Strategic Storytelling: Russian State-Backed Media Coverage of the Ukraine War

Abstract

Strategic narratives help shape wars. In modern history, strategic narratives were used during the Cold War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War to justify military invasions and manipulate opponents. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia was accused of weaponizing its state-backed media outlets to promote a pro-Russian version of the war. Consequently, Russian state-backed media faced a series of new sanctions from Western governments and technology companies. While some studies have sought to identify disinformation about the war, less research has focused on understanding how these stories come together as narratives, particularly in non-English language contexts. Grounded in strategic narrative theory, we analyze Russian state-backed media coverage of the Ukraine war across 12 languages. Using topic modeling and narrative analysis, we find that Russian state-backed media focused primarily on promoting identity narratives, forming an image that Russia is powerful, Ukraine is evil, and the West is hypocritical. Russian strategic narratives both converged and diverged across languages and outlets in ways that met Russia’s desired image and objectives in each region. This paper allows us to better theorize the evolving and transformative role of strategic narrative in Russian state-backed news media during times of conflict.

States use strategic narratives to help defeat adversaries and win wars. As a collection of persuasive stories, strategic narratives are a means of influence that construct a sense of shared understanding. In modern history, strategic narratives have played an integral role in warfare. States have relied on them to shape both domestic and international public opinion about military interventions, using these narratives to garner public support for military action and persuade other states to accept their political aims (Aspriadis, 2023; Graaf, Dimitriu, & Ringsmose, 2015). Strategic narratives tie events together, building a structure through which conflict can be understood by answering the why, how, and what of war (Graaf et al., 2015). They also provide a conceptual framework upon which information operations are built, where disinformation, the concealing of crucial facts, and the delegitimizing of adversarial narratives are tactics used strategically to promote narratives during times of war (Wilson, Zhou, & Starbird, 2018).

On February 24, 2022, President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine (Myers & Frenkel, 2022). In tandem with conventional military forces, Russia began to actively promote its own version of the war on social media. As key actors in Russia’s “full spectrum” approach to information warfare (Abrams, 2016; Baele, Boyd, & Coan, 2019; Bradshaw, DiResta, & Miller, 2023; Rid, 2020; Shimer, 2020), Russian state-backed media outlets such as Sputnik and RT have made use of traditional and digital media to shape the rhetorical battlefield. Over the past few years, Russia has made significant investments in curating audiences in non-Western and non-English speaking countries, particularly through state-backed media (Crilley & Chatterje-Doody, 2020; Rebello et al., 2020). Since the start of the war in Ukraine, several Russian broadcasters also begun focusing efforts heavily on non-Western audiences (Sguazzin, 2022; Tolz & Hutchings, 2023). Despite government sanctions, and platform actions to label and demote content from Russian state-backed media, critics have been concerned that Russian state-backed media has been disproportionately reaching non-English and non-Western countries with propaganda (Myers & Frenkel, 2022).

This paper examines the geographic and language asymmetries across Russian state-backed media coverage of the 2022 war in Ukraine. Since the start of the invasion, several academic studies have explored Russia’s information warfare tactics targeting English-speaking audiences. Working with big datasets, some studies have identified large-scale Twitter (now X), “bots” spreading pro-Russian content about the war (Geissler, Bar, Prollochs, & Feuerriegel, 2023; Smart, Watt, Benedetti, Mitchell, & Roughan, 2022). Others have measured the prevalence of low-credibility content and disinformation on social media platforms, finding low volumes of disinformation (Caprolu, Sadighian, & Di Pietro, 2023), and an overall decline in low-credibility content and accounts sharing this content following platform interventions (Pierri, Luceri, Jindal, & Ferrara, 2023). There have also been some investigations into Russian disinformation and propaganda on social media in individual country-or-language contexts, such as Spanish (Cerulli & Rhodes, 2022). However, the study of strategic narratives in political communication presents an opportunity to study the broad narratives that shape disinformation and propaganda about the war. Through this study, we aim to contribute to these lacunae of research by comparatively examining how same-sourced narratives are strategically leveraged across different languages and geographies.

