Authors

Discussion

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 marked a decisive turning point in Russia’s media system, triggering an accelerated process of discursive, institutional, and technological adaptation. This paper explores how Russian state-aligned media have restructured their strategic narratives to reinforce political legitimacy, manage public perception, and sustain ideological coherence during wartime.

Drawing on the framework of strategic narrative theory (Miskimmon, O’Loughlin & Roselle, 2013) and research on authoritarian media resilience (Guriev & Treisman, 2022; Yablokov, 2022), the study examines the interaction between propaganda, censorship, and affective communication in the construction of the Kremlin’s post-2022 narrative order. Methodologically, the study applies critical discourse analysis (CDA) to a corpus of televised news programs, online media, and Telegram channels from 2022 to 2024, focusing on linguistic framing, metaphorical patterns, and visual rhetoric.

The findings reveal two complementary dynamics. First, a recentralization of meaning, whereby military operations are framed not merely as geopolitical acts but as civilizational struggles for sovereignty, identity, and moral order. Second, a hybridization of discursive practices, blending Soviet-era tropes of heroism and sacrifice with contemporary digital storytelling, designed to mobilize emotion and normalize the state of permanent conflict. This dual process has transformed propaganda into a flexible form of narrative governance—a mechanism that manages consent through the circulation of affect rather than the imposition of ideology alone.

By situating Russia’s wartime media transformation within broader debates on authoritarian adaptation and hybrid information warfare, this paper contributes to understanding how regimes adjust their communicative infrastructures under crisis and sanctions. It highlights the strategic continuity of Russian narrative control alongside subtle ruptures emerging when authoritarian discourse confronts the digital public sphere's disruptive dynamics.