Putin’s potent propaganda machine

“When I called him to tell him what’s going on in my family, and in my city, he starts arguing with me and he told me that, ‘No, everything is not like you are talking about,’” Katsurin said in an interview with CNN.

Like many older Russians, Katsurin’s father doesn’t use the internet and gets most of his news from state TV, and he was quick to argue with his son based on the Kremlin version of the war.

“Russia is not bombing you. Russia is making special operation. It’s peaceful, and they’re trying to kick out the Nazis government from your country,” his father said. “The most impressive thing for me that the Russian soldiers,” he continued, “they are giving warm clothes and food to locals and to Ukrainian military. So, they are quite kind people.”

“I try to explain to him that it’s not true and I’m here in Kyiv and I see everything with my own eyes,” Katsurin said. “But he didn’t believe me.”

When Katsurin tried to explain that what he was being told was Kremlin propaganda, he remained unconvinced.

“I know that my father loves me. I know that he wants to believe me. He just cannot because, in his reality, that’s unbelievable,” Katsurin said. “He thinks that I’m also a victim of propaganda and he told me that, ‘No. All information you’ve got, that’s Ukrainian propaganda, and that’s the thing.’”

Frustrated, and realizing there were millions of Ukrainians just like him with family in Russia who were falling for Vladimir Putin’s lies, Katsurin set up a website, Papa Believe, in which he posted audio of his conversations with his father and urged others to try to get the truth to their families in Russia.

A quick visit to the Russian Ministry of Defense’s Twitter page reveals the alternate universe that is presented to the Russian people, a perversely distorted reality in which the Russians are the heroes and the Ukrainians are the clear villains.

Among the false claims and misleading tweets:

• Russia is intervening only to protect the Russian-speaking people of the eastern Donbas region and that “high-precision weapons” are targeting “only military infrastructure.”
• Ukraine had a secret plan to attack the Donbas this month.
• Ukraine is using children as “human shields.”
• Russian troops are handing out food and humanitarian aid to grateful Ukrainians in Kyiv and Kharkiv.
• Ukrainians are attacking their own nuclear power plants and blaming Russia.
• Ukrainian “nationalists” are committing war crimes by using banned weapons against their own people.

Russian state media also make generous use of any Western media that parrot Putin’s justification for the invasion, namely that Russia is only protecting its legitimate security interests.

A leaked March 3 memo from Russia’s Department of Information and Telecommunications Support urges state-friendly media to use clips from Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show on Fox News.

“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO,” the document states.

For perspective on how this all plays inside Russia, the Washington Examiner talked to Jill Dougherty, a senior fellow at the Wilson Center, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and a former CNN Moscow bureau chief for more than a decade.

Washington Examiner: As someone who’s lived and worked for years in Russia and reported on it as a journalist, help us understand what the “average Russian” thinks is going on in Ukraine.

Jill Dougherty: It depends on what they are seeing, and some of this is related to age. So, I would say the most important definition is, are they watching state television, which everybody has access to, but older people, meaning 45 and up, maybe 50 and up, watch a lot more television than the young generation? The younger generation really are not watching TV. They’re on the internet. So, the older people who are watching TV tend to be more conservative, less exposed to the outside world, more supportive of President Putin, and more supportive of the messages that Putin and the entire structure of the government are giving. The younger generation is much more positive toward the West, more anti-war, although there’s not a lot of good polling on that either, but they have been showing up for protests, and we have, at the last count I saw, 14,000 people arrested for protesting on the streets across Russia.

Washington Examiner: Before Putin, Russia had independent media. What happened?

Dougherty: When Vladimir Putin came into office 22 years ago, he immediately began to control the media. He understood how powerful they were, especially at that point when everybody was watching TV. He began taking over the media, anything that had a mass appeal, TV, some radio, some publications. If they had large numbers of eyes on them, they were either shut down or taken over in a variety of ways.

Washington Examiner: There were some outlets for news that questioned the Kremlin line until a few weeks ago, right?

