many theories for why Russian propaganda about Ukraine has fallen so flat. Perhaps the most obvious is that the invasion is just too ugly a pig to pretty up — an act so baldly unjustified that no amount of propaganda could set it right…