russian propaganda is just a bunch of washed up pr boomers and their interns cranking out memes like its a group project for a marketing class nobody wanted to take. you ever see your uncle quoting some cringe meme about zelenskyy two days after it drops? yeah, thats not organic, thats the kremlin meme machine at work, and its about as subtle as a brick through a window.
the new face of russian propaganda
forget the old dudes yelling about nazis on tv, now its “young” pr types (anyone under 70 in russia) running meme ops from moscow offices. the big dogs? outfits like the Agency of Social Design (ASD), which sounds like a crypto scam startup but just sells “ukraine doesnt exist” memes instead of fake coins.
case in point: that zelenskyy meme elon musk boosted to his 100 million followers? not some internet accident, that was cooked up by asd, a private kremlin pr firm. elon, the worlds richest shitposter, just picked it up and ran with it, probably without even clocking he was doing free pr for putin. thats the game: make the meme, get it viral, let the useful idiots do the rest. suddenly a russian op is “just a meme, bro,” floating around with zero context and a million retweets.
the brains behind asd’s analytics? alexey medvedev, born 1960. so the “youthful” face of russian meme warfare is a 66-year-old dude who probably thinks windows xp is bleeding edge. russian media tried to keep his name quiet, but flight records and some open-source nerds blew his cover. next time you see a meme that looks like it was made by someone who just discovered photoshop, now you know why.
volume over quality, always
these guys arent even good at it. russian propaganda is all about volume, not quality. theyll throw a hundred fakes at the wall and hope one sticks. one day ukraine doesnt exist, next day its a nazi superpower about to collapse and also invade russia at the same time. the mental gymnastics would make an olympic coach cry.
even their own propagandists cant keep up. one minute theyre promising to take kyiv in three days, next minute theyre calling the war a “horrible catastrophe” and talking about “two great slavic nations” like they didnt spend the last decade denying ukraine was real. the story changes faster than the ruble drops.
meanwhile, the z-bloggers—those “objective” military analysts who are just ministry of defense interns with telegram accounts—are losing the plot. you got radov, who at least tries to talk to real soldiers and sometimes admits things are bad. then theres rybar, kremlins favorite war blogger, who started sounding the alarm back in august, saying the initiative was slipping and ukraine was pushing back. but dont worry, the official maps still get colored in with big red arrows, because nothing says “victory” like ms paint.
the numbers game and the cope olympics
every time a ukrainian drone hits a russian ammo dump, the z-bloggers invent a new reason why it doesnt count:
- “it was empty!”
- “it was a decoy!”
- “actually, we wanted it to blow up, its 5d chess!”
the only thing more inflated than their casualty numbers is their sense of reality. the russian army is bleeding out—42,000 losses and counting—but sure, keep telling yourself its all going according to plan.
back home, the propaganda machine is running out of gas. recruitment is tanking, the budget’s got a 5.8 trillion ruble hole, and the only thing growing is the list of banned words. the z-bloggers, who used to be the regimes hype men, are now deleting posts and quietly panicking. they know the real situation is grim, but if they say it out loud, they get a knock at 3am. so they keep painting the maps red and hope nobody notices the front line keeps moving the wrong way.
the kremlins biggest export isnt oil or gas, its narratives.
exporting the circus
the kremlin doesnt just target russians. theyre aiming straight at the west, at ukraine, at anyone who’ll listen. theyve got a whole stable of “independent” bloggers—guys like anatoliy shariy and his crew—who fled ukraine but still have big ukrainian audiences. their whole shtick is playing the victim: “help, im being persecuted for free speech!” then they turn around and push russian talking points to anyone who’ll listen. its like watching someone light their own house on fire and then complain about the smoke.
the west sometimes eats it up. you get headlines like “russian nationalist military bloggers tell the truth about putins war,” as if these guys are some kind of resistance. spoiler: theyre not. theyre just pissed the regime isnt winning fast enough, not that its wrong to invade in the first place. their “truth” is just a different flavor of cope.
meanwhile, the real war is grinding on. ukraine is fighting a war of attrition, where every drone, every open job, every voice that doesnt buy the kremlin line matters. russia’s out here trying to meme its way to victory, but the only thing theyre winning is the gold medal in mental gymnastics.
reality leaks through
the regimes answer to every setback is to double down on the fakes, the memes, the “everything is fine” routine. but reality keeps leaking through, no matter how many posts they delete or how many maps they color in.
the russian dream these days is a lada that starts and a neighbor whos even poorer. the regime robs them blind, sends their kids to die for a war nobody wanted, and all they get in return is a new batch of memes blaming ukraine for everything from inflation to the weather. the propaganda machine is running on fumes, but as long as theres one guy with a toilet in his yard willing to call the rest of us uncivilized, the circus rolls on.
so next time you see a viral meme about ukraine that just happens to line up with kremlin talking points, remember: it probably started in a moscow office, got rubber-stamped by a guy who remembers the soviet union, and went viral because some billionaire shitposter thought it was funny. the “battle for minds” isnt about truth, its about volume, repetition, and hoping youre too tired to fact-check. but the receipts are out there, and the punchlines write themselves.
in the end, the only thing russias meme lords are winning is the race to the bottom. their own side cant keep the story straight, their “objective” bloggers are just propaganda with extra steps, and every fake they push is one more reminder that reality isnt on their side. ukraines still standing, the front lines still moving, and the only thing collapsing faster than russian narratives is the ruble. keep your eyes open, keep laughing at the clowns, and dont let the memes rot your brain. thats my job.
russian victory maps get more cardio than their conscripts, and both are running in circles.