Adam Curtis himself outlined some background for the counter-argument in Hypernormalization: Putin's very successful politics of chaos. This is a practice where Putin supported a number of contradictory political actors to produce 'the Zone', a condition where you couldn't really know who was real and who was being supported by Putin and putting forth fake argument.
THAT, not the Cold War style micro-management, is what ended up doing the real damage, and it's been dismayingly effective. Adam Curtis had observed and reported on it years ago.