56 The EconomistMay 21st 2022
International
The propaganda frontWelcome to the Putin show
W
hen vladimir putin was elected
president of Russia in 2000, he
changed little in the office he inherited
from Boris Yeltsin. Yet in place of a pen on
the desk, Mr Putin put a television remote
control, one visitor noted. The new presi
dent would obsess over the media, spend
ing evenings watching coverage of him
self. One of his first moves was to bring un
der Kremlin control the country’s televi
sion networks, including ntv, an
independent oligarchowned channel,
which had depicted him as a dwarf in a sa
tirical show called “Kukly”, or Puppets.
After more than two decades in power,
today Mr Putin is the puppet master. The
state controls the country’s television
channels, newspapers and radio stations.
The Kremlin gives editors and producers
metodichki, or guidance on what to cover
and how. As young audiences shift online,
it seeks to control the conversation there,
leaning on social networks and news ag
gregators, blocking or undermining unco
operative digital media and flooding popu
lar platforms, such as the messaging app
Telegram, with stateapproved content.Propaganda has long propped up Mr Pu
tin's regime. Now it fuels his war machine.
Since the president announced a “spe
cial military operation” in Ukraine on Feb
ruary 24th, control has become even tight
er. Censorship laws bar war reporting that
cites unofficial sources. Calling the war a
“war” is a crime. Protesters are detained for
holding signs that contain eight asterisks,
the number of letters in the Russian for “no
to war”. Many Western social networks and
platforms, including Facebook, Twitter
and Instagram, have been banned or
blocked. The last influential independent
media have been pushed off air. Dozhd, an
online tv station, has suspended its
streams; Novaya Gazeta, a liberal newspa
per whose editor recently won the Nobel
peace prize, has halted publication; Echo
Moskvy, a popular liberal radio station, no
longer broadcasts from its longtime Mos
cow home on 91.2fm.
As Mr Putin’s regime shifts from a rela
tively open authoritarianism towards a
more closed dictatorship, its propaganda is
changing, too. Early in Mr Putin’s reign,
Russian television created a world where,as the author Peter Pomerantsev has de
scribed it, “nothing is true and everything
is possible.” The propaganda made viewers
doubt anything they heard was true. Many
dropped out of political life.
The new wartime propaganda increas
ingly serves as a stimulant. Television
hosts and guests present the “special mili
tary operation” as part of a grander conflict
in defence of Russia. State media have long
emphasised the West’s supposed under
mining of Russia and Mr Putin’s protection
of the motherland. But where propaganda
once sought mostly to breed passivity, the
goal now is to mobilise support for Mr Pu
tin’s war, by convincing people that Russia
is under attack. “The old rules of authori
tarian life are breaking down, active partic
ipation is being demanded,” says Greg Yu
din, a sociologist and polling expert.
As in any country, the exact picture de
pends on the media you consume. For Rus
sians with the desire and a bit of techsav
vy, unofficial information is still accessi
ble. But those who follow the official news,
asThe Economistdid on May 11th, see a
world solely of the Kremlin’s making.
What follows is a day in the life of a follow
er of The Putin Show.
8:00am: You wake in your flat in a new
high-rise on the outskirts of Moscow. It is a
grey day, overcast and chilly. Your ageing
mother has left a copy ofIzvestia, a popular
conservative daily, on the kitchen table. Scan-
ning the front page, you encounter familiar
storylines: Ukrainian Nazis, Western machi-
nations, Russian heroism.How the Ukraine war is presented to Russians“Doctorly deeds”.A report from the self-proclaimed
Donetsk People’s Republic, in eastern Ukraine, on
the work of Russian volunteer medics."My ancestors defended the Motherland from
Nazism, and I will defend it too.” So says Vladimir
Mashkov, a famous actor.