Using a mixed-method approach combining topic modeling and narrative analysis, we found that Sputnik and RT outlets targeted different audiences: where RT outlets focused coverage on countries in the Global North, Sputnik outlets focused more on audiences in the Global South. Adopting the strategic narratives framework, we identified system, issue, and identity narratives in Russian state-backed media coverage of the war. System narratives emphasized a new world order in which Western hegemony is declining and being replaced by a new world order led by Russia and other like-minded states. System narratives also asymmetrically appeared in Sputnik France, whose target audience is more heavily concentrated in Africa. Identity narratives—the most salient narratives in the coverage—depicted: (a) Russia as a powerful country that cannot be defeated by Western sanctions or aggression; (b) Ukraine as a country that violates human rights, kills civilians, and is controlled by Western governments; and (c) Western governments as hypocritical for colonizing and invading other nations while condemning Russia for attacking Ukraine. Issue narratives about the war included depictions of the West’s role in escalating the war while Russia seeks peace and diplomacy, as well as the negative impact of Western sanctions against Russia on global economic security. The Spanish versions of both RT and Sputnik promoted identity narratives more than other languages’ versions, signaling the importance of promoting a positive image about Russia to Spanish and Latin audiences. However, Arabic RT and Sputnik were keener on promoting issue narratives, emphasizing Russia’s desire to justify the war and promote its diplomatic role to Arab audiences.

Overall, this paper contributes to the study of strategic narratives by exploring Russian state-backed media coverage of Ukraine across diverse languages and geographies. We identify core narratives about the war and demonstrate how they both converged and diverged across different languages and different outlets, highlighting the importance of the local in global news—and propaganda—production. Our analysis also allows us to better theorize and understand Russia’s propaganda efforts, and the distinct ways that identity, system, and issue narratives emerge across differing geopolitical and cultural contexts. The extensive use of strategic identity narratives in Russian crisis communication can be linked to the nation’s imperative to reshape its national identity in the post-Cold War era, especially in endeavors aimed at legitimizing itself to both domestic and external audiences.

Exploring the Strategic Narratives and Information Operations Nexus

The nexus between information operation and strategic narratives is well established. The basic premise of this relationship is centered around the interplay of two key elements: firstly, the importance of information in both times of conflict and peace, and secondly, the storytelling or narrative-building dimensions of international relations, primarily how relevant information can be effectively crafted and communicated to shape perceptions (Brodie, 1949; Fisher, 1984; Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, & Roselle, 2014; Shenhav, 2015). Thus, a strategic narrative analysis assumes the powerful role of information and the language that frames that information to influence public opinion. Throughout history, this relationship has been expressed through a wide range of concepts across various disciplines within political science. These encompass information operations, information warfare, public diplomacy, strategic narratives, disinformation operations, and even propaganda.

Some of these concepts explore the constitutive nature of political communication, while others highlight its manipulative and disruptive facets (Miskimmon & O’Loughlin, 2017; Röling & Maarleveld, 1999). Similarly, some concepts underscore the defensive and unifying undertone of political communication, while others emphasize the confrontational and aggressive tone (Coticchia & Catanzaro, 2022). The ambiguity across these concepts has been intensified by the contemporary communication revolution and the expansion of the information age. This is due to the proliferation of channels and platforms that spread and amplify information, which have now become integral elements of storytelling, narrative building, and coordinated information operations. In this digital era, successful strategic communications means being able to skillfully deliver a strategic narrative across multiple levels of analysis—national, regional, and global—while gaining support from a diverse audience (Noreen & Angstrom, 2015; Palmieri & Mazzali-Lurati, 2021).

The Russian invasion of Ukraine presents a complex and rich case to explore the nexus between strategic narratives and propaganda. Russia and the West participated in a strategic narrative power play to sway global agendas, attribute military actions, construct support blocs, and reshape audience perception of the causes and consequences of the conflict. Within this strategic communication landscape, Russian authorities actively launched propaganda battles and disinformation campaigns, often leveraging state-sponsored media and collaborating with foreign media outlets worldwide to bolster “the truth status” of their alternative narratives (Ciuriak, 2022; Khaldarova & Pantti, 2020). Despite the increasing scholarly attention to the blurry line between strategic information and propaganda, this is not necessarily a recent development. Russia has a well-documented history of conducting information operations to influence domestic and global audiences and advance its geopolitical goals, which continues today in digital form (Abrams, 2016; Doroshenko & Lukito, 2021; Rid, 2020; Snegovaya, 2015). During the Cold War, the concept “active measures” was developed to describe a wide span of practices, “including disinformation operations, political influence efforts, and the activities of soviet front groups and foreign communist parties” that the soviet operatives would employ to exert political influence (Kux, 1985). Many scholars have described how active measures continue to inform and shape the Russian contemporary approach to information operations through foreign state-backed media outlets or large-scale bot and trolling campaigns on social media (Abrams, 2016; Bradshaw et al., 2023; Rid, 2020).

