Putin vs Zelensky: Who's Winning The Propaganda War? - 'Hot Mic' With Nidhi Razdan

Hi, This is Hot Mic and I'm Nidhi Razdan.

Propaganda is now very much a part of the art of war. In this age of social media in particular, communication has become key. And in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it is Ukraine's propaganda machinery that has emerged a winner, winning the hearts and minds of much of the world. The man who took charge of the messaging from day one was President Zelensky himself. When Russia invaded in late February, he first got rid of the stuffy tie and shirt and donned an olive green t-shirt similar to army fatigues. This has been his standard uniform in video appearances since then, even to the number of parliaments that he has addressed via video in other countries.

Zelensky has effectively used social media and his own cellphone to record selfie videos and upload them for the world to see Ukraine's plight. He has helped Ukraine's PR drive like no one else. According to one report, Ukraine's official social media channels have experienced a surge in followers since the start of the war. The country's official Twitter account has nearly 2 million followers, six times as many as before the war. Zelensky's Instagram account added more than 6.5 million followers in less than a month since the war began on the 24th of February.

Zelensky has used social media to strongly press home the point about the horrors of war. He has been at the front and center of the messaging, whereas Putin has hardly been seen since the crisis erupted. The Ukrainian government also uses Twitter very effectively to get its message out and use memes to make their point. An example of this is the recent sinking of the Russian ship the Moskva, which Ukrainian official Twitter handles have used for the creation of a series of memes. Ukraine's Defence Minister was one of the officials who joked about the shipwreck tweeting a photograph of him scuba diving with a turtle and stating that the Russian warship was a "worthy diving site" located in the Black Sea. Of course, many of the stories, floated on social media and WhatsApp by Ukrainian media, sound a bit out there and cannot be verified.

Like tales of old ladies standing up to Russian troops or 80-year-olds volunteering to fight, and the story of one brave man who apparently punched a convoy of Russian trucks in the face. Sounds pretty unbelievable but experts say it's not even about the truth of the story any longer. The battle between a mighty Russia and the underdog Ukraine has clearly gripped the world. So what about the Russian narrative then? Well not surprisingly, Putin is doing everything he can to control the messaging within his own country and within his own country, he seems to be winning the propaganda war. A sanitized version of events on the ground is being presented to ordinary Russians. War casualties are really not being reported.

Even the atrocities in Bucha, where images of hundreds of dead civilians shocked the world, have been presented by Russian media as fake images. In fact, on state media, anchors and writers say that the videos from Bucha are totally fake, and also in another contradictory claim, they say that these were atrocities committed by Ukrainian forces against their own people. Which is it? Is it fake or are these atrocities committed by Ukrainian forces? State media also doesn't use the words 'war' or 'invasion' and does not mention Russia's bombing of Kyiv.

By all accounts, so far, Mr. Putin and the invasion, however, remain very popular in Russia. Even though there have been some voices of dissent, these have been quickly shut down. Thousands of protesters have been arrested over the last few weeks for saying that they don't believe in war. Russia has blocked social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to prevent the messages from reaching their citizens. Though some people are getting around the de facto ban simply by using VPNs like they do in China.

According to The New York Times, an America data analytics company called FilterLabs.AI, which has been tracking Russian sentiment on the Internet messaging boards and other online forums, says that it's measured growing anxiety among Russians about being called in to perhaps fight in the war as well as war casualties. But something else is also happening. Russian society that has largely believed the Russian official narrative has also become deeply polarized, so much so that those who do not support the war are being turned in by their own fellow citizens.

The New York Times had a story last week about how a school teacher in Russia showed a positive video on YouTube to her eighth grade students, how Russian and Ukrainian children were singing songs together about a world without war, a world with peace. But days later, she was fined by the police, who had received a video about what happened in the class from one of the students. The school ended up firing her for what they called amoral behavior. She was accused of discrediting Russia's armed forces.

The same report talks about how students are turning in teachers and people are telling on their own neighbors. There was another example - in a Moscow mall, a computer shop had displayed a "no war" text in the window, and that led to the store owner's detention by police. President Putin himself set the tone for this in a speech that he had made in mid-March, where he said that Russian society needed a "self purification" in which people would "distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouths." He literally said that. It essentially means that those citizens who do not report others will also be seen as suspect themselves.

Meanwhile, a recent survey from the Levada Center which is one of the only independent polling firms still operating in Russia, found that Putin's approval ratings have actually shot up since the start of the invasion. The Director of the Center has been quoted as saying that the surge is because of a belief among Russians that "everyone is against us" and that "Putin defends us, otherwise, we would have been eaten alive." But the longer the war drags on, the harder it may be for Vladimir Putin to hide the harsh truths from his own people.