The world according to ‘Ria Novosti’: A foray into Russian state media

The Monument to the Defenders of Leningrad, St Petersburg - author’s own photo.

Although Ukraine is certainly winning the international ‘information war’ that is being forged alongside the military battles, the proportion of Russians who believe the Kremlin’s narrative is overwhelming. Whilst many have seen fit to demonise or mock the Russian population for accepting the state’s propaganda, it occurred to me that even scratching the surface of what ordinary citizens are reading could help us to understand how so many of them have been convinced that their version of events constitutes the truth.

At the risk of an alert next to my name being flagged up on a government database or university network, I decided to pay a visit to the state-run news website, Ria Novosti.

Immediately, the set of topics at the top of the screen destabilised me. Ria allows you to choose from ‘Politics’, ‘In the World’, ‘Economics’ and ‘Society’, but also includes tabs for ‘Army’ and ‘Religion’ – two topics which I can’t imagine having many hits on a British news website, but gave a sense of what the state deems as important for Russians.

I choose ‘In the World’, on the hunt for the Russian state’s take on international affairs. Unsurprisingly, ‘Ukraine gets new air defence systems’ tops the list. Although the article is succinct, there is space for some criticism of the West; the ubiquitous Kremlin spokesman, Dmitrii Peskov, is quoted as saying that this development would harm Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, and the author explains that that the new American weapons will make the conflict ‘longer and more painful for the Ukrainian side’. Crucially, by blending this blame into the main narrative about the receipt of the weapons, the propaganda is less jarring, potentially rendering the whole piece more credible.

Ria’s musings on the appointment of Rishi Sunak are up next. He will “continue the Russophobic course of his predecessors”, a policy which is entirely baseless, according to Maria Zakharova, representative of the Interior Ministry. She demands that the British government provide statistical evidence for their anti-Russian stance in the war, her attack on credibility presumably intending to reduce the standing of the British government.

Moving away from international news, I give in to my curiosity and visit the army section. Putin’s personal centrality is evident from the subject of the top article – his gracious thanks to the conscripts who have just been deployed. A quote from his address is included, ‘I want to say thank you to them (…) for defending our country, our Russia, and thus their home, their families, our citizens, our people’ (author’s translation). Not only is this rousing, the mixture of the ‘our’ and ‘their’ pronouns blur the lines between civilians and combatants. This fuses together the entire population via the conflict, cementing a sense of national unity reminiscent of the narrative of the Great Patriotic War (as World War Two is known in Russia).  

In fact, allusions to the Great Patriotic War abound. The definition of the ‘special operation’, proclaimed at the top of the page dedicated to the conflict, explains that it is a project put in place to protect people who, for eight years, have been suffering at the hands of the Kiev regime (author’s translation).

Of foremost importance is the sense of this conflict being a liberation mission, affording Russia the moral high-ground which it sought in the post-war years. Moreover, the ‘eight years’ refers to the time passed since the annexation of Crimea, underscoring the notion that the Ukrainian authorities have been insistent on revenge since Russia ‘saved’ their compatriots living there. Finally, by referring to the Kiev regime, rather than Ukrainian, the definition conjures up an image of an unelected, illegitimate government. By extension, in refusing to name Ukraine at all, the definition expels any idea that this is a full-scale international conflict, also robbing the Ukrainian nation of its sovereignty. 

In Ria’s treatment of the Ukrainian refugees, the Russian state’s artistic interpretations of the truth is particularly uncomfortable. Several articles detail the hostility shown to Ukrainians in various European nations, as well as the Ukrainian government’s “abandonment” of their people. From criticism of Zelensky’s request that his citizens remain abroad over Winter, I move to a story about Austrian demonstrations against the influx of refugees in a rural area of the country, where tents have had to be pitched to house the newcomers. I manage to find the original Austrian source (with difficulty, unsurprisingly) which explains that this issue is far more complex than Ria conveys, regional distribution of refugees has been inconsistent, the tents have been placed next to the town’s main tourist destination and the article doesn’t even specify that these tents are for Ukrainians. In Ria’s version of events, this is glossed over in an image of Europe who is unwilling to home those who have had to flee.

Tellingly, the linked article deals with Poland’s tightening of restrictions on Ukrainian immigrants. Whether the content is correct or not, a sense of reticent hosts and unwanted refugees is created by this overwhelming quantity of repetitive material.

I have only dipped my toes into the world of Russian state media, yet both brazen untruths and more subtle propaganda techniques burst forth. This onslaught of disinformation lies at the core of why so many Russians support the war; that over 70% of citizens agree with the military action in Ukraine certainly implies that the state-sanctioned image of the world has been absorbed by a huge swathe of the population. 

These conclusions about the power of media are not only applicable to Russia, nor only to authoritarian states, but to all societies as we confront an age where the definition of ‘truth’ is becoming ever-more malleable.