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An extraordinary event unfolded on Russian television late Monday: Mid-newscast on the main state TV Channel One, a woman rushed in behind the anchor and unfurled a handwritten poster.

"No war," read the sign. "Don't believe propaganda. They're lying to you here."

The cameras quickly cut away and the protester — Channel One employee Marina Ovsyannikova — 

Amid the Kremlin's ongoing campaign to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine, the scene was a rare off-message moment in an otherwise heavily scripted effort to shape Russians' perceptions of events on the ground.

For years, state TV has remained Russians' top source of news, balanced only by a handful of independent and often digital outlets. But now, a range of Kremlin-backed media — including Channel One, Rossiya 1, the energy giant Gazprom's NTV, and cable news channel Rossiya 24 — are increasingly the only word of record, as critical media shutter en masse thanks to a new law that criminalizes the very term "war" itself.

Whereas global reporting has largely focused on the suffering of Ukrainian civilians, Russians are offered a starkly different story at home. Their screens present accounts of a humanitarian Kremlin mission — one in which "surgical" airstrikes target Ukrainian nationalists and spare civilians, American agents seek to deploy anti-Russian bioweapons, and Ukraine's leaders are hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons to attack the Russian homeland.

The shaping of the Russian narrative begins with words — both chosen and left unsaid.

, forbids journalists covering Ukraine from using the words "war" or "invasion" in favor of "special military operation" — 

 Russian forces would enter Ukraine to protect Russian speakers in Donbas "republics" recognized by Moscow just hours prior.

An additional law penalizes any coverage of the military that contradicts the government's accounts or is deemed as denigrating the armed forces. This has led to an exodus of journalists, foreign and domestic, over threats of 15 years' imprisonment for sharing what the state deems "fake news."

The venerable Echo of Moscow radio station — a symbol of press freedoms that emerged in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union — was unceremoniously taken off the airwaves and replaced by government programming.

, who hosted a political talk show on Echo of Moscow for nearly two decades before its closure. "In this world ... lies are truth and war is peace."

 also suspended its operations amid government pressure. The station went off-air with an eerie vintage Soviet broadcast of "Swan Lake" — the classic Tchaikovsky ballet that Russians have come to view as 

a broadcast harbinger of repression and political turmoil

Platforms for free expression were winnowed further still with 

 like Facebook and Twitter. Nearly all of Russia's independent journalism has now retreated into the Telegram messaging app –

a lifeline for news, but also for rumor and disinformation.

Meanwhile, state media propagandists — many under sanctions by the West — have rushed in to fill the information void.

The worldview painted by Russian state outlets is a Kremlin alternative to Western narratives. In it, virtually all global events are framed through Russian interests: Putin is a political heavyweight unmatched in the global arena. And the world's nations routinely look to Moscow for solutions to the most protracted international crises.

Here, unconfirmed guesswork is equal to facts, while facts are inherently subjective.

Across all networks, Ukraine's fighters are "terrorists" and "rebels," NATO is Ukraine's "overseas master" and Russian rockets strike only military targets, while Ukrainian troops use hospitals and residential buildings for cover.

"All the experts say we're using our aircraft with great accuracy and our artillery with precision," said pro-Kremlin pundit Vladimir Solovyov on one of his recent talk shows. He saturates the radio and TV airwaves so thoroughly that he once broke 

 for most live hours broadcast in a week.

Vesti Nedeli — the flagship Week's News Sunday program hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov on Rossiya 1 — led this week's broadcast by repeating Putin's debunked claims of Ukrainian "Nazis" conducting a campaign of "genocide" in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.

"It's clear by now," began Kiselyov, "that if our troops hadn't gone in, the Donbas would have been wiped from the face of the Earth."

Kiselyov claimed a journalistic scoop: documents that he said showed the West sought NATO membership for Ukraine in a bid to place nuclear weapons on its soil. A nuclear-empowered regime in Kyiv, Kiselyov warned, would try to retake the Crimean Peninsula — sparking a massive war.

Another key daily talk show, 60 Minutes, hosted by Olga Skabeyeva, also recently honed in on Donetsk – showing repeated footage of a missile that Russian authorities claim was launched by Ukrainian forces, killing two dozen people. Over and over, the program alerted viewers to breaking news of a rising death toll from this incident, punctuated by shouting, outraged studio guests.

President Biden, too, looms large in Russia's state media coverage. Talk show hosts air anti-Biden remarks by former President Donald Trump and Fox News host Tucker Carlson. They cite Biden's "plunging" ratings, impending U.S. "gas riots" and "increasing calls" for Biden's impeachment, saying he blames Russia for his domestic troubles.

 still get their news from TV. State-run polls show that a majority of Russians – 

 – support the Kremlin's "special military operation."

It's a reflection, analysts say, of the broader public's inability to parse the barrage of propaganda.

"Most people are not truth-seekers ... they will not go in pursuit of facts or truth. They go on about their daily life," says Sergey Radchenko, Cold War historian at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "So they are subconsciously looking for some kind of excuses and they buy into this narrative that is on offer for them."

Fear, too, is widely believed to skew polling numbers. Over 15,000 protesters have been detained in antiwar protests since the Russian campaign began in Ukraine.

Marina Ovsyannikova, the Channel One employee who charged onto the set Monday with her antiwar message, 

 expressing "shame" for taking part in the Kremlin's propaganda machine. Her mother is Russian but her father is Ukrainian, Ovsyannikova explained.

"Go out and protest," she said in the recording. "Don't be afraid. They can't imprison us all." 

International

NPR Staff

Author

State TV has long been Russians' top news source. Now it's becoming the only word of record, presenting stories of "surgical" attacks on Ukrainian nationalists and threats of anti-Russian bioweapons.

What Ukraine war news looks like from Russia

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