Putin administration instructs state-run media to emphasize authorities’ response to drone attacks and downplay some officials’ comments

Meduza has learned from sources within Russia’s state-run and pro-government media agencies how the Putin administration has instructed them to frame Tuesday morning’s drone attacks on Moscow and the Moscow region.

According to the sources, the Kremlin told the outlets to take the following approaches:

• Note the “successful work of air defense forces”;
• Report that the reaction from the “federal services” and the city and regional authorities was “immediate” and that their work was “high-quality and focused”;
• Emphasize that the goal of the “provocation” was not achieved;
• Stress that the attack was intended to have a “psychological” effect but that residents demonstrated “calm and restraint.”

The Putin administration’s “guide” also said that if propaganda outlets quote comments made Tuesday by State Duma Deputy Alexander Khinshtein, Center for the Development of Transport Technologies head Alexey Rogozin, or former “DNR” Defense Minister Igor Strelkov, they should portray them in a negative light.

Khinshtein published a list of sites in the Moscow region where downed drones fell and called it Russia’s “new reality.” Rogozin spoke to reporters about what types of drones may have been used in the attacks. Strelkov wrote on Telegram that Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin was “urgently forming groups to be sent to Donetsk, Horlivka, and Shebekino to familiarize themselves with the experience institutions in those cities have had under conditions of the negative impact of drones.”