War on All Fronts: How the Kremlin’s Media Ecosystem Broadcasts the War in Ukraine

This research leads us to an important insight into Russian media strategy that is balanced between the tightly controlled official media and the fairly independent Telegram media system. This balance is an outcome of the indigenous Russian conceptual framework of the ‘communication regime’, in which different parts enjoy different levels of controllability and institutionalisation, due to Russia’s particular historically established norms and traditions that govern communications between the state, media, and people. The orchestrated demonopolisation of power does not necessarily imply the independence of Telegram administrators, as their communications are still governed by conditions, principles, norms, and rules which are controlled by the Kremlin. The Kremlin’s decision to give more flexibility and independence to some actors on Telegram is highly calculated, both in terms of the scale of the flexibility and the nature of the actors. Moreover, the conditions, principles, norms, and rules of selective law enforcement in Russia have established well-known (though flexible) rules of engagement within Russia’s ‘communication regime’, when all the media actors know that they might have a long leash, but there are grim consequences for extending it too far.