Prof of Russian Studies @ Pilecki Institute | FrHistS | Russian media, war, and propaganda 🇨🇦
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Big Thread: After a few more days of war, I've been carefully monitoring Russian social media reaction and production and I'm more convinced than before that Putin's regime has totally overestimated its ability to win a propaganda war.
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First he suffers two and a half years of Russian invasion and now he has to listen to this shit?
Patience of a saint.
Justin Baragona
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A reminder that Russia shot down a passenger jet over Ukraine in 2014, killing 298 civilians, and the West shrugged and got on with huffing Moscow’s gas.
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If Putin murdering hospitalized kids doesn’t change a few minds, nothing will.
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I've spent some time developing a tool to help you interpret truth and lies in Russia's media. Please share with the needy ⬇️
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I am calling on Brazilian President Lula da Silva to cede Rio to Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
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Russia’s biggest late night talk show host, Ivan Urgant, disappeared from public view after criticizing the war on day 1. And that, people, is Cancel Culture.
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Trump on a runway, once again saying that definitely maybe he will sort of perhaps do something really soon or not about Russia.
Putin is eating him alive. He’s hopeless.
The Bulwark
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Prigozhin is an abominable monster. If his coup is successful, Russia is not going to be a better or more peaceful place. Don’t cheer him on like he’s some hero or liberator.
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Can't wait for an ecstatic Trump to applaud Zelensky as he walks down the red carpet in Washington on Monday
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Zelensky has not banned the Orthodox Church. These people are infuriatingly dim.
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You might have read about Yury Dud, the popular Russian blogger, speaking out against the war. 5 million followers, and look at what he's sharing at the top of his Instagram page: strong stuff.
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Russia: "We're telling you openly for the millionth time the invasion is about seizing territory and erasing Ukraine and Ukrainian culture. We've also kidnapped a million Ukrainians and murdered tens of thousands more!"
People: "Ah, yes, I hear you: NATO is bad."
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Russians are being bombarded with very effective Russian-language anti-war propaganda. We're seeing a lot about Zelensky etc. but Russians are widely viewing some HUGE celebrities with big, big follower counts coming out against the war.
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Russian media in the next 12 hours:
- There were no chemical weapons
- The footage is fake
- Azov did it
- It’s a Western provocation
- The world hates us
- This is why we must destroy Ukraine
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Ukraine destroys 87% of the Russian army in under 2 years and Republicans wonder whether it’s worth supporting them. It’s the military deal of the century!
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Putin met soldiers' mothers today. Here's Vladimir, patiently listening. He wants to hear what ordinary people have to say. Except it turns out these mothers are not so ordinary...
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Elon Musk is every overconfident first-year politics student who definitely knows that you, personally, just haven't though about his brilliant solution yet
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Russians are seeing these narratives, hearing their peers and idols talk to them like normal people and in Russian. They're being shared widely, and the Russian government basically can't stop them.
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Sergey Lavrov taking a break from Russia’s war against Western depravity by slipping on a Basquiat t-shirt is perfect. Basquiat was a queer, anti-colonial Black artist. Just the sort of guy who’d love Sergey’s war.
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Democrats were too centrist, too left, too right, too pro-Israel, too anti-Israel, too good on the economy, too bad on the economy, too nice to Trump voters, too mean to Trump voters, too ambitious, too unambitious.
Maybe people just like what Trump is selling?
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None of the usual Russian trolls are responding to my threads. So let’s draw them out: Russia is a fascist country. Putin is a fascist. Prigozhin is a fascist. Are you guys still out there?
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Dear Mr Churchill, I would like to interview you on my podcast, but can we do it in German?
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Zelensky is the undisputed champion of political speeches and PR. Absolutely world class.
The New Statesman
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A reminder:
Russia wants to destroy Ukraine. Ukraine just wants to not he destroyed.
That’s it. That’s the conflict.
'I want to see my kids walk the streets without hiding' - Zelensky bbc.in/3DXLw0D
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Why is nobody asking Putin which part of Russia he will give up in exchange for peace?
60 Minutes
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I’m sorry, but at events like this, there is an appropriate dress code: when you meet Volodymyr Zelensky, wear green.
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Ukrainians, Chechens, Tatars, Estonians, Volga Germans, Afghans, Poles, name a nationality the USSR didn’t slaughter.
