As Russian tanks bogged down in the mud on the outskirts of Kiev in the early months of this year and the economic fallout from the war with Ukraine began to be felt, one sector of Russia’s government was operating with precision: political propaganda on television.
Weaving a counter-narrative for tens of millions of viewers, Russian propagandists have culled clips from American cable news outlets, right-wing social media and Chinese authorities. They identified claims that the West’s embargo on Russian oil would ultimately harm the West, that the United States was hiding secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine, and that China was Russia’s staunch ally against a fractured West.
Day after day, journalists from the state press were honing in on these topics in emails. In some cases, they aired battlefield videos and other information received from the KGB’s successor agency. They featured excerpts and images, with translation, of their favorite commentators, such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whose comments on the war were shown to millions of Russians.
“Be sure to give what Tucker said,” wrote a Russian news producer to a co-worker. The email referenced a clip in which Carlson described the power of the China-Russia partnership that has emerged under President Joe Biden — and how US economic measures against Russia could weaken the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.
The correspondence was one of thousands of emails stored in a leaked database of Russia’s largest state media company, VGTRK (All-Russian State Television and Radio Corporation). The data was made publicly available by DdoSecrets, an organization that disseminates hacked documents.
The New York Times created a search engine to identify materials among the 750 gigabytes of files related to the escalation that preceded the war and the initial phase of the conflict, between January and March 2022. The NYT verified the documents, confirming the addresses email address and people’s identity. In many cases, the issues discussed ended up leading to the airing of content.
The emails offer a rare glimpse into the workings of a propaganda machine that is perhaps Russia’s greatest success in the war. As the country grapples with battlefield defeats, isolation and international condemnation, state TV broadcasts are broadcasting a version that Russia is winning, Ukraine is in ruins and Western alliances are fraying.
Coupled with a relentless crackdown on dissent, the propaganda apparatus has helped Russian President Vladimir Putin retain domestic support for a war that many in the West expected would weaken him further the longer it dragged on.
To create that narrative, producers at the state-owned media company hand-picked content from conservative Western news outlets, as well as obscure social media accounts on Telegram and YouTube, according to the files. Russian security agencies such as the Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the KGB, fed Russian media with other information.
In other cases, VGTRK professionals shared clips, sometimes from little-known American outlets, that seemed to indicate that opposition to the war was growing in the West or that sanctions were having negative repercussions for the United States.
Other materials showed an organization that sought to address Russia’s growing isolation. VGTRK professionals followed how their broadcasts were received abroad and talked about how to react when their channels were blocked in neighboring European countries.
Records show that China was used to reinforce the Russian narrative, with producers looking to Chinese media for potential leads. In another case, they discussed the possibility of currying favor with a senior Chinese political propaganda official.
VGTRK did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Fox News, neither.
VGTRK has around 3,500 employees and operates some of the highest rated channels in Russia, including Russia 1 and Russia 24, in addition to a strong online operation. With national and regional networks, the broadcaster reaches almost the entire Russian population and its dominance has grown with government-imposed restrictions on social media and independent news media. Analysts estimate that the company receives around US$500 million (R$2.65 billion) a year from the Russian government.
Two-thirds of Russians rely on television as their main source of news, according to a recent survey. And VGTRK’s influence extends to other media outlets.
Every day the Kremlin draws up a list of topics to be covered by broadcasters. Known as a “temnik”, this document is handed out to senior leaders of the VGTRK and other organizations, outlining issues that the Kremlin wants to be addressed, in a positive or negative light.
The Kremlin’s tight control over the media has increased since the invasion of Ukraine, but people’s trust in what they are watching is diminishing as the war drags on and it becomes harder to hide its reality, said Vera Tolz, a professor at the University of from Manchester who has studied Russian media for the British Parliament and the European Union. “There are cracks that appear.”
The US was a frequent target, according to the documents. Every day emails circulated with long lists of news clips and viral posts that served as a backdrop to paint an increasingly bleak picture of Washington.
As Russia became isolated, China’s importance grew. VGTRK reporters rewrote reports from Chinese state media, conveying the image of a powerful country that was on Moscow’s side and whose population was supporting a just war in Ukraine. An email that resulted in a report identified a slogan that was said to be circulating on the Chinese internet: “Buy a Russian sweet and you can convert it into a bullet against Nazism.”
Reports followed international media coverage of a leading VGTRK presenter, Dmitri Kiseliov, noting when his lines were picked up by global newspapers and rating each instance as positive, negative or neutral.
Kiseliov is known for inflammatory statements – in May he threatened the UK with nuclear annihilation – and his negative mentions in the press have increased in 2022, according to reports. News outlets in Germany, Nigeria and Canada made critical mentions of him. One – marked in red as negative – by the German magazine Stern, described the state of Russian television under “propagandists” like Kiseliov: “A toxic mix of lies, hatred and absurdities”.
Emails showed close links between state media and the Russian security apparatus, which provided information that was promptly aired, painting a rosy picture of a war that in reality was deteriorating.
On February 24, the day of the invasion, the FSB sent emails to state media outlets calling them “colleagues” and claiming that Ukrainian soldiers were abandoning their posts. Another message highlighted an alleged attack by Ukraine on a civilian cargo ship.
In March, the FSB submitted dossiers on two Ukrainian officers killed in action, making unverifiable claims that they killed civilians. In the email, the security service advised that the information should not be attributed to the FSB. The order was obeyed in the subsequent issue.
State media followed FSB and Ministry of Defense guidance on how to cover events that attracted outrage, according to the documents. After the March bombing of a theater in Mariupol where civilians were supposed to be sheltering, the military leadership sent an email to the VGTRK and other state outlets with “Important!” in the subject line. The email contained a video of a woman saying that members of a Ukrainian nationalist group, not the Russian military, had blown up the theater.
“Please use the material in reporting,” the email read.
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