Telegramming Russia’s War: On the Functions and Limits of Permissible Criticisms of Moscow’s War Effort

• In Event: Russia’s Ways of Shaping its Place in the World: From Controlling Narratives to Strategic Deception

Abstract

The dramatic increase in Russia’s censorship of information about its war in Ukraine prompted an unprecedented migration of Russians to online spaces. When the Russian state had stumbled in its ability to produce a compelling narrative about the war, pro-war Telegram channels became an important source of news for millions of people.

The first-hand chronicles war of war often contradicted the official narrative about the Russian troops’ performance. The Russian government has tolerated the criticisms of some pro-war commentators, while silenced others. What have been the boundaries of permissible criticism regarding the war, and how have pro-war commentators navigated those limits?

This paper engages with these questions. It carries out a statistical analysis of rhetorical and thematic features of a large random sample of Telegram posts selected from prominent pro-war channels. It finds that messages containing criticism of the conduct of the war draw greater readership and engagement from viewers. However, the semantics of blame and how it is positioned in the corpus of other messages differ across Telegram channels. The study places these findings in the broader political and historical context to inform conclusions about the functions and limits of permissible criticisms in Putin’s Russia at war.

Author

• Mariya Y Omelicheva, National Defense U