Russian propaganda techniques: the case of the Russia-Ukraine war

Abstract

Russia, which has been promoting its propaganda narratives for years, is a complex and acute topic for research. The reason is that the Kremlin’s propaganda is characterised by its complexity, diversity, and multi-orientation. Despite the immense interest in its investigation since the beginning of the Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine, few works have examined how its propaganda has changed over time. This raises a research problem that I attempt to close in this thesis. Hence, I analysed two periods of the Russia-Ukraine war to find out how Vladimir Putin’s propaganda techniques changed and what their proportion was during the hybrid warfare and the beginning of the full-scale invasion. By creating a more systematic approach to analysing propaganda techniques in the form of three separate categories — emotional, social, and cognitive propaganda methods, I detect that propaganda has altered since the beginning of 2022, compared to 2014. The findings show there have been changes in the prioritisation and proportion of propaganda techniques. The work facilitates a better understanding of the approaches of Russia’s information warfare, its strategies during the war, and what countermeasures should be developed to resist the Kremlin’s propaganda. The comparative analysis was carried out based on a selection of speeches by President Vladimir Putin. It included 152 articles mentioning information about Ukraine, where examples of propaganda techniques were identified.