10 May 2025
by Aleksandr Podrabinek
Source: Facebook
‘The whole country, society, and people support the participants in the special military Operation,’ Vladimir Putin declared on 9 May at the military parade in Moscow. This straightforward boilerplate propaganda is repeatedly circulated by Russian media, and is intensely drilled into the heads of Russian citizens. And it’s not just Russians; this Kremlin narrative is also popular in the West. There, media, bloggers, and political activists are happy to repeat Kremlin nonsense about the ‘unity of the party and the people,’ about Putin’s 86 percent approval rating, and that all Russians support imperialism and aggression. Publishing shocking photos of kids in military uniforms, these voluntary aides of Putin propaganda forget to say that children are just putty in the hands of adults, and not conscious enemies of the human race, having absorbed militaristic expertise from the cradle. Displaying footage of ‘national celebrations’ to their audience, they forget to say that all these celebrations were organized and paid for by government agencies for propaganda purposes. Showing street interviews with responses like ‘I believe in Putin,’ they forget to say that the opinion polls in Russia are just as dependent on the authorities as television. And it’s stupid to expect genuine answers in a country where you can be jailed for a like on social media or a critical remark about the government in a private phone conversation.
Thanks to such selectivity in the news reports, the reader, viewer, and listener get the impression that all of Russia approves the war and the dictatorial regime. But what is the reality? It is difficult to accurately determine the balance of social forces, as there is neither a free press, nor accurate opinion polls, nor free and fair elections – all the things that can indicate the mood of society.
But the other day I tried to do this. Dedicated supporters of Putin’s triumphalism wear St. George’s ribbons these days, like the one Putin wore during the parade. I decided to calculate how many of them there are in terms of a percentage. On 8 May I stood in the passageway running from one metro station to another and counted out one hundred people from the oncoming stream. There was one with a St. George’s ribbon. I repeated the count in another metro passageway – out of one hundred people, there were four with ribbons. However, two of them were police officers, and they have St. George’s ribbons as a part of their dress uniform on these public holidays. They are required to wear them. I conducted a third count in a metro car. Out of one hundred people, there were two with ribbons, both foreigners. They were of European appearance and spoke in English. I think that they either found their attire to be an amusing bit of Russian-inspired fun (like a fur hat or a matryoshka to give to friends), or they had decided that a demonstration of loyalty would grant them safety in such an unpredictable and frightening country. Or maybe they were just successfully brainwashed by Kremlin propaganda, which has found a comfortable home in the West.
These are the figures from my personal observations. I don’t know what these people have in their hearts or minds, but one thing can be said for sure: 98 percent of randomly selected people do not wear loyalty on their sleeves or feel patriotic fervour for yet another victory celebration. But the point of propaganda is to give a voice to only the remaining two percent. They are the ones who are passed off as leaders of public opinion.
Translated by Alyssa Rider
