David Pratt: Examining Vladimir Putin's latest propaganda campaign

The “empire” to which Putin referred of course was the United States, but since then that phrase has taken on a very ­different significance for the Kremlin as it battles for the hearts and minds of ­Russians faced with a war that has not gone to plan.

As the conflict in Ukraine enters its fourth week, that battle, both online as well as on Russia’s broadcast networks, newspapers and in the country’s, streets has taken on a new disturbing intensity and importance.

With Russian state-sponsored news ­outlets now banned across the ­European Union and online platforms having ­reduced the Kremlin’s reach ­worldwide, Putin has turned his attention ­increasingly towards his domestic ­audience and the Russian speaking diaspora.

Last Friday Putin held a pro-war ­rally feeding the Kremlin’s propaganda ­machine as many Russians continue to ­remain uninformed about their ­nation’s invasion and ongoing onslaught in Ukraine.

In what is thought to be his first public appearance since launching the invasion on February 24, Putin speaking at the 81,000-capacity Luzhniki stadium filled with supporters, hailed what Russia calls its “special operation” in Ukraine, saying he aimed to set the Donbas region east of the country free from “genocide”.

Even this public spectacle it seems was open to dubious Kremlin accounts as ­Russia’s interior ministry claimed more than 203,000 people attended with 95,000 at the stadium and more than 100,000 near it. But some independent reports suggest that many of those at the stadium were state employees reportedly bused in and told they would lose their jobs if they didn’t go along.

For most of us here in the West ­consuming news about what is ­happening in Ukraine and Russia there has been a deluge of information. From the progress of Russian armoured columns on the ground to the rocketing and shelling of cities like Mariupol, Kharkiv, Kyiv and the mass movement of refugees, news outlets have kept us abreast of the situation.

But for most Russians it’s been a very different story, one tantamount to what Russian-American journalist, author and activist Masha Gessen recently described as a “parallel reality”.

With broad layers of the ­population relying on state-controlled television as their main source of news it’s been ­comparatively easy so far for the ­Kremlin to keep a tight rein on the flow of ­information. Likewise, state TV has been able to intensify increasingly aggressive messaging against those who oppose or question the war.

The latest crackdown has greatly ­increased Putin’s censorship including a new law that can see journalists ­providing military information deemed false by the state facing sentences of up to 15 years. And in speech after speech Putin’s ­frustration and anger over how the war is going becomes ever more obvious.

“The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and will simply spit them out like a gnat that accidentally few into their mouths – spit them on the pavement,” ­Putin said last week during a call with top officials.

“I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of ­society will only strengthen our country, our ­solidarity, cohesion and readiness to ­respond to any challenges,” added ­Putin, in remarks that had some observers ­talking of political and military “purges” within the Kremlin’s ranks.

Putin also charged that Russians who oppose the war in Ukraine were a “fifth column” obsequiously serving Western interests and ready to “sell their own mother”.

In other words, either support Russia’s war effort in Ukraine or face the ­consequences for speaking out against it.

Some Russia watchers have already highlighted how Putin’s language of late carries ominous parallels for those ­familiar with Soviet history during the time of the show trials of Joseph ­Stalin’s Great Terror, when the authorities ­disparaged the declared “enemies of the people” as “reptiles” or “mad dogs”.

As the propaganda battle rages, ­Russia’s state-run pollster Vtsiom has claimed that 71% of Russians back the “special ­military operation”. While ­according to the ­independent Levada Center, ­hostility towards the west has risen sharply, with 55% of Russians disliking the US in ­February, compared with 42% in ­November.

Given such figures and the little ­access many Russians have to information about the war other than that delivered into their living rooms by state media, ­propaganda campaigning is often ­finding fertile ground in which to take root among ­sections of the population.

At the heart of Russia’s propaganda campaign is the letter Z, seen painted on military vehicles taking part in the ­invasion, but which has since become an increasingly ubiquitous symbol of ­support for the war, for the military, for the Kremlin’s policies, and most of all for President Vladimir Putin.

“About a week after the beginning of the war, the Kremlin propagandists ­decided to take the symbol Z, which ­already had mythical associations, into their arsenal for propaganda purposes,” said Ruslan Leviyev, a military analyst at the ­Conflict Intelligence Team, an ­independent ­monitoring group.

“Then they thought up various rather simplistic explanations such as that Z stands for ‘For Victory’ (za pobedu in Russian),” Leviyev, told Radio Free ­Europe/Radio Liberty in a recent interview.

Although the Russian military has not explained the use of the letter, some ­analysts believe it is used to indicate ­forces from the Western (zapadny) ­Military District. Others point to it being the first letter in za, meaning “for” in ­Russian hence the propensity for many ordinary Russians keen to show their backing for the war by affixing Z on their cars or clothing.

