False patriots, rebels, and traitors

The Kremlin’s media guidelines frame Prigozhin’s failed insurrection as a real danger, thwarted by Russia’s ‘valiant’ forces of law and order

Vladimir Putin’s unexpected address to the Russian military and state security apparatus cued a new round of myth-making around the failed insurrection, which was led, and then abandoned, last weekend by Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. Speaking in front of the Kremlin’s iconic Palace of Facets on June 27, Putin thanked Russia’s forces of law and order for having “stopped a civil war” that was about to plunge the country into “chaos.” But not once did the president mention the leader of the insurgence, Yevgeny Prigozhin, by name. The same is true of the Kremlin’s propaganda guidelines that have been recently distributed to the state-controlled Russian media. Meduza’s special correspondent Andrey Pertsev has got ahold of the Kremlin’s instructions on how state propaganda must cover the insurrection and frame it for posterity.

When speaking to the Russian troops in Moscow’s Cathedral Square, Putin said to them: “You have defended the constitutional order, and the lives, liberty, and security of our citizens; you have protected our Motherland from shock and have, in fact, stopped a civil war.” “Your determination and courage, as well as the consolidation of Russia’s whole society,” Putin went on, “played a huge, decisive role in stabilizing the situation. Those who were drawn into the mutiny saw that neither the army nor the people were on their side.” The president also mentioned the pilots killed during the insurrection, honoring them with a minute of silence.

None of the main federal news channels broadcast Putin’s speech to their audiences, and an official video was only published after the the pro-Kremlin news tabloid Mash had posted the footage on Telegram. But, despite the event’s relatively low profile, the Kremlin’s communications office promptly prepared and distributed a set of media guidelines on how it should be covered by state media and other pro-Kremlin propaganda outlets. Meduza has obtained the full guidelines, and here’s what they prescribe.

Mercenaries who took part in the insurrection must be called “false patriots,” “rebels,” and “traitors.” The state’s forces of law and order are, in contrast, “Russia’s real defenders.” It’s also “recommended” to emphasize that the “warriors” of Russia’s armed forces consider Putin to be their “true leader,” while he, in turn, sees them as a “reliable backbone” of the state. Although the guidelines don’t explicitly discourage direct references to Prigozhin, it’s remarkable that his name doesn’t appear in the document at all.

The loyalist media are also instructed to highlight Putin’s role in making the decisions that purportedly prevented the insurrection from developing into a “negative scenario.” The guidelines are fairly vague about what those decisions were, but they do say that the regular army, the National Guard, the interior forces, and other state security structures all “enabled the reliable work of key governance centers, strategic objects, and defense facilities,” also ensuring “the security of border regions.” Combined with the Defense Ministry’s decision not to withdraw any units from the Ukrainian front, all this purportedly made it possible to stymie the insurrection.

In reality, of course, Wagner mercenaries had easily captured Rostov-on-Don, where many of the locals welcomed their arrival as they entered the city in tanks and armored vehicles. The insurgents killed at least 10 Russian servicemen and met practically no resistance as they made their way to Moscow. By the time the insurrection fizzled out, they had only about 200 kilometers (or just over 120 miles) to go before they’d reach the capital. As previously reported by Meduza, Putin himself absconded from the scene, possibly even leaving Moscow, and the president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko unexpectedly stepped forward as the main negotiator with Prigozhin.

Although Russia’s security forces and law enforcement looked utterly lost in the course of the insurrection, the Kremlin’s instructions to the media claim that, as a result of the “work on peaceful conflict resolution,” “the traitors saw that the army is not on their side, and that they will gain nothing by using violence.” As a result, they had to “accept the proposed scenario of bloodless conflict resolution,” as evidenced by Prigozhin’s abrupt announcement of turning his troops back from Moscow.

Propagandists also have to accentuate the real danger that the rebels might have plunged the country into “chaos,” precipitating “a series of shocks” to the state. The pilots killed by Wagner fire are to be described as “our country’s real heroes who gave their lives for the defense of the Fatherland and it people.” The guidelines also bring Ukraine’s secret services into the narrative:

The vast media machinery of the insurgents and the Ukrainian secret services tried to destabilize the situation in our country by lending support to the traitors and their rebellion. Society refused to follow the message of the false patriots who talked about their love of the Motherland but did everything in their power to bring about its defeat at the front and its internal collapse.

According to the Kremlin guidelines, audiences should get the impression that, in the course of the coup, Russian society “rallied around the president and law and order” (no specific evidence of this consolidation is cited in the instructions), and that the unspecified “organizers” of the insurrection were defeated.

Reportage by Andrey Pertsev. Translated by Anna Razumnaya.