Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the Russians in the dark about the human toll from the war in Ukraine.
Years ago, Putin started cracking down on the free press. After Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, the Kremlin's attempts to control the media landscape in Russia reached a new height.
This is not the first time that the media has been cracked down. Maya Vinokour is an assistant professor in the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University. Any major independent outlet has closed.
In this vacuum of independent media, the cries of Russian state TV personalities are that the West is behind World War III and that Russia is not to blame. Some experts say that Putin's regime has been effective in controlling the Russians' perception of the war, while others say that Moscow has isolated the country to such an extent that it's hard to know what people there really think.
In order to tighten his grip over the narrative, Putin signed a law prohibiting the media from calling the Ukraine war a "war," instead requiring journalists and pundits to refer to the full-scale invasion as a "Special operation." Russian journalists who didn't fall in line have been put on wanted lists. Russia's media regulators blocked access to websites that reported on the war. The war in Russia has led to the blocking of major social media platforms in the country.
Since the war began, a number of prominent print, radio, and TV outlets have shut down or suspended operations due to government pressure.
There are Russians who access banned websites via virtual private networks, according to Vinokour. Telegram, a social media and chat app that's not been banned, is where independent news sources are fighting to counter the often false, conspiratorial posts from Russian state outlets.
Independent Russian outlets are trying to provide accurate reporting that challenges the government and has an audience. A majority of Russians get their news from state-run television, according to a survey by Levada.
Channel One and Russia-1 are state TV channels. They feature pro-Putin hosts who vilifies the West while boasting about their military prowess. Over 1,000 tanks and a flagship cruiser are included in the toll, as Russia was forced to retreat from its assault on Kyiv.
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According to the State Department, the Russian host, his producers, and guests "flood Russian-language audiences with Guinness World Record-breaking rants of anti-Western and anti-Ukraine propaganda."
Russian audiences are often bombarded with false, baseless and outrageous assertions from Kremlin propagandists. Russian propaganda is not very well-crafted.
Russian state news has portrayed the atrocities committed by Russian troops in Ukraine as fake. The host of "60 Minutes" pushed a baseless theory that Ukrainians were behind the massacre of civilians. Skabeyeva has told Russians that they are in the middle of World War III.
State news agencies often portray the conflict as the beginning of a larger war against the alliance. Despite receiving significant levels of support from NATO, including lethal aid, it is not a member and was not on the path to join it when Russia invaded.
Russian state media has spent a lot of time and energy promoting the idea that the war in Ukraine is being waged to liberate it from the Nazis. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a Jew.
It doesn't mean that Moscow's propaganda hasn't been successful. According to a number of Russia watchers, Putin has an advantage in terms of keeping the public on his side because of his control over the media.
Russian journalist Alexey Kovalyov, who previously worked for state news agency RIA Novosti and now works as an editor for the independent, Latvia-based outlet Meduza, said in April that Russian state news has been "terrifyingly effective" in shaping public opinion on the Ukraine.
There are a lot of heartbreaking accounts of people living in Ukraine under the Russian bombs, they're calling their family members in Russia and telling them they're being bombed by the Russian army, and their own family members refuse to believe them.
The war has been disastrous for Russia, with the Russian military failing to achieve major objectives and losing an estimated 15,000 troops in three months, but there are signs that many Russians have been reassured. According to a Levada poll conducted in late May, a majority of Russians support the actions of the Russian armed forces.
The fear of speaking out against the war or the Kremlin makes it hard to gauge the true level of support for Putin in Russia. Government-backed polls can't be trusted, and experts like Vinokour are skeptical that a broad-based conclusion can be drawn from public support for the war.
The idea of polling inside of a personal authoritarian regime is suspect to me.
Putin has made it harder for the world to understand what is happening in Russia and how Russians feel by trying to control what the Russians know. The Soviet Union's failed incursion in Afghanistan will be hard for the Russian media to forget.
Yevgenia Albats, a Russian journalist, told NPR in March that it was Orwell 1984. War is peace and lies are truth.
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