Measuring the Reach of Russia’s Propaganda in the Russia-Ukraine War

Composite image by Sara Herbst/RAND from Adobe Stock images by Pattadis, deagreez, supamas, elen31, and Ammak.

On February 24, 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, he claimed that Ukraine was led by “far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis” and that the purpose of Russia’s invasion was to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.” Russia’s propagandists have sought to weaponize extremist ideologies and anti-Ukrainian ethno-national animus to mobilize domestic and international audiences.

The concern that Russia's extremist narratives could gain popularity with international audiences and even catalyze violent extremism against groups that these narratives target is warranted—but should not be overstated. Although Russian propaganda does spread far and wide, recent research suggests that not all of it is as successful as it might seem.

RAND Researchers Examined Four Hate-Filled Narratives

A recent RAND study examined how some of Russia’s most extremist and most hate-filled narratives have spread on social-media platforms, such as X and Telegram. It identified four such narratives and looked at which audiences these narratives reach and who is spreading them. Researchers reviewed statements from Russian officials, state media, and social media to identify Russian-originating narratives that echo violent extremist tropes to target and denigrate Ukrainians. The four narratives are summarized in Table 1.

There Is a Vast Amount of Social-Media Content in Many Languages

Using translated keywords that capture these four narratives, researchers identified more than 43 million posts from X and Telegram, involving 3.8 million authors writing in more than 30 languages. As shown in Figure 1, the number of posts containing the keywords rose dramatically with Russia’s invasion, illustrating the manufactured nature of these narratives.

The figure has two mirrored stacked area charts. The left chart shows the the number of Russian posts compared to the total, and the right chart shows the amount of English posts compared to the total. English has a larger share of posts throughout the timespan.

For overall posts, the biggest spike on the chart is when Russia invades Ukraine at the end of February 2022. Other spikes are during the following events: Victory Day in Russia; Russia attacks power grid; Biden visits Kyiv; Russian explodes dam; Wagner mutiny; and the Hamas attack in October 2023.

Unlike posts in English, which generally spiked during these major war-related events, posts in Russian remained relatively flat following the invasion.

The use of slurs to dehumanize Ukrainians is a particularly challenging theme to internationalize for pro-Russian voices: Relatively few European societies have significant preexisting animus toward Ukrainians as a distinct ethno-national group, and most of the slurs are fully understandable only in the Russian language (as well as to Ukrainian speakers).

Thus, it is certainly concerning to see this language used by linguistic communities in which these narratives might be expected to have little resonance. For example, more than 667,000 X posts in Spanish, more than 520,000 posts in English, and between 25,000 and 165,000 posts in other major European languages contained slurs and dehumanizing language.

But the Success of Pro-Russian Narratives Is Limited

The sheer amount of content with rhetoric unleashed by Russia’s propagandists and proxies against Ukraine suggests a broad reach; but, as the researchers discovered, it is also shallow.

On X

First, as Figure 2 shows, of the four narratives, the slur-laden dehumanization narrative was the most heavily dominated by the Russian language; while the other three were dominated by English. Second, of the large number of authors posting content with keywords, a relatively modest share are part of a discourse network. Researchers used network analysis to focus on these accounts that not only post but also are in conversation with others—through replying to or reposting content.

The chord diagram showing the pattern of posts by language across the four narratives. The connections for Narrative 2 are called out in red.

Narrative 1: Nazi Accusations

The majority of posts are in English, followed by posts in Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, Ukrainian, German, Polish, and other languages.

Total posts: 19,002,907

Narrative 2: Dehumanizing Slurs

The majority of the post are in Russian, followed by Spanish, English, Ukrainian, French, other languages, Italian, and Polish.

Total posts: 3,734,662

Russian: 1,721,089

Spanish: 667,075

English: 520,368

Narrative 3: Antisemitic Tropes

The vast majority of posts are in English, followed by Russian.

Total posts: 3,702,226

Narrative 4: Anti-Western Vitriol

The vast majority of posts are in English, followed by Russian.

Total posts: 1,905,132

As shown in Figure 3, on X, only 1 to 6 percent of all authors who ever posted relevant content engaged with others in conversations relevant to the narratives.

• Narrative 1: Denazification. Total authors: 2,311,986. Engaged authors: 54,260 (2%)
• Narrative 2: Dehumanization. Total authors: 471,541. Engaged authors: 26,700 (6%)
• Narrative 3: Antisemitism. Total authors: 927,685. Engaged authors: 6,049 (0.06%)
• Narrative 1: Denazification. Total authors: 599,582. Engaged authors: 2,256 (0.03%)

Although the audiences for these narratives are multilingual, the most persistent and most virulent voices are in Russian—and these voices do not reach as broad an audience.

On X, the most popular sources of content were a mix of media sources, propagandists, and other prominent figures, such as social-media influencers, many of whom post in English.

By contrast, the actors who most actively sought to engage the network and to spread content were predominantly nonrecognizable and often anonymous, writing in Russian. They are often the most prolific in terms of the volume of posts containing anti-Ukrainian, hate-filled content. They are also most active in terms of seeking to spread the most-virulent content—that is, content that most heavily relies on slurs and other dehumanizing language. These actors are often not very popular, however: They do not draw much reciprocal attention from others on the network and tend to have low numbers of followers or subscribers. Despite the apparent intent of these accounts to shape discourse in the network, they largely fail.

Many communities within the bigger network are multilingual. But the most virulent voices tend to be concentrated in specific, Russian-language–dominated communities. And there was a significant number of pro-Ukrainian accounts, which often had higher numbers of followers and greater attention to their posts than the pro-Russian accounts. These networks, in other words, were not invariably echo chambers of hate but spaces in which pro-Ukrainian voices were actively fighting an information war against Russia’s campaign to malign the Ukrainian people before international audiences.

"Our submissives see #Swastikas and #SS regalia everywhere in #Ukraine and yet call #Russia "Nazi". They know #Ukrainians butchered millions of Jews, Poles, Partisans in the #Holocaust yet hate the people who liberated the death camps and crushed the Hitlerite beast in #Berlin." –@georgegalloway, X

"We are fighting in Ukraine against fascism, satanism, and nazism. Those who do not want to live under the LGBT banner should rise up and help us deal with this." –@NeoficialniyBeZsonoV, Telegram, translated from Russian

"Banderites are like an infection, get rid of them in time" –@swodki (Novorossia Militia Reports Z.O.V.), Telegram, translated from Russian

"Remember when Ukrainian neo-Nazis were greasing their bullets in pork fat, then they got steamrolled by the Chechens?" –@jacksonhinklle, X

"In Israel, Khokhols write and leave notes on the Wailing Wall to draw attention to themselves. The content of some of them: 'More money for Ukraine!' 'Ukrainians are also Jews.' "Only a dead Moskal is better than a dead Palestinian." –@Slavyangrad (Slavyangrad), Telegram

On Telegram

Telegram networks have a different structure from X networks: They are made up of channels, rather than individual accounts, linked to other channels through forwarding others’ content. On Telegram networks, Russian-language channels, such as those operated by Russia’s military bloggers, tend to be the most popular—i.e., the most widely forwarded. However, channels with the most virulent content tend to be less widely forwarded. And these virulent channels are concentrated in predominantly Russian-language communities; it is still Russian speakers who are exposed to the most hate-filled and most dehumanizing rhetoric.

Topics

• European Union
• Russia
• Social Media Analysis
• Ukraine
• Violent Extremism