Whom are Russians Going to Believe about Murmansk -- Kremlin Media or Their Own Eyes?

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 26 – Governments around the world routinely try to control the narratives about problems lest their populations draw conclusions based on what they can see and hear. But few regimes have gone as far as the Kremlin in doing so, a pattern highlighted this week by how it is trying to control the reactions of Russians to the dark and freezing city of Murmansk.

            At a time when Russian aggression has turned out the lights in Kyiv and many other Ukrainian cities, the Putin regime is especially interested in preventing Russians from drawing parallels between what is happening in Ukraine and what is happening inside Russia given that the two things have their roots in the same place – the Kremlin and its contempt for people.

            Many Russian population points have suffered this winter but no large city more and for a longer period that Murmansk in the Russian north where there has been no heat, light or water for days (thebarentsobserver.com/news/darkness-descended-on-murmansk/444153, meduza.io/feature/2026/01/26/v-murmanske-treti-sutki-pereboi-s-elektrichestvom-i-podachey-tepla-eto-krupneyshiy-gorod-za-polyarnym-krugom-i-seychas-tam-moroz and krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/105279).

            Despite or more precisely because of the scope of this tragedy, Kremlin-controlled media have devoted little attention to it, clearly reflecting the hopes of Russia’s rulers that what these outlets don’t report, the Russian people won’t pay attention to (t.me/agentstvonews/13673 and nemoskva.net/2026/01/26/federalnye-telekanaly-otkazalis-ot-polnoczennogo-osveshheniya-blekauta-v-murmanskoj-oblasti/).

            And to reenforce this message, the Kremlin has used bots to push its message that the disaster in Murmansk was the result of something other than the failures of officials to live up to their responsibilities to maintain the infrastructure needed to keep people warm and safe (t.me/botnadzor_org/1910).

            But as independent social anthropologist Aleksandr Arkhipova points out, Kremlin messengers have gone even further and introduced a new term of art for what is happening in Murmansk (t.me/anthro_fun/3853 and nemoskva.net/2026/01/26/ne-otklyuchenie-a-rotacziya-elektrichestva-murmanskie-energetiki-izobreli-novoe-slovosochetanie-chtoby-skryt-masshtab-avarii/).

            “It will become clear to anyone who thinks about this for a second that what is going on are rolling blackouts,” Arkhipova says, especially as these words “say nothing about a major a ccident or about people being without eating. In short and as usual, we have our lovely euphemisms, a product of a world where nothing bad ever happens.”

            Residents of Murmansk posted comments on Arkhipova’s article and said that what electricity there is comes on mostly at night but that in some apartment blocks, heating and water have been cut off, with some of the city’s shops closed as well. They also say that bread has disappeared from the shelves because the city’s bakeries have been affected by power outages.

            As so often happens in such situations, the Russian government’s effort to control the popular reaction is backfiring with its efforts transparently obvious, thus leading the population to conclude or even report that the situation is far worse than people would have assumed if they had been told the truth to begin with.