Strategic Narratives as a Conceptual Framework

Over the past few years, the study of strategic narratives has gained momentum, owing to the active role of storylines, language framing, and metaphors in shaping different forms of political communication. Strategic narratives leverage the deliberate and persuasive nature of utilizing storylines that can tap into collective memories, emotions, and historical analogies to achieve political objectives. The concept of strategic narrative emerged from Freedman’s (2006) study of how narratives could be “designed or nurtured” strategically with the intention of shaping the responses of “others” in the context of war. These are not organic narratives; rather, they are deliberately constructed or reinforced by the decision-makers to influence certain political outcomes.

Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle (2014) built upon Freedman’s initial framework and substantially broadened and deepened the concept. They identified strategic narrative as a tool of power “by which political actors attempt to construct a shared meaning of the past, present, and future of international politics to shape the behavior of domestic and international actors.” They delineated three stages of strategic narrative: first, its formation reflects the role of political actors and institutions in constructing agreed-upon narratives; second, its projection describes the process through which the information is narrated, contested, and spread; and third, its reception assesses how the intended audience(s) accepts and processes the narratives.

Scholars expanded upon this conceptual development and observed that there are three distinct manifestations of strategic narratives: system narratives, identity narratives, and issue narratives. System narratives relate to the “larger world order” (Popkova, 2023) and the structure and characteristics of international relations (Miskimmon et al., 2014; Schmitt, 2018). Identity narratives concern the actors’ sense of self, values, and traditions (Popkova, 2023). Issue-specific narratives are typically associated with a narrower policy issue or topic (Schmitt, 2018). Scholars further note that these distinct forms of strategic narratives are not entirely isolated; rather, they are interconnected. Noort (2019) argues that the need for political actors to negotiate power at the high level as well as specific policy level lies at the core of these interlinkages. Failure to recognize their interdependence can derail the overall effectiveness of employing narratives (Klockar, 2020). For instance, the identity narrative of U.S. exceptionalism both drives and draws on the emerging issues narratives pursued by U.S. policymakers in their day-to-day foreign policy decisions (Popkova, 2023).

Subsequent scholars focused on unpacking other elements that impact the process and efficacy of strategic narratives. Schmitt (2018), for instance, underscores that content, dispersion, and coherence are essential elements driving the reception of strategic narratives among target audiences. In unpacking this relationship, Schmitt (2018) argues that the degree of resonance or alignment between an external strategic narrative (constituted with a specific intention) vis à vis local political myth (inherent with existing political culture) influences the effectiveness of the constituted narratives. Depending on the positioning of the political myth along the two dimensions—universal vis à vis local and coherent vis à vis contradictory—the effectiveness of narratives will vary. There has also been a nuanced exploration of the audience dynamics since strategic narratives can target domestic, foreign, or even both. The values, interests, and prejudices of the target audience are key to the acceptance of strategic narrative within a political community (Wilkinson & Gow, 2017).

Another group of scholars has specifically examined the projection of antagonistic or counter-strategic narratives through media outlets in foreign languages, along with its destabilizing potential (Ramsay & Robertshaw, 2019). This stream of research examines strategic narratives as part of propaganda and disinformation operations, specifically looking at how they aim to disrupt the existing information environment of a foreign country through collaboration with traditional media as well as online networks. In particular, scholars have discussed the mechanisms of these antagonistic strategic narratives including (a) suppression—aimed at accomplishing status shifts; (b) destruction—aimed at damaging the other’s capabilities; and (c) direction—aimed at steering the narrative toward a preferred way of behavior by way of implicit inducements (Deverell, Wagnsson, & Olsson, 2021; Hoyle, van den Berg, Doosje, & Kitzen, 2023; Wagnsson & Barzanje, 2019). Other scholars highlighted that both automated and manual bots are strategically utilized to systematically reproduce propaganda and disinformation using fake accounts or cyber armies, with the dual purpose of bolstering the credibility of targeted narratives among audiences and eroding alternative public discourses (Agarwal et al., 2021). What merits attention in this context is the spread of both facts and false information by the actors that employ various messaging strategies, enabling exponential diffusion of target disinformation (Khaldarova & Pantti, 2020; Tucker et al., 2018).

