Putin's communications difficulties reflect serious policy problems

Vladimir Putin’s messages to his domestic and foreign audiences are escalating tensions with Western countries and forcing him to up the stakes for fear of appearing weak at home.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, faces a formidable communications challenge because of the need to maintain domestic support for his actions in Ukraine – both among the elite and in society at large – while also trying to prevent the emergence of a more unified Western response to his policies. This agenda is complicated by Putin’s need to accommodate different elements within his domestic power base, which disagree over policy on Ukraine.

For the domestic audience, Putin’s priority, the message remains predictably nationalistic and triumphal. On 15 March state television aired a two-and-a-half-hour documentary, ‘Crimea: Journey to the Motherland’, timed to mark the first anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Watched by one of the biggest television audiences in Russia in recent years, the film provided a hagiographical depiction of the Russian president as the architect and hands-on manager of the operation to save the majority-Russian population of Crimea. Its narrative rested on graphic messages about the allegedly violent intentions of Western-backed Ukrainian nationalists. It continued the Russian state media’s relentless vilification over the past year of Ukrainians and their Western supporters.