Most Russian people, whether they admit it or not, consume state-controlled media. That means all TV, all radio and now, almost all easily accessible internet sources for news stories. State media downplay Russia’s military action and justify it as entirely reactive, protective and justified. But we should be cautious about Russian state media’s supposed ‘hypodermic’ effects – injecting the right response into public opinion.
Instead, I characterise Russians’ response so far as a mixture of disbelief in the scale and destructiveness of the Russian actions and denial that Russia is the aggressor. The Russian state has shut down most easily accessible sources of alternative information. People with VPNs can still find things out, but these are a tiny minority. Many people are rightly afraid to even talk about the war, and this blackout heightens public sensitivity to the dribs and drabs of official information.
For many, the war, now in its 12th day, is still a “special anti-terrorist operation” against “neo-Nazis”. But it is clear to many that things are not going to plan, and this feeds into Russians’ coping mechanisms. These are best thought of as forms of ‘defensive consolidation’: a retreat into comforting truths which help individuals deal with cognitive dissonance. For example, rather than accept that ‘our’ Russian troops are indiscriminately using rockets against civilian targets in Ukraine, a person would write to me on Facebook (while it was still accessible): “It’s better that it’s over quickly; Ukrainians brought this upon themselves; it’s better that it happens there than here; it was inevitable that the West would provoke a large conflict.”