Thus, the comprehensive scope of strategic narrative scholarship, integrating distinct yet interrelated facets of information (i.e., constitutive dimensions) and disinformation operation as well as propaganda campaigns (i.e., manipulative dimensions), forms the basis of our justification to employ it as the central conceptual framework for understanding Russia’s disinformation operation strategies across a variety of audiences during, and in the aftermath of, the 2022 Ukraine invasion. Through the lens of strategic narratives, we can view the deliberate spread of information as a multifaceted power struggle aimed at disseminating alternative versions of truth to cast doubt on objective truths. Simultaneously, the framework enables examination of both the Russian government’s top-down, structured approach to crisis communication and the inherent interplay between elite strategy development and the agency of audiences in the digital era. Also underscored by this frame is the information operations’ progressively collaborative nature, as evidenced by the group of actors integrating through social network sites that facilitate outreach to a global and diverse range of audiences. Therefore, we investigate: What asymmetries in language and geography characterize the strategic narratives utilized by Russia in the 2022 invasion? How do these narratives differ when considering languages, media outlets, and target audiences?

Data and Analysis

To examine the strategic narratives employed by Russian state-backed media during the war in Ukraine, we gathered Facebook posts by official RT and Sputnik Facebook pages across twelve languages using CrowdTangle. Languages in our analysis include Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Serbian, Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese. We collected data from January to November 2022 to assess content produced in the lead-up to and start of the invasion on February 24, 2022. In total, 264,835 posts from 26 Facebook pages were downloaded. These Facebook pages have a combined following of over 64 million non-unique accounts. During the 327 days in our analysis dataset, the pages garnered over 85 million interactions. Each of the 810 posts per day received, on average, 323 interactions (median: 106). Table 1 summarizes the reach and content production of each of the pages in our dataset.

Many of the Facebook posts by RT and Sputnik frequently included links to articles published on their respective websites. Where available, we collected articles for topic modeling and narrative analysis. In cases where a link to an article was not available, we used the post description (if it was of sufficient length). We defined 150 English-language characters as sufficiently long. We extracted all URLs from the dataset and parsed them using the Newspaper3k package. Subsequently, we concatenated the title and the body of the article and cleaned the returned text. This included removing HTML tags, converting the articles to lowercase, removing emojis, removing URLs, removing punctuation, removing stop words, and lemmatizing all tokens. Additionally, we removed all tokens that appeared in every article of an outlet, such as sign-offs, calls for feedback, or author tags, which would confound later clustering. Since most of the Facebook pages and news articles published content in the language of their local target audience, we translated all articles and post descriptions to English using the googletrans API. Finally, we filtered the entire dataset to only include articles and posts including mentions of Ukraine. This led to the final dataset of 41,346 unique long posts and articles. Table 2 summarizes the data used for our analysis.

Identifying the Geographical Focus of Each Outlet

We investigated the local or regional focus of each outlet to better understand how localized each outlet was in its coverage. We did this by searching for mentions of a country’s capital, short name, long name, or demonym in each article. We found that English-speaking and international Facebook pages for RT and Sputnik have global audiences and mention many countries, with the United States being one of the most mentioned. In contrast, more local outlets such as Sputnik’s editions in Vietnam, Greece, and Serbia concentrate much more on local and regional issues. Figure 1 shows country mentions by individual outlet. Figure 2 shows country mentions by language of the outlet.

Similarly, we compared country mentions of Sputnik and RT by clustering their national outlets. We then calculated the within-group proportion of country mentions and calculated the ratio of Sputnik to RT. As visible in Figure 3, countries are colored based on the dominant outlet, with muted and light colors indicating an almost equal share of RT and Sputnik. There is a distinct divide between the coverage of RT and Sputnik, with coverage of RT focusing heavily on the Northern Hemisphere, including Europe and North America, and Asia. In contrast, Sputnik dominates coverage in Africa, Southeast Asia, Central America, and South America.

