Significant shifts in Russian attitudes were detected across the country, sometimes over the prosecution of the war itself. By June, as EU sanctions started to impact the economy and as information about western consolidation behind Ukraine and heavy resistance to Russian advances seeped into Buryatia, it took only eight days after a wave of propaganda for public sentiment to drop down to a negative steady state. But by late May, that cycle had shrunk to nine days. In April, a national propaganda campaign created a positive spike in local sentiment in Buryatia towards the war that lasted for 12 days before reverting to pre-campaign levels. Many of those drafted into the Russian army regardless of age, military experience and medical history come from ethnic minority dominant regions like Buryatia. Some of the first data FilterLabs gathered after the invasion was from the republic of Buryatia, a mostly rural, underdeveloped region 3,700 miles from Moscow and bordering Mongolia. ![]() This is particularly true in the regions of Russia most heavily targeted by Putin’s mobilization. They are particularly adept at muddling information environments, making people unsure of what to believe, and sapping their motivation.īut as the war drags into a second year and as more Russians feel its effects on their daily lives - especially the growing number of men drafted or conscripted into the armed forces - the limitations of Kremlin propaganda are increasingly apparent. Russian information operations remain formidable in their ability to mobilize and leverage state resources. As Putin’s war of choice inflicts personal costs on citizens, Russians seem less willing to swallow the state narratives that are delivered over state television, which remains the primary source of information for most Russians. In other words, Russians appear to be less and less influenced by propaganda from Moscow, especially when it clearly contradicts the struggles in their daily lives. As the war in Ukraine drags on, though, these positive waves of public sentiment are getting shorter, particularly outside the major cities, and are needing to be deployed with increasing frequency across Russia. Since the invasion, Russian state-sponsored propaganda waves elevated public sentiment toward the war for an average of 14 days across all regions and topics. Kremlin propagandists work iteratively, piloting slightly different messages successively and rolling them out in waves when their analysis signals that they are needed. Our analysis shows that the Kremlin is increasingly unable to control public sentiment outside major cities with national propaganda. Outside of those major cities, a more negative picture emerges. ![]() Petersburg, which can skew national averages. Standard polling often concentrates on population centers including Moscow and St. This data tells a different story about Russian public opinion, especially outside Moscow - a story Putin will not like. The analysis evaluates scraped public documents and comments across social media, news media, messenger app groups (including Telegram, which is widely used in Russia), and other popular forums to gauge what people are thinking and feeling at the local level, and whether that sentiment is trending positive or negative. Sentiment analysis is a well-tested form of artificial intelligence that trains computers to read and understand human-generated text and speech. ![]() For the past year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies has worked with FilterLabs.AI, a Massachusetts-based data analytics firm, to track local sentiment across Russia using AI-enabled sentiment analysis. ![]() Artificial intelligence can help with this.
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