Russian Telegram's Second Age

How the invasion of Ukraine gave us Z-heads and made Durov's creation relevant again, according to Andrey Pertsev

In a new essay for Riddle, journalist and columnist Andrey Pertsev basically profiles Russia's pro-invasion Telegram content. The war gave Russian Telegram a second life, he says, rescuing channels from the obscurity of Kremlinological PR by transforming the network into the Party of War's platform. The censorship of Russia's news media and dangers of misspeaking politically raise the value of anonymity, adding to Telegram's attraction.

In Telegram's First Age in Russia, all this already happened with "political channels": they started out by leaking genuine insider information before they were co-opted, sold off to publicists, or run out of business. Also, ordinary readers learned to identify the phoniness of their planted stories, and many channels eventually pivoted to "Kremlin tower" analysis.

Unlike mainstream state propagandists, Telegram war correspondents (really glorified bloggers writing from the front lines) report on Russia's setbacks and shortcomings, not just its victories, often criticizing the authorities and demanding more brutality from the military. This content appeals to active supporters of the invasion (a small minority of Russians, Pertsev later emphasizes) who worry that TV propaganda is lying about the war. Telegram reports from these bloggers offer solace in the notion that "foolish generals and traitorous officials" are to blame for lost battles and retreats, not the Russian military's inferiority. (The war's opponents also read these channels for frontline info and to measure the pulse of the Z-heads.)

Just like the "political channels" that attained First-Age Telegram prominence before the invasion, Z-channels seek to influence Russia's decision makers. The big message they're conveying now is that Putin's political base will reject any peace deal in Ukraine (an argument that requires PR "manipulations," says Pertsev, because polling shows that the Russian public is hardly so bloodthirsty). To this aim, war correspondents and bloggers have constructed a "parallel reality" where the public demands total war.

While these channels still lack the audience sizes needed to shape mass public opinion, their ability to reach decision makers, Putin included, gives them outsized influence. It also helps that they're selling a narrative that resonates with the president (ie, the population is committed to Putin's historical vision), and he might be inclined to view Telegram content itself as true "samizdat" amid Soviet-level media censorship.