Tricked out studios, intense music and pro-war propaganda — this is the world of Russian state TV. Behind the flashy and often aggressive presentation, there’s a logic to how Kremlin-controlled media works.
“The important element is that Russian TV always has to find enemies against whom Russia can kind of position themselves,” said Francis Scarr, a journalist with BCC monitoring who follows Russian State media.
According to Scarr, usually Europe, Ukraine and the US are the go-to targets. However, since President Donald Trump’s return to office, the propaganda machine has presented the US in a different, more favorable, light.
“They are talking about the US now as if it is the kind of country that they respect,” Scarr said. “A country with which they want to do business, and every single step that they’ve taken is being welcomed.”
On a recent program earlier this week Vladimir Solovyov, a well-known host on Russian state TV, known for his brash style, said, “America and Russia actually aren’t conflicting countries.”
He said that both countries could benefit from economic, and even military, cooperation and that the real enemy is “Satanic Europe.”
“Ultimately they’re in favor of what Trump’s doing,” Scarr said. “They’re seeing Ukraine being thrown under the bus, and they’ve seen his subsequent steps to suspend military aid to Ukraine and to stop sharing intelligence as hugely positive steps.”
The change was gradual at first, but everything went into full gear a week ago, after the White House meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went off the rails.
“One of the key propagandists, Dmitry Kiselyov, said that Trump has been dressed to the nines in his suit with his tie and then Zelenskyy had turned up with a shaggy beard looking like what he described as a removals man, before being thrown out of the meeting by the scruff of the neck,” Scarr said.
“On another channel, they described Zelenskyy as a worthless actor, and said that he behaves like a rude teenager when he hasn’t got a script in front of him,” he added.
Mikhail Fishman, a host with TV Rain, a Russian independent news channel in exile, said the heated Trump-Zelenskyy White House meeting was presented on Russian state TV as a sort of victory.
“For three years, they have been humiliating, denigrating Zelenskyy and Ukraine on a daily basis,” Fishman said. “It’s their job, it’s what they do, it’s a whole industry of speaking in this manner. They sneer, they troll, they mock, they invent special slurs, and now they finally saw that it all paid off.”
It paid off because, from their point of view, the public debacle at the White House legitimized the Kremlin’s narratives.
“The moral question, the moral dilemma, of this war, who is the victim and who is the aggressor, has been put off the table,” Fishman said.
The narrative is constant on Russian state TV, that every country is acting in its own self-interest, that might makes right.
Russia’s embrace of Trump’s foreign policy isn’t just voiced by talk show hosts — it’s coming from the Kremlin itself.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on the a TV camera screen as he speaks at a forum titled “All for a Victory!” held by the All-Russia People’s Front in Tula, Russia, Feb. 2, 2024.Artyom Geodakyan, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov said that “the new administration is quickly changing its foreign policy configurations, [and] in many ways [these changes] align with our vision.”
That alignment, according to Fishman, may embolden Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine, despite Trump’s stated goal of wanting to end the war.
“This new reality in which there is a new sheriff in town who supports Russia, is regarded, at least to some extent in Russian public opinion, as an opportunity to go and get more of the enemy’s land until the peace will come,” Fishman said.
At the same time, he doubts that the US and Russia will forge a strategic alliance — there’s a limit to how far this partnership can go.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, second left, and other American officials meet with Saudi and Russian officials for talks at Diriyah Palace, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 18, 2025.Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Photo via AP
He also believes that Russian propaganda is flexible. Right now, it has embraced Trump, but that could easily change.
What’s more concerning for Fishman is that in his view, “The West is breaking, and this is something real. Trust, within the Western camp, is broken, and I hardly see it being restored in the next few years.”
And that means that rogue players, as Fishman calls them, like Iran, North Korea and Russia, will see new windows of opportunity to operate with impunity.