Kremlin Propaganda has Done Something Worse than Generate Support for War in Ukraine, Kuleshova Says; It hadesgs Destroyed Ability of Russians to Make a Moral Assessment

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 19 – Many people suggest that Kremlin propaganda has effectively generated support for Putin’s war in Ukraine, but in fact, it has not done that, Anna Kulashova says. Instead, it has done something far worse: it has destroyed the ability of many Russians to make a moral assessment of that conflict and much else.

            Kremlin propaganda, the Russian sociologist who has worked in Luxembourg since 2022 says, has not “zombified millions of people and turned them into aggressive and ideological supporters of the armed conflict” (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/10/19/tsinizm-lukavogo-cheloveka).

            Polls have shown that the number of convinced supporters of Putin’s war is still about 22 percent, a figure roughly equal to the number of convinced opponents, she continues. Many more simply refuse to make any judgment and thus go along with whatever the regime wants because they no longer feel themselves capable of assessing things for themselves.

            One of the most powerful tools of Kremlin propaganda, she suggests, is the notion of “whataboutism,” the promotion of the idea that since things are far from perfect outside of Russia, “we [in Russia] can do everything” and thus conclude that “we are doing everything right.

            In this way, she says, “attention is shifted from one’s own acts to the motives and sins of those who criticize that individual.” And when the state promotes this view of the world or supports it by monetarizing death and suggesting that war is the eternal state of mankind, it deprives people of their own moral foundations and thus the basis for right action.

            “Once life without war is impossible, then trying to change something is meaningless” Kuleshova says. “Together with fatalism, propaganda imposes total cynicism, and It masterfully neutralizes any idealistic and humanistic values like calls for world peace, the value of human life, empathy and mercy.”

            The sociologist tsays that “the authorities do not need everyone to believe in the necessity of war. They are enough to ensure that no one believes in anything or that it is possible to live differently, nor that his own conscience is more important than a strange bad example, nor that the world is better than war.”

            And that in turn leaves Russian society in a far worse position: “A convinced opponent can be persuaded, but with cynics everything is more difficult, they have nothing to revise.” As a result, the restoration of the ability to moral judgment, to the simple thought “I will not do this, even if others do” is inevitably much more difficult.”