Topic-Modelling

Our analysis was conducted in two stages. Given our large corpus of data, we first used topic modeling to computationally identify common themes in the coverage of the war in Ukraine. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) are well-established topic modeling techniques in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) for uncovering underlying themes and topics in a collection of documents (Mifrah & Benlahmar, 2020). However, both techniques have been found to have limitations when applied to modern NLP tasks. Research has demonstrated that LDA and NMF are suboptimal in modeling short text pieces and are unable to capture contextual meaning (Dieng et al., 2020). Given the noted shortcomings of these techniques, we opted to employ BERTtopic to extract topics from the dataset. BERTtopic has been shown to outperform other techniques both in terms of topic coherence and diversity over a number of domains. We used all-MiniLM-L6-v2 embeddings and restricted the model to only return topics with at least 50 associated documents. In total, we identified 108 topics from the corpus of text. The top 25 topics and the most important terms per topic are outlined in Table 3. A full list of all topics and their most important terms can be found in Supplementary Material.

Narrative Analysis

Our topic modeling has been combined with narrative analysis because while topic modeling can uncover latent structures of documents, it does not provide immediate interpretability to researchers. To understand and unpack strategic narratives, they must be traced against viewing as a linear process (Miskimmon et al., 2014). The narrative analysis allows exploration of intricate non-linear processes through in-depth reading of news and stories that influence public opinion, by examining ‘what story is told and how they are narrated’ (Smith & Sparkes, 2009). As a series of cohesive and causally linked stories, narratives are central to human relations, giving meaning to actions and facilitating collective sensemaking (Braddock & Dillard, 2016; Wilson et al., 2018). Hence, narrative analysis is essential to examine the subjectivity and identity of news stories and how they unfold and evolve over time.

The integration of this computational technique with an interpretivist ontology enabled us to extract and assess the intricate processes involved in constructing coherent narratives based on the underlying messages presented in news articles and Facebook posts. Additionally, incorporating a qualitative methodological component helped us examine whether and how Russia projects narratives that are tailored to the unique beliefs, perspectives, and preferences of diverse audiences situated in varied cultures and geographies. Overall, our integrated approach requires particular flexibility in order to examine the nuanced ways in which news articles and social media posts generate meanings and put forth a credible and persuasive alternative narrative of the war.

In the first stage of the narrative analysis, for each of the 108 topics that were categorized using topic modeling, we sampled 5 news articles from each of the 12 languages we collected. To eliminate bias and the potential for uneven sampling, we selected five news stories randomly for each sampled topic. In order to structure the study to answer our research questions, each of these news stories was organized in a spreadsheet and subjected to thorough manual reading by three coders guided by a thematic coding framework. We organized the coding framework into three distinct forms—system, identity, and issue—following the categorization proposed by Miskimmon et al. (2014) to analyze strategic narratives. Within these forms, we examined various sub-narratives, focusing on the use of metaphors and the construction of arguments related to topics such as sanctions, acts of aggression, identification of targets and victims, portrayal of individual leaders, and support of the international community and institutions.

The theoretical framework, derived deductively, facilitated the grouping of these sub-narratives into three primary categories, which provided a meaningful structure for interpreting the news stories. To enhance coherence, we correlated the sub-narratives with their respective topic numbers in the topic modeling process. Additionally, we employed binary coding to systematically document the prevalence of specific narratives across various outlets and languages. In the final phase, a comparison of how news stories were projected across different languages and versions of state-sponsored media allowed us to explore potential implications for the diverse set of audiences. In the following sections, we provide a detailed illustration of each of these narratives and our findings.

