It is not clear to me in which regard is the messaging inconsistent. The fact that people write to the Kremlin complaining about the draft and the lack of equipment, how does it show inconsistencies in the message?
Thanks for the question. You're right, I should have been clearer about that in the post. In a nutshell, if you look both at the messages on television and other state-linked media, and if you look at the kind of speech that the Kremlin is and is not punishing, we see consistency about the war in abstract and about the country's resilience in the face of sanctions, but we nonetheless see a fair amount of discussion of how the army is fighting and of the conditions for soldiers. And while the Kremlin does go after people who criticize the war as such, they have not (yet) clamped down on the military bloggers and others on Telegram and elsewhere who expose the granular reality on the front.
I wonder if it is not deliberate to let that Telegram rhetoric spill into main stream media. As you mentioned earlier, Putin views the failures of his army in Ukraine as an opportunity to strengthen it. Allowing open criticism may actually help to achieve this goal.
On another note, it was interesting to learn about the long-standing tradition of "chelobitnye" in Russia. What surprised me was that the Kremlin has systematized this practice and even publishes statistics about it. Professor de Vogel's work in this area is very interesting. Thank you again for your insightful weekly updates.
It is not clear to me in which regard is the messaging inconsistent. The fact that people write to the Kremlin complaining about the draft and the lack of equipment, how does it show inconsistencies in the message?
Thanks for the question. You're right, I should have been clearer about that in the post. In a nutshell, if you look both at the messages on television and other state-linked media, and if you look at the kind of speech that the Kremlin is and is not punishing, we see consistency about the war in abstract and about the country's resilience in the face of sanctions, but we nonetheless see a fair amount of discussion of how the army is fighting and of the conditions for soldiers. And while the Kremlin does go after people who criticize the war as such, they have not (yet) clamped down on the military bloggers and others on Telegram and elsewhere who expose the granular reality on the front.
I wonder if it is not deliberate to let that Telegram rhetoric spill into main stream media. As you mentioned earlier, Putin views the failures of his army in Ukraine as an opportunity to strengthen it. Allowing open criticism may actually help to achieve this goal.
On another note, it was interesting to learn about the long-standing tradition of "chelobitnye" in Russia. What surprised me was that the Kremlin has systematized this practice and even publishes statistics about it. Professor de Vogel's work in this area is very interesting. Thank you again for your insightful weekly updates.