Journalists around the world are covering the war in Ukraine. But what are Russian media outlets saying about it? Well, for starters, they’re not calling it a “war.”
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00:00Are there words you're not going to hear on Russian TV?
00:03War or invasion, right? This is an incursion into Ukraine.
00:09A special military operation, I believe, is the phrase that's supposed to be used.
00:30If you turn the TV on in Russia, you're going to get the version that the Russian government
00:38wants told to the Russian people.
00:40By fulfilling the tasks set out to protect our people in Donbass, to ensure the safety
00:46of our Motherland, Russian soldiers and officers are acting courageously.
00:51This is the dream of all the undefeated Nazis, to go and kill the Russians.
00:58Particularly in Russia, people who are older tend to get a tremendous amount of their news
01:03from television, more so than in other countries.
01:05When Putin took over as president in 2000, there was independent media in Russia.
01:10There was thriving independent media.
01:11There were large independent media stations.
01:13Since that time, the state has gradually enacted more and more control over media.
01:20And it has gotten worse in recent years.
01:28The one story that's been told the Russian population is this is an ongoing story about
01:49the expansion of NATO threatening Russia's security.
01:52There's another story that's also being told, which is that this point Putin made in sort
01:56of the media run up to the war, which is this argument that Ukraine is not a real country,
02:01that Ukraine is actually part of Russia.
02:16And so this is a story about, you know, the idea that Ukraine, which is sort of part and
02:21parcel of Russia, could be turning away from Russia and turning away to the West.
02:26That's seen as somehow antithetical to the very essence of what it means to be Russia.
02:31And so that's the story whereby Putin says, these are our brothers, you know, this is
02:35not right.
02:36It must be because they've been corrupted by their leadership.
02:39And that's the sort of third story that gets told, which is that, you know, the leadership
02:44of Ukraine has sold out to the West.
02:46These kind of crazy assertions that the Ukrainian government is being run by Nazis and now Nazis
02:51and drug addicts.
03:03And then you have this final piece, which is that there are these two republics in south
03:08and eastern part of Ukraine, Luhansk and Donetsk, that in the aftermath of the 2014 conflict
03:16that led to Crimea being annexed from Ukraine by Russia, separatists in those regions began
03:23fighting to try to get those regions also independent from Ukraine.
03:27In the run-up to the war, Putin was repeatedly talking about genocide against Russians, despite
03:34no evidence to this on the ground, that Russians in these regions were being attacked.
03:39So if you turn on Russian TV, you're likely to see combinations of these narratives.
04:10So, today, hostilities continued on the territory of Ukraine.
04:14We must call it a special operation, as if it were out of the law.
04:40Tragically, a number of journalists in Russia have been killed, have been physically beaten
04:55and attacked, but they risk livelihood, right?
04:58You're not going to have an opportunity to work for state media, which is where the big
05:02TV is and everything like that, if you are doing this.
05:05And you can risk harassment of your families.
05:07And journalists have fled the country.
05:19Young people, like young people everywhere, are much more likely to get their news through
05:22internet, through mobile, through social media.
05:24They're much more likely to be savvy about how to use VPNs.
05:27But there's one aspect of this I think that's super important here to address, which is
05:33that Russians have friends and family in Ukraine.
05:37The Russian and Ukrainian societies are very much intertwined.
05:42And so, yes, you can shut down, try to shut down Facebook or try to shut down Twitter,
05:47but people are going to get things through text messages.
05:49They're going to get things.
05:50And Telegram, which is a popular app in Russia, is kind of a fusion of WhatsApp and Twitter.
05:55Telegram has been used before to coordinate protests in Russia.
05:58It was used a lot to coordinate protests in Belarus.
06:00This is a much more complicated problem for a regime to control information when people
06:07have encrypted apps and when people are using messaging groups.
06:28I think that this is going to be a very dangerous time for people who are opponents of the war,
06:34which makes all the more courageous what people are doing who are speaking out against the
06:38war.