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On the other side, the Russian government is pushing an increasingly impersonal narrative. All we're seeing is images of Putin and his generals in vast meeting rooms, adorned with Rococo panelling, in unidentified places.
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Here's a voice from Ukraine. Travel YouTuber Anton Ptushkin, a Russian speaker with *5.5 million* subscribers, posted this heartfelt appeal for peace & frank discussion of fears about his family on his IG. Here's a version from YouTube for ease of viewing. piped.video/watch?v=yaVTavQ2…
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The people, where they are addressed, are spoken to as an abstract ("The government is starting a special operation...") rather than as individuals (Ukraine's "We implore you, fellow Russians, to stop attacking our women and children").
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Zelensky knocks it out the park every time. I’m not a Russian conscript but I feel I should surrender to the Ukrainian Army.
Alex Bond
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RU's narrative looks more like WW1 - a detached imperial tsar directing his troops in an abstract war against imperial opposition - than the "all-national" effort of WW2 when, even under Stalin, the population was united in its desire to fight the Nazis. Remember this point.
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Vladimir Putin has awarded Steven Seagal the Order of Friendship for his contribution to “international cultural and humanitarian cooperation.” Seagal’s only global humanitarian act has been to stop making movies in the West.
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Watching this dude have a total meltdown is the best Sunday entertainment you could wish for
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I’m trying to count the number of times NATO has tried to invade Russia but still coming up with zero. Can anybody help?
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Blows my mind that Putin is threatening a nuclear war that would end civilization and people think we should just sit down, have a nice chat, and come up with a sweet deal together.
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BREAKING: Morally corrupt organization does morally corrupt thing
BREAKING: Incoming IOC president to open talks on Russia's potential return to Olympics
news.sky.com/story/incoming-…
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If Russia had to invade Ukraine, and Hitler had to invade Poland, then who is Putin in the analogy? 🤨
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The book is real. If you think the Russian state hates me today, wait until they read this. It was gut-wrenchingly awful to write, but worth every drop of frustration and every last hate email.
Get your copy at hurstpublishers.com/book/z-g…
@HurstPublishers
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Here's what a Russian attack on the UK looks like:
- Cyber attacks target healthcare, banking, energy. They look like they come from criminal gangs, not the Kremlin.
- Moscow funnels money to criminals in the UK to commit arson, larceny, and violence.
- Now the nasty bit...
Can someone explain in a material sense why Britain spending more money on defence would be a deterrence to Russia?
Given an actual war between UK and Russia would involve very little fighting and would be over in about 10 minutes, after an exchange of nuclear missiles
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🇺🇦 vs 🇷🇺 PR effectiveness:
Zelensky visited Bucha within 48 hours of the news of atrocities breaking. He spoke to ordinary people. He was visibly distraught.
Putin made it to Mariupol 10 months after Azovstal fell. He drove around in a car, did some staged photo ops, and left.
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⚡️ Russian Central Bank releases new graph showing ruble's impressive growth against the dollar
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Ukraine subverts Russia's mobilization advert: "I don't want to kill kids. I don't want to cut heads off. I don't want to be responsible for Putin's war crimes. You're a human. So be one."
Once again, they're so, so good at this.
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This video, from Valeriy Zaluzhny’s Telegram feed, is hyping Ukrainian troops to “take back what’s ours.” An astonishing piece of work: artfully shot, well cut; more movie trailer than military order.
Christopher Miller
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How can we end the war in Ukraine? Create a demilitarized zone, outlined here in orange ⬇️
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Instead, we're still treated to the kinds of bizarre anti-NATO/US Imperialism rants that move public opinion slowly against the enemy. But I don't see them having much effect, in the long run, vs. the much more slick Russian language Ukrainian material.
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People are not ready for their iPhones to disappear to inflation and sanctions (joke seen in the wild today: "Don't drop your iPhone, because it's going to be your last"). People are not ready for hyper-inflation.
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Teacher from Moscow tells me her school received an official form requesting details of all employees born in Ukraine. Totally normal, non-fascist stuff.
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Every day I think about how Putin could have simply retired to a villa in the sun and millions of dollars in his bank in 2008. Yet here he is, a lonely old man stuck in the Kremlin running an unwinnable war and killing thousands of innocent people.
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To be clear, this is not a “peace negotiation.” Trump is asking for Ukraine’s surrender.
