Russia's TV propaganda machine has become synonymous with Vladimir Putin. Photo / AP
When Vladimir Putin sent tanks across the border in February, countless Ukrainians pleaded with families and friends in Russia to do something to stop the invasion - or at least speak out against it.
Instead, all they got back were boilerplate phrases about “Ukrainian Nazis” and a “puppet government in Kyiv”.
Ukrainians were stunned - but Russia watchers were not. It was the result of a years-long campaign of highly targeted and xenophobic propaganda orchestrated almost entirely by Russian state TV - and in some cases it proved more powerful than family ties.
Former employees describe a well-oiled machine where everyone understands the stakes and even liberal-minded journalists work on the assumption that their primary job is to serve the Kremlin.
This machine has become synonymous with Putin. One of the first things he did when he assumed office in 2000 was to wrest back control of the television networks from his opponents, forcing private owners to sell out and ensuring criticism of the government was no longer acceptable.
But it was in 2013 and 2014 that things stepped up a gear. That was the year pro-EU protests erupted in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and Putin turned to state TV to ensure Russians had no doubt about what to think.
Farida Kurbangaleeva was a leading news host for Rossiya 1 at the time and remembers the pressure to paint demonstrators as Nazis and extremists.
She once made the mistake of calling people in the streets of Kyiv “protesters” only to be told off by her boss. “What ‘protesters’? Are you out of your mind? Write it down: ‘spiritual descendants of Stepan Bandera’,” he said, referring to a controversial Ukrainian resistance hero who collaborated with Hitler’s party.
Before long, Kurbangaleeva was hearing acquaintances parrot exactly the same rabid lines that she used in her broadcasts.
“I would look at them and freeze for a second: I was the one who had put those thoughts in their heads,” she told The Telegraph. “But the most horrible thing was I didn’t believe in them myself.”
Kurbangaleeva went on maternity leave in autumn 2014 and quit shortly afterwards, a few months after the annexation of Crimea. She said she couldn’t keep working in a job where she knew she was either “lying or omitting things intentionally”. She now works in Prague at Radio Free Europe’s project Current Time.
But many of her colleagues kept on working and have continued to repeat the ever more hysterical messaging pumped out by the Kremlin since Russia invaded Ukraine.
A lot of them are not even ideologically driven, she said, they are “apolitical people who only wanted to get famous, and they didn’t care where they worked. All they want is to be on TV”.
Many of Russia’s most notorious propagandists come from humble backgrounds and likely do not believe everything they say, but have become trapped by the system, former employees say.
Yevgeny Popov, a TV star who makes an on and off-screen power couple with Olga Skabeyeva, is described by acquaintances as a decent, hard-working man.
The other top TV stars, Vladimir Solovyov and Dmitry Kiselyov, were once well-respected journalists who criticised the government.
But these days they have become masters of propaganda, issuing incendiary threats on live television that Russia should turn the United States into “radioactive ash” or “burn the hearts of gay people and bury them”.
They have made Kremlin propaganda more exciting and watchable, setting a feverish tone that rakes in viewers and that other presenters have rushed to mimic, particularly after new treason laws were brought in.
“Any alternative point of view that differs from the official line is now treated as betrayal,” said Irina Petrovskaya, a veteran Russian TV critic, following the invasion. She compared shows these days to the Soviet Union’s Central Television.
Only a few have been brave enough to challenge Moscow’s narrative on Ukraine publicly and face the potential consequences.
In one of the most spectacular anti-war stunts, long-time TV producer Marina Ovsyannikova burst onto the set of a flagship news show one month after the start of the Russian invasion, holding up a poster saying, “Stop the war! Don’t believe propaganda.”
A handful of well-known state TV correspondents also resigned in protest, but most people have quietly stayed on in their roles.
“They’re often scared, and many of them feel hostage to the situation,” said Alexei, a former long-time correspondent at a top Russian TV channel who asked for his name to be changed. “Heroes are very few.”
He quit a few days after the Kremlin invaded Ukraine once it became clear to him that all political stories were now being manipulated.
“The channel is more like a factory now: When you start doing a story, it may look okay but when the story gets recycled on three or four news shows - you no longer recognise it,” he said.
He remembers talking to colleagues who in real life were reasonable and opposition-minded but who changed once they were on screen.
“At work I used to sit next to this veteran reporter. Every morning he’d say: ‘Did you see what they’re doing? Are they completely out of their mind in the Kremlin’?” Alexei recalled.
“Then that same day you watch his package and he’s merely repeating Vladimir Putin’s words as fact.”
Some have urged such presenters to be sanctioned; opposition figure Alexei Navalny has called them “war criminals”. But Alexei believes there is little that can be done outside or inside the system that will change it while Putin is in power.
“For state TV channels the point of the view of the government is an absolute truth,” he said. “You are a cog in this giant machine, and there’s nothing you can change.”