Dougherty: Russia did have some independent media, but by, let’s say, a year ago, they were really being marginalized. There were really two major independent outlets that had any type of reach. One was TV Rain, a channel that used to be broadcast on-air but then couldn’t be broadcast anymore, and it was on the internet. And the other one is Echo of Moscow Radio, which had enormous reach, millions of people across the country. Both within the past couple of weeks shut themselves down because they just realized that it was impossible to function.

Washington Examiner: That was because of new laws passed by the Russian Duma criminalizing free speech?

Dougherty: Yes. The most recent passed just a couple of weeks ago, which would sentence you, if you’re in the media or even sometimes individuals, it’s a little unclear, if you disseminate disinformation, fake news about the military operation or about the military, you could end up in prison for 15 years. Even before that, they had already said anybody who describes this conflict, which Putin calls “a special military operation,” the word “war,” “invasion,” or “attack,” you also could end up being prosecuted for fake news. By the way, the English word “fake” is now a Russian word, too.

Washington Examiner: You were just in Moscow providing analysis for CNN.

Dougherty: I left because the government passed that law, and it was very unclear, legally, how it was going to apply to foreign journalists. Now, I am an academic, but I was providing analysis for CNN, and so, the same thing could apply to me. If I called it “a war,” I could be arrested and thrown in the slammer for 15 years. So, it made it really impossible, and also, the threat of being arrested, prosecuted, or heaven knows what was just too great.

Washington Examiner: So, is it the case that Russians don’t have any access to alternative sources of information, or are there ways they can get it?

Dougherty: Within the last couple of weeks due to the war, outside news organizations — BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Deutsche Welle, which are all connected with governments — were blocked, along with other means of getting information. So, you had Facebook, essentially slowed, and then access shut down for Russians. The government has also warned TikTok, Google, Twitter, and those are in the process of being, if not shut down, then access is very limited.

Washington Examiner: Are there ways around that?

Dougherty: To a certain extent, there are ways. Russians always have them, but now, they’re really massively turning to [virtual private networks], which allow you to say that you are in a different place. They also are using things like Telegram. Telegram is an instant messaging service, but it also has channels, almost like TV channels, and it’s become a huge way of communicating. That still operates. Who knows if it will continue?

Washington Examiner: I was struck by the case of the restaurateur in Ukraine who called his father back in Russia to tell him what was going on and discovered his father didn’t believe anything he said. So, how much of the problem is it that, even if there were access to accurate reports from the West or from Ukraine, many Russians are just predisposed not to believe it?

Dougherty: That’s absolutely the case. So, the propaganda right now, the message that’s coming from the government, is it’s not Ukraine that’s being bombed. “It’s the Russian-speaking populations in Eastern Ukraine who are under attack by the fascist Ukrainian government, which is being weaponized by the United States and NATO to attack Russia.” And this is all in quotes because it’s ridiculous and it’s false.

Washington Examiner: Why does that false narrative resonate with so many Russians?

Dougherty: I think it is very, very difficult for average Russians to conceptualize the idea that their own government could be attacking Ukraine because many Russians have relatives in Ukraine. Average Russians don’t want to think about their own government attacking their relatives in Ukraine. So, they just close their eyes and ears and just say, “This can’t be happening. I trust my leader. I trust Vladimir Putin.”

Washington Examiner: So, is Putin’s propaganda working?

Dougherty: I would say that in a limited sense, in Russia, Putin’s propaganda may be working among older populations. But worldwide, he is losing the information battle. They have nothing to hold up to the world that compares with what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is doing. Zelensky’s speech to the Congress was extremely effective. He knows how to talk to people. He is a communicator. He made common cause with Americans talking about Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Martin Luther King, and American values. And that video that he showed will be all over the internet, and it’s true. But it is also an incredible work of communication and messaging.

So, I think, ultimately, Putin is going to lose this information war. He can’t control all the information in this society. Russians are too smart and too plugged-in to really have that happen. The sad thing, though, is that a number of them recently have had to leave the country because of the danger of being thrown into prison. That’s what you get when you have an autocratic regime that is intent on controlling the media and controlling information.

Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.