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Russia’s War in Ukraine

Understanding the conflict four years on.

A revolutionary new study shows that Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine not only genuinely believe state propaganda but also that the strength of their beliefs strongly correlates with their dehumanization of Ukrainians, their conviction that the war against Ukraine is necessary and legitimate, and their self-identification with the broader “Russian world” for which they are willing to fight and die. These findings illustrate how state rhetoric can create the conditions for atrocities on the ground, helping to close one of the most persistent legal gaps in holding propagandists accountable.

Working with support from the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, Ukrainian nongovernment organization LingvaLexa surveyed 1,060 Russian prisoners of war held in Ukrainian camps. The findings are stark: Belief in Russian propaganda is widespread. Seventy-six percent of respondents endorsed at least one of the 18 narratives tested.

A revolutionary new study shows that Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine not only genuinely believe state propaganda but also that the strength of their beliefs strongly correlates with their dehumanization of Ukrainians, their conviction that the war against Ukraine is necessary and legitimate, and their self-identification with the broader “Russian world” for which they are willing to fight and die. These findings illustrate how state rhetoric can create the conditions for atrocities on the ground, helping to close one of the most persistent legal gaps in holding propagandists accountable.

Working with support from the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, Ukrainian nongovernment organization LingvaLexa surveyed 1,060 Russian prisoners of war held in Ukrainian camps. The findings are stark: Belief in Russian propaganda is widespread. Seventy-six percent of respondents endorsed at least one of the 18 narratives tested.

The most widely accepted narratives echoed core Kremlin talking points: that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, that armed groups in the Donbas and Crimea were ordinary Ukrainians defending their rights, that “Ukraine is a ‘Western puppet,’ and that “NATO is waging war against Russia ‘through Ukraine.’

Even the least popular of these narratives—the idea that Ukraine’s leadership and military are “Nazis,” that “NATO has biolabs in Ukraine to attack Russia” and that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are using civilians as human shields—are still believed by more than 60 percent of the prisoners of war who were surveyed.

These claims are demonstrably false. Russia’s military involvement, political control, and the economic and administrative integration of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics—as well as its annexation of Crimea—are extensively documented. While NATO countries provide Ukraine with military and financial assistance, it is Ukrainian forces that bear the brunt of the fighting. The notion that Russians and Ukrainians are one people draws on 19thcentury imperial historiography shaped by the political needs of the Russian Empire and rooted in selective readings of history.

Hundreds of international journalists and observers working in Ukraine over the past four years have found no........

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