Russian propaganda is getting worse as the war continues

In the early months of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia prided itself on the high quality of its propaganda. Even its enemies and various analysts were forced to admit that it was one of the few high-quality products the country produced. 

Four years later, something has broken. It's as if the economy's shift to a state of war has turned the once-mighty propaganda machine into a rotting pumpkin.

State-funded, carbon-copied videos urging men to sign military contracts to “protect the future of children” and “influence the fate of the country” have only one argument: the monthly salary of 204,000 rubles ($2,614) for a soldier deployed to a war zone. War offers a solution to the financial problems of useless Russian men who have nowhere and no reason to work.

Today's propaganda is almost too embarrassing to discuss. One video includes a clip from the Russian film " Brothers 2 ,” in which the hero tells a terrified American that “strength lies in truth.” Not that the American had any choice, with all his guards dead. Interspersed throughout the video are clips of women handing out daffodils to soldiers suspiciously cleaning tanks that look like they’ve just come out of a car wash.

The video ends with the uncreative slogan “Join yours in SVO!” But the strange symbolism throughout the video is what I remember most. Did those daffodils have any special meaning?

Another example is a series of gruesome illustrations from a history textbook and inappropriately edited photographs from World War II, accompanied by Alexander Klyukvin's narration: "Historically, we have defended our borders, our people, and those who need our help. Although our enemies have spoken different languages ​​and possessed different weapons, their goals have always been the same – to destroy our country, to take away our freedom!" 

The Orwellian absurdity continues to the end. Attack equals defense; invading a neighbor is defending one’s own borders. At least going to war for natural resources would make some sense. But no, Russia is at war for “our freedom.” You would think that a hero’s job is to defend that freedom, not attack someone else for it. But not according to the closing slogan – “Be a hero who brings victory closer!”

“Victory” is a word that causes a lot of noise, a concentration of emotions that has lost all meaning. What kind of victory are they talking about? Over whom? For what purpose? Is it being rewarded with a wristwatch, a car, an airline? Russia has no friends to fight, only partners to whom the Kremlin feels no real loyalty. What remains is a fight to the bitter end, bringing closer a great victory that you will never see and will never achieve for the same reason. Your children need victory only as a symbol to justify the fact that their father is dying in the mud far away.

The mutual indifference of clients, creators and audience is what immediately catches the eye and forms the psychological fable of videos that call men to war. The Ministry of Defense needs more propaganda to advertise the contract service. The production companies that won the tender to make the videos will have to report that the work is done. There is no need to try at all costs to convince someone to fight “for the homeland”. Even the client does not believe in the message of their work.

During the Covid pandemic, it was as if Russians were pre-programmed to social distance. Their response to the full-scale invasion had an uncanny symmetry to that time. Like the Germans when Nazi marches began appearing on their streets, many Russians went about their lives with surprisingly few interruptions. But Ukraine’s invasion of the Kursk region in August 2024 was a shock, even if it did not affect the course of the war and even had the opposite effect. Although Ukraine has since lost its foothold on Russian soil, its campaign of deep-sea attacks has intensified. Precision strikes on Russian energy and logistics facilities inevitably bring increasing costs. Suddenly, death by drone is on the doorstep of Russians regardless of age, gender, or profession.

Under this new order, war propaganda is cut off from all those who once directly belonged to it. Soviet propaganda was blunt and direct, but it had an unchanging core of meaning. Even now, it is easy to see how it divided the world into two halves with mirrored meanings of good and evil. However false the alleged values ​​of the USSR turned out to be, they were at least predictable.

It is now impossible to use, seriously and without reservation, all those concepts that Russian propaganda continues to lump together by inertia. The total technologization of war and its transformation into a spectacle for both its participants and victims has pushed meaning out of parentheses. What remains is a not particularly large amount of money that one can try to secure in the absence of other understandable forms of employment. And even that only if the soldier is lucky and the state does not cheat him and his family – which, for obvious reasons, it is inclined to do.

At the end of July 2024, the legendary Propaganda nightclub in Moscow’s Kitai-Gorod district closed. During its 27 years of operation, it set the standard for Moscow’s world-famous club culture. Its founders said goodbye to entire generations of fans dryly and evasively, saying that “the time had come” and that “the project had exhausted itself.”

I mention this sad turn of events because it is oddly symbolic of the breakdown of Russian propaganda. Regular people mourning their beloved “Propka” write online about how it now exists only “in people’s heads.” They may not have thought of the parallel with Russia’s pro-war propaganda, but its power now exists only in people’s imaginations, not on their screens.

There is no particular need for it to be otherwise. The state demands that these videos be made only because it is accustomed to doing as it pleases. Watching the resulting miserable samples, the viewer does not burst into laughter only because the result for him will be sad anyway: the Kremlin does not need to use any propaganda to send its citizens to the slaughter. And propaganda will be needed only to drown out the screams of soldiers dragged into the basement because they refused to hand over to their commander whatever he has decided to take from them.

The GeoPost