How Putin Turned Into the Hero Of the Global South

Propaganda in Russia

by Mikhail Zygar
October 15, 2023

Putin’s narrative about the denazification of Ukraine has not caught on. A new propaganda strategy was needed. Now the Kremlin leader is taking a heroic stand against US hegemony.
This works at home – and abroad.

How Putin Turned Into the Hero Of the Global South

On the night of February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin explained to the Russian people and the world why he believed a full-scale invasion of Ukraine was justified. His main argument was the need for “denazification of Ukraine.” Apparently a Nazi junta had taken power there and was terrorizing the people, especially Russian-speaking people, so that Russian troops had to come to the aid of the Ukrainians and save the world from the Nazis again, as in World War II.

This version broadly corresponded to the course that Russian propaganda had followed since the Ukrainian “Euromaidan” of 2014. She tried to prove that there had been a coup in Ukraine and that radical nationalists (“the Banderovtsy”) were in power.

This version is of course completely ridiculous. If the junta seized power, how could it hold democratic elections in 2019, with incumbent President Petro Poroshenko even losing them? And if they are Nazis, then why is President Volodymyr Zelensky a Jew? But that is exactly what Putin and Russian propaganda claimed at the beginning of the war.

But in the first few months this message was forgotten. It is significant that even after February 24, Putin rarely used the word “denazification,” similarily his court propagandists rarely used this word anymore.

Post-Soviet Society is Extremely Pragmatic

The obvious reason for this is that the majority of Russians did not believe this version. Post-Soviet society is extremely pragmatic, if not downright cynical. The society no longer reacts to suggested heartbreaking impulses – and does not believe that Putin would save anyone.

And even more importantly, the failures of the Russian army in the first months of the war forced the propaganda to change the enemy. It was no longer possible to claim that Moscow was at war with the Ukrainian coup plotters. Because not so long ago the propagandists had assured that Russians would be able to take Kiev in three days.

So they began to state that Russia was at war with NATO – or simply with the United States, that it was just a proxy war, that the Ukrainians were just a tool in the hands of “their foreign puppeteers.”

At first glance, this message resembles Soviet propaganda. For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian authorities have explicitly said they are fighting America.

However, there is a fundamental difference.

During the Soviet Union years, propaganda always asserted that the Soviet Union was fighting for world peace and that the Americans were warmongers; it put forward that justice and prosperity prevailed only in the Soviet Union, while the West was depraved: apartheid, racism and human rights violations.

Today the propaganda is different: Nobody claims that the Russians are good and the Americans are bad.

“Everyone is the same, we are neither better nor worse,” say the propagandists.

Every Superpower Should Have the Right to Use Force

The new basis of Russian ideology is that every superpower should have the right to use force. Until now, the logic went, only the Americans were allowed to start wars and invade other countries: “Why are the Americans allowed to do that and we not?” says Russian propaganda. If the Americans attacked Iraq in violation of all international norms, then Russia, in turn, should have the right to attack Ukraine – this is a sacred privilege of a superpower.

And essentially, this is how Russia fights against US hegemony.

Amazingly, it is this last thesis of Russian propaganda that has gained incredible popularity around the world. Suddenly it turned out that many countries in the so-called “Global South” hardly care about what is happening in Ukraine, what war crimes the Russian military is committing and whether Russia had a reason to start this war. For them, the desire to fight American hegemony is enough. The fact that Putin rubbed the war under the Americans’ noses and deprived them of their monopoly on violence makes him, if not a hero, then at least a situational ally.

However, the story does not end with this reversal of Russian propaganda.

In recent months, the thesis that Russia is not really at war with Ukraine but with America has been supplemented by the daily reminder that the Kremlin can destroy the entire world at any time if it wants to. If the Kremlin doesn’t do it, it’s out of sheer goodness of the heart.

Target Cities for a Nuclear First Strike: Frankfurt, Poznan or Bucharest

Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the foreign state broadcaster RT, said before the beginning of October that Russia could easily detonate a nuclear bomb over its own territory to disable all digital devices in the world.

And a leading Russian political scientist, honorary chairman of the largest Russian think tank, the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, called for a nuclear strike on one of the NATO countries without waiting for the first strike on Russia – he even named possible target cities: Frankfurt, Poznan or Bucharest .

Nuclear blackmail is aimed not only at an external audience, but also at an internal audience. In this way, propaganda tries to convince the population that it is pointless to try to escape. That it’s not even worth thinking about leaving Russia – because nuclear weapons hit you everywhere.

The Demoralization of its Own Population

If you listen carefully to Russian propaganda, you will notice that it stopped explaining why Russia is waging war against Ukraine a long time ago. She declares that Russia is waging war against the entire world – and she is preparing the Russian people to prepare to become victims.

Basically, this is a well-known technique: the real goal of a propaganda war is always to demoralize the enemy. And there is no doubt that one of the main opponents of Russian power in the current war is the Russian population, because it is their demoralization that requires the greatest efforts.