System Narratives: The End of the West

System narratives about the Russia-Ukraine war were concerned with the larger world order and with how the war was altering the structure, characteristics, and future of global governance away from Western hegemony. Some of the narratives explicitly claimed that the war was bringing an end to Western hegemony, attributing it to ineffective Western leadership and seeking to underscore the decline of democracy in the United States. Other narratives focused on the decline of international institutions, like NATO or the European Union. Here, narratives highlighted how various international institutions were ineffective, were unable to achieve consensus, were corrupt, or held double standards. System narratives like these—which tended to emphasize the collapse or decline of Western hegemony—were also contrasted by stories about the rise of new powers in the world order. For example, some narratives discussed Russia-China cooperation, Russia-Serbia cooperation, Russia’s close relationship with Belarus, or Russia’s cooperation with countries throughout the MENA region. Allies were depicted as strong supporters who provided an alternative option to the international liberal world order.

When it came to geographic or language asymmetries, Sputnik France, which publishes French-language news targeting French-speaking African countries, produced more system narratives as compared to RT France, which tends to mention global—but more European—countries in the news. While both RT France and Sputnik France discussed similar system narratives about the decline of the West, for example, by highlighting global protest footage of citizens being unhappy with the decisions of their leaders about the war, or by discussing disagreement among allied institutions or the general emergence of a new world order with Russia leading this vision, these stories asymmetrically appeared in Sputnik France stories compared to RT France. Sputnik France also covered system narratives that emphasized Western double standards, hypocrisy, and failure to enact effective policies around the war. These narratives include stories about Biden as an ineffective leader, US hypocrisy over bio-weapon development, or how the West is punishing Africa for not supporting its geopolitical agenda. Sputnik France also asymmetrically covered narratives about strong counter-hegemonic alliances between Russia and China and Russia and Belarus, emphasizing a strong relationship between Russia and its allied partners.

This focus on system narratives on the French-speaking African web aligns with findings from other scholarship that has examined Russia’s soft power interventions in the region (Clifford & Gruzd, 2022). Russia has invested in media across the continent to broadcast positive narratives about its involvement in local and global politics (Douzet, Limonier, Mihoubi, & René, 2021). This strategy has involved expanding state-backed media broadcasts and social media channels (Tolz & Hutchings, 2023), as well as leveraging covert strategies such as “man on the street” reporting, where local journalists are co-opted by Russian agents (DiResta et al., 2019). The greater focus on system narratives in French-language Sputnik outlets can thus be seen as a strategic narrative power play that reflects Russia’s broader strategy of soft power influence across the African continent.

Identity Narratives: “Us-versus-West”

Russia seized the opportunity presented by the war to strategically communicate multiple identity narratives, harnessing the prevailing circumstances for both domestic and external legitimization (Schmitt, 2018). In our analysis, we observed that identity narratives were most frequently utilized in framing Russian political communications. The prevalence of strategic identity narratives in Russian crisis communication can be associated with the country’s need to recraft its national identity in the post-Cold War era, particularly in its efforts to legitimize itself to both domestic and diaspora audiences as well as in its successful utilization of identity narratives during the Crimean invasion (Just, 2016). These identity narratives commonly stem from the identities of key actors in international affairs, as well as from the continual negotiation and dispute over the distribution of global power. However, in most instances, these identity narratives are also intricately intertwined with the high-level system narratives, while concurrently embracing a bottom-up approach to forge a connection with local versions of reality through issue politics and the overarching dynamics of identity politics at the systemic level.

The resonance of these identity narratives varies depending on the audience. Some of the narratives are grounded in Russia’s local myth or cultural values, while others originate in the broader theme of Russia’s relationship with its allies, or in the global identity divide manifested in “us-versus-west” dynamics. And by adopting sub-narratives, such as Ukrainians are Nazis, Ukraine is committing war crimes, and Ukraine is fabricating videos to frame Russia, the Russian authorities are deploying messages that serve a dual purpose: to bolster the credibility of their “truth” on the Ukraine conflict and to resonate with the pre-existing beliefs of their domestic audience for domestic legitimation. The aim is to emphasize Ukraine’s historical ties to Russia, with these narratives asserting that the invasion is justified since Ukraine is violating human rights while simultaneously stressing the need for its denazification.

Similarly, through the incorporation of narratives centered on Russian heroism, the accentuation of Russophobia in Western media, and the depiction of Russia as a global savior, Russian authorities used the war as a window of opportunity to reconstitute their international image and reputation towards harnessing external legitimacy. While the sub-narratives, such as Russia is protecting civilians and providing them safe passages, Russia will ensure food trade continues so people do not starve, and Russia defames sanctions as a blow to global economy, primarily serve to improve Russia’s international identity as a responsible and anti-war global power, they also represent a strategic narrative power play aimed at influencing the global audience. These narratives collectively shape and reinforce the Russian sense of responsibility as a global power willing to endure Western sanctions for the greater global good, all the while exposing the perceived Western hypocrisy.