But far from everyone in Russia ­endorses its use with many having grown increasingly concerned at what they see as a fascistic emblem of state-mandated blind loyalty and a militarised society.

Speaking to the Financial Times a few days ago, Andrei Kolesnikov, ­senior ­fellow at the Carnegie Moscow ­Centre, described the Kremlin’s nationalist push as being greater even than the state-sanctioned euphoria that followed the ­annexation of Crimea in 2014, which massively bolstered Putin’s ratings.

“It’s a ‘you’re either with us or against us’ campaign. There’s no way to be ­neutral,” Kolesnikov said. “It might ­happen through the education system or at work – you have to express your ­loyalty publicly. And if you don’t that means you’re against it. You’re a pariah. You don’t support Russia and the letter Z.”

While The Kremlin has restricted ­Russians’ access to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to prevent the reports and images of war from reaching them and banned the use of the terms “invasion” or “war” to describe what Putin is doing in Ukraine, this has not stopped thousands of Russians from protesting against the carnage.

In an act of incredible courage Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee of a Russian state TV station, interrupted a live news programme last week, chanting “Stop the war!”. She held up a cardboard sign that featured the Russian and ­Ukrainian flags and shouted: “Don’t believe the ­propaganda. They’re lying to you.” ­Seconds later, the programme was cut off.

A video also went viral on social ­media showing a woman being arrested by the Russian police for holding up a small piece of paper that reads “two words.” The phrase “two words” in ­Russian seems to hint at the forbidden ­slogan “no war”.

Russian police have even arrested demonstrators who protest with blank signs and according to one report from an Agence France Presse (AFP) journalist, some of the police had the letter “Z” in the colours of the Russian flag on their helmets.

Last week independent human rights monitoring group OVD-Info said police had arrested at least 756 people during demonstrations in 37 Russian cities, with about half of them in Moscow.

The picture that is emerging is that Putin’s propaganda campaign just like the war on the ground in Ukraine is not going quite the way the Russian leader would have liked.

Both European and US agencies have pushed back hard, publicly, against ­Moscow’s claims and the reality on the ground in Ukraine, including direct ­attacks on civilians, has made it difficult to spin Russian assaults as a ­peacekeeping mission to save Ukrainians from their own government.

According to Janis Sarts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, a think tank associated with the Western alliance whose Riga-based team tracks Russian disinformation and propaganda, the Kremlin’s disinformation and propaganda tactics have been found seriously wanting.

“Russia has lost the information war in the West, fair and square,” Sarts was quoted by online magazine Politico as saying recently. Now, they are either labelling everything that is coming out of Ukraine as fake, or using the same material

from Ukraine, but flipping the narrative. It’s not Russians, but Ukrainians,” Sarts said, adding that roughly 90% of Moscow’s propaganda had shifted to focus on a ­domestic, not international, audience.

There are perhaps other signs too that Putin’s war both home and away is not ­going to his liking. While difficult to ­confirm reports are emerging of a purge of some of Russia’s most ­powerful ­officials. Andrei Soldatov, a Russian ­Moscow-based journalist, and expert on Russian security services, tweeted last week that Putin had punished two senior FSB officials over ­intelligence failings in Ukraine.

Soldatov said Putin had placed its head of foreign intelligence, Sergei Beseda, ­under house arrest, along with Beseda’s deputy. There were also reports that ­Putin had fired Roman Gavrilov, the deputy chief of Rosgvardia, the Russian national guard.

One source told the open-source ­intelligence and investigative ­monitoring group Bellingcat that Gavrilov was ­detained by the FSB’s military ­counterintelligence department over “leaks of military info that led to loss of life”, while two others say it was ­“wasteful squandering of fuel”.

Last week the head of Ukraine’s ­security council said that Putin had fired eight generals over the invasion of Ukraine, while four more have been killed while fighting in the country.

None of these internal reprisals of course have been confirmed by the ­Kremlin, but they certainly would fit with the words Putin has been using in recent speeches about clearing out “traitors”.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine intensifies so too does the battle in the spread of propaganda and disinformation used by both sides to gain advantage of one kind or other. To that end warfare has always involved an element of propaganda and this conflict is no exception, albeit one ­being played out in the internet age where “deepfake and “disinformation” are more than ever powerful weapons.

Certainly, the long-term outcome of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will depend on military might, but it will also depend on power of a different sort, the kind that keeps a country’s citizens on side whose family members are on the frontline.

Writing in the 5th century BC the ­Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote in his now-famous treatise ‘The Art of War’ that, “if the mind is willing, the flesh could go on and on without many things.”

Putin doubtless knows all too well that for his prosecution of the war to continue in Ukraine then more than ever he will need to continue winning over the hearts and minds of his fellow Russians. But one just can’t help having the feeling that in the long term at least, that could prove too tall an order.