Thread by @TheStudyofWar

#Russian officials are promoting an information operation that falsely frames Russia’s war in #Ukraine as existential to the continued existence of the Russian Federation.

isw.pub/UkrWar02272023

2/ In an interview with state TV on 26 FEB, Putin warned that he does not know if "such an ethnic group as the Russian people can survive in the form in which it exists today" if the West succeeds in "destroying the Russian Federation and establishing control over its fragments."

3/ #Putin began to set conditions for the perpetuation of this information operation in his speech to the Federal Assembly on February 21, where he blamed the collective West for using the war in #Ukraine to threaten the existence of the #Russian Federation.

4/ Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry #Medvedev invoked similarly existential sentiments in an essay called "Points of No Return" published on 27 FEB in which he accused the West of fueling the current situation in #Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union.

5/ Both statements engage w/ an information operation that frames the war in Ukraine as existential to the continued survival of the post-Soviet Russian Federation, which is likely an attempt to present the war as having higher stakes for #Russia & the West than it actually does.

6/ #Putin likely hopes to set informational conditions to accuse #Ukraine and the West of threatening the survival of the Russian Federation in response to Russian military failures and Western support for Ukrainian victories.

7/ No prominent Western official has called for the dissolution of the Russian Federation, and Western leaders have been very careful to articulate their aims as being to enable #Ukraine to liberate all its territory at most.

8/ Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stated during a TV interview with Rossiya-1 on 26 FEB that the types of weapons that the West decides to provide to Ukraine will determine how far Russian troops will need to "push the threat away" from Russian borders.

9/ Putin made a similar statement in his February 21 address in an effort to discourage the West from providing long-range systems to Ukraine by suggesting that the provision of such systems will protract the war by "forcing" Russia to take more Ukrainian territory to be "safe."

10/ All of this rhetoric is designed to fuel support for the war in #Russia & stoke fears in the West of the instability that would follow the collapse of Russia to deter Western aid to #Ukraine & persuade the West to coerce Kyiv into accepting RU demands. isw.pub/UkrWar02272023

11/ As @TheStudyofWar has previously reported, Russian information campaigns have throughout the war supported a continuous strategic objective of deterring or slowing the West’s provision of material support to #Ukraine. isw.pub/UkrWar02122023