As Russia probes NATO’s eastern frontiers with drones and jets, the Kremlin is rewriting reality for a public worn down by a war.
The war in Ukraine could soon outlast even the nation-molding Soviet struggle against Adolf Hitler and there are signs that the Russian public just want it to be over. So, the propaganda machine is doubling down that Russia’s the victim, and that fragile Western nations are quivering in the face of Russian might.
In recent weeks, Poland, Lithuania and Estonia have all reported incursions by Russian drones or jets in what NATO has qualified as a “pattern of increasingly irresponsible behaviour.”
But according to Moscow’s version of events, it’s Europe that is the aggressor and dragging the region toward a broader conflict by suggesting it could shoot down future Russian jets.
As in previous episodes where Moscow found itself on the defensive — such as the downing of Malaysian airliner MH17 or Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been dispatched to provide the international community with the parallel reality. (Remember it was Lavrov, in January 2022, who angrily denied Moscow was looking for pretexts to invade Ukraine.)
Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Saturday, he accused the West of escalatory rhetoric against Russia, including “openly talking about preparations for an attack on our Kaliningrad region and other Russian territories.”
He appeared to be referring to a July press conference in which a NATO general speculated about a possible and hypothetical NATO reaction to a Russian attack. Lavrov, however, did not include that caveat.
“Russia has never had and does not have” any intention of attacking NATO or the EU, Lavrov said, adding: “Any aggression against my country will be met with a decisive response.”
Lavrov’s dual strategy, pairing denial with veiled threats, echoed remarks made by President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of Russia’s Security Council last week.
Accusing the West of “destructive actions,” Putin vowed Russia would answer any escalatory action “not with words, but with concrete military-technical measures.”
State news agency RIA Novosti captured the Kremlin’s bellicose mood in a bold headline: “NATO is preparing to down Russian jets. Putin has accepted the challenge.”
Scare tactics
Further down the command chain, the Kremlin’s propaganda units — which provide most Russians with their news and enjoy considerable creative license within limits set by the Kremlin — have been most explicit in lambasting NATO and the EU.
Russian state television’s top news shows and their panels of experts cast the West’s reaction to the series of incursions as “hysterical” and play up its internal divisions.
“The EU’s reactions appear extremely fragmented, you can immediately tell which party each person belongs to,” Olga Skabeyeva, host of the flagship daily news show “60 minutes,” told her viewers. “The party of war is the most prominent and aggressive.”
She proceeded to single out European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Europe’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Predictably, Russian media also targeted Ukraine’s president, whom they accused of a conspiracy to drag the United States deeper into conflict.
“The main beneficiary of this commotion on a global scale is [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy,” wrote the pro-Kremlin tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets.
Only U.S. President Donald Trump was spared a thorough excoriation, with journalists praising him for what they deemed his measured reaction, because he refrained from immediately denouncing Russia after the drone incursion into Poland.
Alexei Zhuravlev, a guest on “60 minutes,” summarized the state of play : “We [Russians] are calmly advancing, Europe continues to act aggressively, and Trump remains the usual: either waiting to talk to Putin, talking to Putin, or saying how well the conversation with Putin went.”
“All of Europe is squealing,” Zhuravlev, who serves as deputy chairman of the State Duma’s Defense Committee, continued. “Some drones flew in, who knows from where … they presented no threat whatsoever, but they are squealing.”
Even as they painted Europe as out-of-control, however, state media personalities simultaneously sought to downplay the danger.
Ruslan Ostashko, host of the program “Vremya Pokazhet,” claimed he’d asked artificial intelligence for a prognosis of how seriously to take Europe’s “threatening statements.”
“At most they’ll scramble planes to escort our fighter jets,” the TV journalist relayed. “A 20 percent chance that they’ll do something, that is the most positive scenario for them.”
In ultranationalist ranks, the discourse was outright belligerent.
“What a bunch of slackers. They keep meeting, but they don’t want to work,” scoffed Vladimir Solovyov, one of Russia’s most warmongering propagandists, referring to Poland’s decision to invoke NATO’s Article 4, consultations, instead of Article 5, which would imply a collective military response.
Later in the same broadcast, he went on to say that Russia should “spray the whole place” with Oreshniks — Russia’s medium-range ballistic missiles, which have the capacity of carrying nuclear warheads.
Similar tough talk could be found among Russia’s crowd of pro-war military bloggers.
“You have NOT fought Russia yet. All you’ve done is find a few strange-looking drones on your territory (no one knows how they got there). And you’ve already soiled your pants,” wrote Yuri Podolyaka, a popular war blogger with some 3 million Telegram followers.
“Plus, you fired off tens of millions of dollars’ worth of missiles and ended up hitting a few Polish houses in the process. And now these useless fighters are threatening us.”
‘Psychological mobilization’
The recent incidents testing NATO’s airspace are part of a broader “psychological war” against Europe, according to independent analyst Andrei Kolesnikov. But the primary target of the propaganda push is its own population, he added.
Now approaching the end of its fourth year, Russia’s war against Ukraine in January will soon surpass the duration of the Soviet Union’s struggle against Nazi Germany in World War II, a key psychological milestone.
That, combined with the economic strain of the conflict — last week, Russia’s Finance Ministry announced plans to raise value added tax — mean Putin is under pressure to provide some kind of explanation.
“Where’s the victory?” Kolesnikov asked. “Well, the answer is that we’re under threat — from Finland, Poland, and whomever else. That’s why we’re in a state of permanent war, and why we need more money for defense.”
He described the propaganda as a form of “psychological mobilization.”
Russia also recently marked the third anniversary of its military mobilization drive.
Putin’s announcement in September 2022 that some 300,000 men would be recruited sparked an unprecedented exodus of young men and record levels of social anxiety.
Since then, the Kremlin has shifted tactics. While offering sky-high salaries to attract volunteer fighters, it has kept any information about the human cost, including about the lives of those who have been mobilized, under wraps.
Other than the arrest of the mother of a mobilized soldier who’d come to protest outside Russia’s Defense Ministry, the three-year mobilization date went by very much unnoticed, eliciting grumbling among war bloggers.
But ordinary Russians appear to have little appetite for more upheaval or escalation. A recent poll by the independent Levada Center found that 66 percent of respondents supported peace talks to resolve the conflict in Ukraine — the highest level recorded since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Meanwhile, the number of people who want military action to continue at any cost has dropped to an all-time low.
“That’s why they’re ramping up the propaganda — to convince people that we’re supposedly fighting the whole world, to stir people up emotionally somehow,” Ilya Yashin, a prominent Russian opposition politician, told POLITICO.
“If the war ended tomorrow along the current front lines, most people would break out in applause,” he added.
The Kremlin’s rhetoric suggests it has other plans.
“Putin’s regime can’t exist without confrontation,” said Kolesnikov, the analyst. “That is its essence.”
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