In Their Own Words: How Russian Propagandists Reveal Putin’s Intentions By Julia DavisColumbia University Press, 2024

Julia Davis book brings together 104 of her articles published in media outlets that analyse de-humanisation of Ukrainians on Russian television. The book has a foreword by Yale University’s Timothy Snyder and a preface and afterword by Davis. This is the first book that brings together a detailed insight and analysis of how Russian television prepared the Russian public for the full-scale invasion through the de-humanisation of Ukrainians, and how Russian media has continued to mobilise public support for Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Peter Pomerantsev has written of ‘The challenge for anyone trying to bring propagandists to trial has always been connecting vile words to horrific acts.’ In June 2024, the FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) submitted a Communication to the ICC (International Criminal Court) on hate speech in the Russian media that they believe had mobilised war crimes in Ukraine. Thus, it is surprising that of the six indictments of Russians by the ICC (International Criminal Court), none of them are for journalists.

FIDH had analysed over 2,000 video segments with statements made in the Russian media between 24 February 2022 and 24 February 2024.  The Communication targeted former President and Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitri Medvedev, Vladimir Solovyov, Russia-1 TV channel host; Editor of Russia Today Margarita Siimonyan; director of the state-owned media group Rossiya Segodnya Dmitry Kiselyov; popular radio and television presenter Sergei Mardan; and first deputy to the Chief of Staff of the presidential administration Alexei Gromov.

Independent media in Russia was closed down in 2021-2022, and has since only existed in exile. Simonyan, head of the Kremlin propaganda television channel RT (formerly Russia Today), called for the repression of the opposition in Russia by 1 May 2021 which, she believed, would prepare the ground for the ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine (Davis, pp.82-83).

Russia’s constitution was changed in 2020 to allow Vladimir Putin to remain president until 2036, in effect making him president for life. Since 2020, Russia has transitioned from an authoritarian political system with a collective leadership to a dictatorship. Political repression has become widespread in Russia, and Putin’s dictatorship imprisons a higher number of political prisoners than in the post-Stalin Soviet Union.  In a volume edited by Ian Garner and myself, eleven scholars analyse how Russia has become a fascist dictatorship, based on an ideology of Russian imperial nationalism, where internal repression is intimately connected to external military aggression.

Davis analyses Russian state media which reflects the Kremlin’s official position. In these TV debates and news reports, Russia journalists, political technologists (consultants), academics, think tank ‘experts’ and state officials have been given opportunities to lay out their disdain for Ukraine and Ukrainians and call for war crimes and genocide against Ukrainians who are resisting Russia’s ‘liberation’.

The Russian media has never hidden Russia’s goal of destroying the Ukrainian state and installing a Russian puppet state and replacing Ukrainians with Little Russians (one of three branches of a pan-Russian people, the others being great Russians and white Russians). Russia’s so-called ‘special military operation’ was supposed to be a quick operation that would bring about regime change. The Russian media and Russian leaders have also never hidden its territorial revanchism and imperialism towards Ukraine. Russian TV routinely referred to Ukraine as “the territory formerly known as Ukraine” (Davis, p.188).

Davis’ (2024) study of Russian state media should be placed within context.  The disintegration of the USSR in 1991 into fifteen republics was, as Putin explained, the demise of ‘Historic Russia.’ Russians never viewed the Russian SFSR as their homeland, which was the entire Soviet Union.  Unlike fourteen non-Russian Soviet republics, the Russian SFSR did not possess republican institutions such as a communist party, and therefore Russian and Soviet identities were de facto the same. Unlike Ukraine and even Belarus, the Russian SFSR did not declare independence from the USSR. This is why Alexander Motyl wrote that Russian nationalism is a ‘myth’ as Russian nationalists had never sought to separate from the USSR or build an independent nation-state (Motyl, 1990, pp.161-173). Russian nationalists prefer empire over nation-state; indeed, Putin describes Russia as a ‘state-civilisation’ without borders. One of the fundamental requisites for a nation-state is a territory surrounded by defined borders.

The Russian image of ‘Russia’ was therefore always........

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