russia's most effective imperial propaganda isn't designed for russians.

one oscar, and the western cognitive weakness russia has been exploiting for generations.

here is what's in store for you this week:

(estimated reading time: 6 min)

• Cognitive defences: an internationally celebrated russian documentary is a masterclass on soft imperial propaganda designed exclusively for the West. Let me help you to recognise it.

• Did you know: “Great russian culture” started from a barbaric colonial loot.

• Justice: “For too long, russia contaminated Ukraine with its ideas, corruption, greed, habits to fear and lie. It is time for Ukraine to teach russia how to be human.”

• Confirmed pattern: how does history warn us that we should not expect russia to stick to its own agreements.

• Culture: one text of the Ukrainian classic literature that explains the world of today with harrowing accuracy.

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Peter Ruzavin, centre. Credit: Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times.

Here are two real stories.

In the first one, after playing the American anthem in public and taping the letter X on a window in a solidarity symbol that nobody recognises, a school teacher packs and moves out of his country in an act of his ultimate resistance to the regime.

In the second one, a prominent journalist also moves out of his country after it invades its neighbour. But instead, he enlists in this neighbour’s armed forces and resists the regime with actual arms.

Guess which one gets an international press tour and is celebrated with an Oscar?

‘I bet the Kremlin is very unhappy about this. How can it be propaganda, then?’ reads a comment from a foreigner under one of my social media posts where I call a russian documentary, which has just won the Oscar, a masterclass in soft imperial propaganda. (I won’t mention the title, so no reach or engagement from my page benefits it.)

Like most Ukrainians, I would rather not spend my life discussing anything russians create - unless it is armed resistance, Petr Ruzavin-style. There’s so much they tried to erase that deserves my time amplifying it, instead. But this case is different. Not because of the documentary per se, but because of the chasm it exposes between those who know the russian empire well and the rest. This chasm exists there because of a certain Western cognitive weakness. And russian imperial propaganda has been exploiting it for generations. Recognising it can immunise you from one of the largest corpora of russian imperial propaganda. Not stepping on any social media minefields would be a bonus :)

Winners of the award for documentary feature film for “Mr. Nobody against Putin,” pose in the press room at the Oscars on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

WHICH TYPE OF IMPERIAL PROPAGANDA?

Let's spend a minute on the doc. The film documents the russian imperial indoctrination of kids and portrays putin's rule as fascist and totalitarian. All true. But on the back of these facts, it also smuggles false context and manipulative distortions. It alludes that there's a silent protest in russia? That's false. It insists that the resistance inside russia is futile because the system is too repressive — a speculation that has never been stress-tested in the last ten years since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

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