Russian propaganda changes the news background around the Ukraine’s war

How and why the Russian propaganda changes the news background around the Russian war against Ukraine.



Why the Russian media did not summarize 100 days of war.

A full-scale war in Ukraine has been raging for more than three months, but the Russian media has completely ignored the 100-day mark. And this was not accidental. According to Medusa, prior to the date, the Russian presidential administration asked the state and pro-government media "not to dwell on the topic of 100 days of war" and "not to focus" on the duration of the Russian invasion.

This is fully confirmed by media monitoring.

The tabloids "Komsomolskaya Pravda" and "Moskovskiy Komsomolets" do not specify the duration of the invasion, nor is it indicated in the TASS news agency. It was not mentioned in news releases on Channel One and Russia-1, as well as on RIA and RT.

This is to make the Russians less aware of the fact that in three months the enemy troops have not been able to achieve at least some strategic success in Ukraine.  "Focusing on war-related dates can make Russians think about the goals and successfulness of the invasion," Medusa reports.

Why the Russian media does not speak about combat losses in the war.

Although it may sound ridiculous, Russian military officials said that the Russian armed forces have passed the three-month mark in the war "without losses." So why should they bother talking about the thing that doesn’t exist?

The head of the Defense Committee of the Russian State Duma A. Kartapolov, who said that the aggressor almost ceased to suffer losses in the war after changing combat tactics, came to the above conclusion. It is worth noting that the Russian Defense Ministry reported Russian losses in Ukraine only twice: on March 2nd and 25th. According to the latest data, 1,351 service members were killed and 3,825 wounded during the hostilities.

Such rhetoric was willingly taken up by Russian media outlets, which have kept the issue of military losses in an information vacuum since March. Now, after a broad coverage of A. Kartapolov's thesis, the issue of combat losses has been removed from the Russian media agenda.

The logic of this media move is quite simple: the Russians should not think about the military blunders of the Russian troops and the price of the bloody war in Ukraine.

Why the Russian media are changing the broadcast network.

Entertainment programs have recently begun to replace the total news flow in the Russian media. We cannot say that the propaganda has disappeared from the air, but after a three-month news "marathon", even a partial change in content speaks volumes.

Along with the omission of "uncomfortable" facts about the war in Ukraine, the dynamics of increasing entertainment content is nothing but an attempt to switch the Russian war against Ukraine to the "background mode". This means that for the Russian audience, which expects "great victories", the media's degree of interest in the war in general and its "triumphant" end, in particular, will gradually decrease.

Without strategic success, this media move is nothing but a preventive deterrence of possible social unrest and the emergence of protests within Russia.

Conclusions.

The tendency to gradually reduce the presence of military issues in Russian media space, which we are witnessing today, will only accelerate in the near future until the actual transition of the war in Ukraine to the "background mode" till the Russian audience is no longer interested in it. In this case, the results of the war and its consequences for Russia will become uninteresting.

At least, that is what short-sighted Russian propagandists are hoping for.

Ukraine Front Lines

Cover photo credits: the Economist

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