Furthermore, the analysis revealed Russia’s deliberate effort to craft differentiated identity narratives (Dajani, Gillespie, & Crilley, 2021) tailored to resonate with distinct target audiences in accordance with its broader geopolitical interests and system and issue narratives. For instance, RT Spanish and RT Arabic were primarily dedicated to highlighting instances of Western hypocrisy, whereas RT English concentrated on reporting and portraying narratives of support for Russia from elites in the Global South as well as of malevolence of Ukraine. To contextualize this differentiation, RT Spanish primarily targets regions with a historical link to Russia characterized by shared anti-imperialist interests. Simultaneously, post its limited 1990s presence, Russia has been driven by imperatives to shape a distinct identity, diverging from the European “other.” RT Arabic, echoing Russian role during the Syrian war, facilitates a negotiation of the geopolitical role of Russia vis-à-vis West amid Arab states’ ambiguity regarding U.S. motivations (Dajani et al., 2021). In contrast, RT English broadly functions as a generic platform for information warfare, promoting an alternative pro-Russian perspective to Global South audiences.

The propagation and reproduction of specific sub-narratives, such as Maduro claims sanctions as an economic war, Bolivia blames US for affecting world peace, and Mexico considers the EU as corrupted, were also evident through the platforms of RT Spanish and RT Arabic. These narratives, along with subsequent backing from Latin American and Middle Eastern elites in forging alliances with Russia and denouncing Western hypocrisy, illustrated yet another discernible example of the cross-regional diffusion of strategic narratives and their reception among the broader international audience.

Issue Narratives: The West’s Fault

Issue narratives strategically covered by Russian state-backed media focused on three key aspects: the West’s role in escalating the war, Russian diplomatic efforts to peacefully end the war, and the negative effect of Western sanctions on global economic security. First, many Russian state-backed media stories focused on news about Western governments providing support to Ukraine either through weapons or aid. When the conflict was discussed, Russian media often focused on investments by the West resulting in an escalation of the war, sometimes because of Western self-interest around testing new weapons or spending in the military industrial complex. As narratives can often overlap, there was also significant use of identity frames when discussing Western military aid and intervention, such as portrayals of the West as hypocritical for recruiting mercenaries to send to Ukraine. Other articles also blamed the west for ending the Minsk agreement and further escalating the war.

Narratives about Western aggression and escalation in the war were simultaneously complemented with narratives about China calling for peace, or Turkey calling for peace, and Russia offering diplomatic solutions to the war. These stories intended to show that there are several governments, usually Russia’s allies, that call for peace and diplomatic resolutions. Stories about Russia’s intention to attend diplomatic meetings and summits were featured in the coverage. These narratives were promoted particularly in the Arabic versions of RT and Sputnik, compared to other language versions, to portray Russia as a peaceful actor compared to the West. RT Arabic has been described in the scholarship as applying a “soft power” approach to Russia-MENA relations, performing a legitimating function for Russia to build a strong audience base in the Arab world (Dajani et al., 2021). The emphasis on issue narratives framing the war because of Western aggression and refusal to work through diplomatic channels with Russia fits with Russia’s overarching geopolitical agenda for legitimation in the region and its strategy to position itself as a counterbalancing power to Western dominance. These issue narratives also demonstrate how system narratives (i.e., about changing world order) and identity narratives (i.e., about Western hypocrisy and corruption) can come together into an overarching story that supports Russia’s diplomatic goals within the broader Arab world.

