Headlines across pro-Russian media declared that "America fell to its knees before Putin." Reality is a bit more modest: this year's Economic Forum in St Petersburg is being attended by an American delegation - for the first time officially since 2017 - but led by Rodney Cook Jr., the head of an American commission for the fine arts. A capitulation hardly looks like that.

The attendance was confirmed by Russian presidential adviser Yuri Ushakov, and the Americans will take part in a special session titled "Russia-US: A Dialogue of Cultures." A cultural official at a cultural session - that's a piece of news worth noting, but not proof that the world order has flipped overnight. The difference between "the US returned to the forum" and "America knelt" is the difference between journalism and propaganda.

The forum itself is expected to gather around 20,000 participants from over 100 countries, with representatives from 76 states. Putin will give a speech on the "new global economic order" and multipolarity - Moscow's favourite thesis in recent years. On the sidelines, a meeting with the president of Uzbekistan about building a nuclear power plant through Russia's Rosatom.

And here's the point the Balkans know well: the headline and the content are rarely the same thing. When an outlet sells you a "mega-quake" and hands you an arts official, it isn't telling you what happened - it's telling you what it wants you to think. The real news is that Moscow wants to look more open to the West than it actually is. And telling the image apart from the fact is precisely what propaganda fears most.