Other Telegram channels are offering citizens opportunities for less direct, though far more self-interested, action-namely, how to flee the country even as the government has instituted a nationwide ban on selling plane tickets to men aged 18 to 65. The Rospartizan Telegram group-which has more than 28,000 subscribers-has posted photos and videos purporting to show early action against the military mobilization, including burned-out offices and broken windows at local government buildings. “Agitate, incite, spread the truth, but do not be the ones who legitimize the Russian government.” “Ordinary Russians are invited to die for nothing in a foreign land,” they wrote.
Just minutes after Putin announced conscription, the administrators of the anti-Kremlin Rospartizan group announced its own “mobilization,” gearing up its supporters to bomb military enlistment officers and the Ministry of Defense with Molotov cocktails. Russia’s fiercely independent anti-Putin groups are offering suggestions via Telegram on how to avoid being called up and are even planning attempts to sabotage state efforts to drag innocent people into his war. For all the work the government is doing to try to control the narrative on Telegram, there’s a vibrant opposition on the same platform working to undermine it-and to offer support for those seeking to dodge the draft. Whether this vein of propaganda is working is far from certain. “You may, as an older Russian, watch pro-war Telegram channels and never see a single Telegram channel that challenges these narratives,” says Yevgeniy Golovchenko, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen who studies disinformation and censorship on social media. Other pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, meanwhile, have been sharing pictures from mobilization offices of men “voluntarily” signing up to fight-images, of course, that promote the idea that the war Putin is waging is just and winnable. “They have to wage a war for the hearts and minds.” “The Kremlin tries to react quickly because it understands it’s a difficult moment and a difficult topic,” Yablokov adds. The Russian Ministry of Defense’s official Telegram channel then shared the group’s message justifying Putin’s decision as evidence of public support for the move.
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