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And the government is doing essentially *nothing* to get Russians ready for this. They overplayed a weak hand, the West called their bluff, and now they're in the shit. (Notice this seems to parallel the overconfidence in the military effort - not a coincidence, I'll wager you.)
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Firing cruise missiles at kids: fine, not escalatory, go ahead
Killing enemy generals: naughty, will cause WW3
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This is London in 1940. I can’t believe the USA gave them millions of dollars of aid so they could PARTY!!
Is it too late to get a refund???!!!!
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A compromise solution is easy: simply disband NATO, transfer America’s nuclear arsenal to Moscow, and offer Putin every country a Russian has ever visited.
…can I have an NYT column now?
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Turns out Russia has plenty of ways to destroy Ukraine and Ukrainians without using nuclear weapons. What will the Western response be? Where are *our* red lines? Is Russia not afraid of *us* escalating?
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Why in the living fuck would you, a Western European, travel to Russia as a tourist right now?
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State TV political shows, which have good viewing figures, aren't talking about or to people or individuals, who will be the key to winning the propaganda war, either.
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Joe Rogan's show is increasingly becoming a platform for paid propagandists or useful idiots to trot out the Kremlin's lies while the bro in chief goes "Whoa, really?" like a stoned kid in his mom's basement. Washington, you have a problem.
.@joerogan: When did the U.S. government get started with internet censorship?
@mikebenzcyber: "It started in 2014 with the Ukraine coup and the counter-coup. In 2014, we had about 25 years of successful free-speech diplomacy, and then we successfully overthrew the government of Ukraine. Our Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, handed out cookies and water bottles to violent street protestors as they surrounded the parliament building and ran the democratically elected government out of office.
But then the eastern side of Ukraine completely broke away, and they didn't respect this new U.S.-installed government. Crimea voted in a referendum to join the Russian Federation, which set in motion events that would end the concept of free speech diplomacy... NATO formally declared that it was no longer just about tanks, but it was about controlling tweets, and then Brexit happened in June 2016.
The very next month, NATO added hybrid warfare to its formal charter, basically authorizing the military, diplomatic sphere, and intelligence world to take control of social media. Then, five months later, Trump won the election while being called a Russian asset, so all that infrastructure was redirected home to the U.S."
@joerogan: "Jesus!" 🤯🤯🤯
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So what do we have? A stagnant propaganda machine that knows how to create chaos and tear things - esp. the West - down. But it's the propaganda machine of an empire. It's not agile, and it doesn't know how to respond to current events & the strong Ukrainian and Western efforts.
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According to Russia, countries that are invading Ukraine:
- Moldova
- Romania
- Poland
- America
- Canada
- USA
- Britain
- Ukraine
Countries not invading Ukraine:
- Russia
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Does he really think he can take on penguins in a tariff war and win? Those guys don't mess around
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Grad students, it's okay, nobody who has a PhD has ever read more than the introduction and conclusion of any article or book, ever.
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(3) This is probably the most important point. I'm seeing plenty of sharing about bank runs, ATM dashes, inflating prices, and availability of consumer goods. People in the Far East, where food prices are already sky high, aren't quite panicking, but they're not exactly happy.
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Turning to Russian social media, a much more threatening narrative for Putin's government might be playing out. I've spent some time reading around Russian language social media to look for what people are saying about the war.
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Russia is using social media to wage a war against the West. We're all participants in that war, and we're destroying each other as a result. Forcing Ukraine to capitulate won't stop Moscow⬇️
foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/09…
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Medvedev calling Ukrainians “blood-sucking parasites” from an “unterukraine.” Not even bothering to hide the fascist rhetoric. Abominable.
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The last person to suggest that Poland started World War 2 was none other than Vladimir Putin. And if you're siding with Hitler and Putin, you're short of a brain cell or two.
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It does you no favours to gloat about the death - real or imagined - of a civilian you know nothing about.
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After a few days of war we can't say that Putin is doomed, but I wonder: without signs that the gvt is taking winning the media war seriously, will tiny cracks around the 1990s, around sacrifice, and around loss turn into gaping fissures in the state's narratives of identity?
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Hot on Russian Telegram: map of “free nations” after “decolonization of Europe.” The only countries that get to be big are Russia and Serbia. Tells you everything about the Russian imperial imagination.
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