Another prominent issue narrative was about Western sanctions against Russia and the ways in which these sanctions were negatively impacting global economic security. For example, state-backed media outlets published narratives about Western sanctions exacerbating issues of food instability and rising food prices and global hunger because of Western sanctions. In languages like French, Spanish, Serbian, Turkish, and Vietnamese, narratives about sanctions also highlighted Russia’s role in continuing to provide grain and food shipments to the rest of the world, ensuring that trade would continue despite sanctions. The majority of these languages target audiences in the Global South for whom the depiction of Russia as a hero saving the Majority World from starvation is relevant. For example, RT French and RT Spanish targeted audiences in Africa and Latin America who suffered from Western colonization and can resonate with stories that mirror the historical violence perpetrated by the West. These issue narratives are strategically emphasized to divert attention from geopolitical dynamics, foster alliances, and frame discourses around Russia’s intentions for economic stability. In the context of China’s influence in the Middle East and Arab ambivalence toward U.S. intentions, Russia is trying to position itself as a proponent of peaceful reconciliation within a multipolar regional order, leveraging economic narratives to appeal to nations facing immediate concerns like starvation and inflation.

Similar to issue narratives about diplomacy, these issue narratives about sanctions demonstrate how system, issue, and identity narratives can overlap, reinforce, and strengthen one another. In the case of sanctions, issue narratives simultaneously highlight system-level narratives about Russia’s role as a protector in a new global world order, identity narratives about Russia as a provider, and issue narratives about sanctions causing global economic harm.

Conclusion

In this paper, we investigate strategic narratives promoted by Russian state-backed media about the 2022 war in Ukraine. Using topic modeling and narrative analysis, we comparatively examined how the various stories published by Russian state-backed media outlets came together into different system, issue, and identity narratives about the war, and how some of these narratives converged and diverged across different geographic regions and languages. By examining the coverage of Russian state-backed media, we identified distinct target audiences where RT focused its coverage more on the Global North and Middle East, and Sputnik focused more on Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. While news and propaganda have always been tailored to specific audiences, our comparative analysis allowed us to explore where narratives might converge and diverge—lending insight into the broader geopolitical goals of Russian propaganda and disinformation.

The system narratives promoted the decline of Western hegemony and propagated the idea that a new world order led by Russia and like-minded states was inevitable. Identity narratives furthered an image of a strong, heroic, and powerful Russia that protects civilians and respects human rights and, simultaneously, were used to justify the war through depictions of Ukraine as evil, as a country fabricating facts about the war, and as a state ruled by an incompetent leader. Issue narratives focused on the West’s role in escalating tensions between Ukraine and Russia, the negative effect of Western sanctions on global economic security, and Russia’s position of dominance in the war, despite Western sanctions and aggression. The portrayal of strategic narratives by Russian state-backed media should be interpreted within the context of the country’s efforts to position itself as a central figure in fostering stability, confronting Western influence, and establishing alliances grounded in alternative geopolitical perspectives. This deliberate narrative construction serves the purpose of building legitimacy across diverse audiences and reinforcing Russia’s role as a counterbalance to perceived Western hegemony, highlighting a strategic endeavor to shape global perceptions.

The adaptability and differentiated portrayal of Russian state-backed media to deliberately target and tailor narratives to distinct audiences reflects a broader understanding of how propaganda can be persuasive if it reflects the local interests and expectations of the various viewers. The shifting focus among identity, issue, and system narratives across distinct languages, outlets, and geographies allows Russia to present a multifaceted message that can reinforce its broader geopolitical objectives. For example, identity narratives that cover a broad range of topics, from Russia protecting civilians to defeating Ukrainian troops to withstanding Western aggression, come together to paint a broader narrative about Russian identity in the post-Cold War era. System narratives that discuss the inadequacy of U.S. leadership, the double standards of the European Union, and the rise of Russia and its allies demonstrate Russia’s vision for an alternative world order. These distinct yet intertwined narratives also come together to portray an alternative version of reality that satisfies Russian geopolitical needs in distinct parts of the world. This dynamic approach to strategic narrative analysis and framing underscores the intricacies of modern influence operations, where localized narratives are crucial in shaping political perspectives. Thus, although the Russian propaganda strategy is sometimes described as “a firehose of falsehoods,” it is also important to acknowledge and examine how individual stories—and disinformation—can converge into broader narratives that inform geopolitical strategy.

Biographical Note

Samantha Bradshaw is an assistant professor in New Technology & Security at American University.

Mona Elswah is an assistant lecturer at Cairo University.

Monzima Haque is a doctoral candidate at American University.

Dorian Quelle is a doctoral candidate at the University of Zurich.

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