How Russian Legislators Portray the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine on Social Media

• In Event: Voting Behavior and Legislatures: Insights and Implications

Abstract

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has profound consequences for regional and global stability; it however also tests the resilience of the personalist authoritarian regime in Russia itself. Most observers of Russian politics have agreed that the decision to launch a full-scale invasion was made by Putin and his small inner circle without consulting, or informing other political elite, which in turn had to adapt their behavior to dramatically new circumstances. Following an early period of a profound shock, as the conflict continued, most of the elites can be seen to have sown their loyalty to the autocrat by supporting the ‘special military operation’ in written texts and speeches. However, the intensity of their support, as well as the degree of emphasis on particular aspects related to the invasion, such as raising mass patriotism, justifying unpopular policies, or addressing economic challenges, has varied across the ranks. Specifically, we are interested in examining members of the federal legislature. We propose that elites vary their responses strategically, and that how they publicly discuss the invasion of Ukraine depends on whether they come from the ruling party or affiliated political parties, the level of socio-economic development of the constituency they represent, as well as their personal background and political experience. This study applies text-as-data methods, including topic modeling, word embeddings and latent semantic scaling, to analyze the social media posts of the State Duma deputies on a Russian-language social media platform, Vkontakte, from the onset of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While we do not find that any Russian legislators criticize their country’s attack against Ukraine, we however are able to distinguish between overt, often very vocal supporters of the ‘special military operation’ and those parliamentarians who are much more restrained and even overtly neutral in their speech acts. Preliminary results indicate that legislators with a better educational background, or those who have some experience with pro-democratic political parties prior to 2003, are more likely to avoid references to conflict in their social media posts. In turn, parliamentary leaders, including deputy speakers and committee chairpersons, are more vocal in their support for military actions. This research contributes to the literature on authoritarian communication and behavior of authoritarian elites, as well as on the effects of war on political regimes.

Authors

• Mikael Belov, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

• Daniil Romanov, Oxford University

• Nikita Khokhlov, Dublin City University