Putin’s propagandists have a new message about Ukraine: If we don’t win, we’ll all be tried for war crimes

Over the last two months, support for the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine has dropped dramatically among the Russian population — a roughly 20 percent drop, according to several polls, including one conducted for the Kremlin. And as that support drops, Russia’s leading propagandists are making a new case for continuing the war.

It’s no longer only about “denazification,” “demilitarization” or the often-heard rants about saving Russia from the evil, soulless West. Now the most influential voices in the country are pointing to the likelihood of a war-crimes tribunal and warning that — in the event of Russia’s defeat — it’s not just President Vladimir Putin and his top lieutenants who would be charged; even ordinary Russians will be judged.

In other words, if you’re a Russian citizen, you’d better back this war to the hilt and to the end. Otherwise, you might find yourself detained and prosecuted by “the West.”

On the Nov. 27 edition of Russia’s most popular political TV talk show, “Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov,” the host was in conversation with another Kremlin mouthpiece, Margarita Simonyan, head of the RT channel.

Simonyan was complaining — as she often does — that the war has not been prosecuted forcefully enough. And then she used two words I had not heard before on Russian television — at least not in this context: “The Hague.”

Simonyan began by saying that Russians “in the highest circles” were worried that a more ferocious attack on Ukraine might mean charges from The Hague, which is home to the world’s International Criminal Court. Then she turned that into a case for all-out war — anything to avoid defeat.

“Listen, what we must be afraid of is losing; we must be afraid of disgrace,” she said. “If we manage to lose, The Hague … awaits even the janitor who sweeps the pavestones behind the Kremlin wall!”

More indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian cities, Simonyan argued, would make no difference in terms of war-crimes charges — implying that Russia has already done enough to warrant accusations from The Hague: “So what if another district of Kyiv will be left without electricity?”

“To be afraid of The Hague means not to go into the forest,” she added, paraphrasing a well-known Russian proverb (“If you are afraid of wolves, do not go into the forest”).

Her arguments were clear: We Russians must not be afraid to act with brutality; the only way we avoid The Hague is if we win, and if we lose, all of us may wind up on trial for war crimes.

It’s a warped and twisted logic — a mix of “who cares about a few more atrocities — we’ve committed many already” and the idea that Kremlin janitors and other ordinary Russians might wind up on trial along with Putin and his commanders. But warped and twisted arguments have been a regular feature of this war, at least on the Russian side.

Listening to Simonyan, for example, I recalled that well before the invasion, back in April 2021, speaking on that same talk show, she had promised that in the event of a full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia would overrun the country in 48 hours.

“We will defeat Ukraine in two days,” Simonyan said then. “What is there to defeat, for God’s sake?”

Which might help explain why I wasn’t too worried when I heard Solovyov end his Sunday segment this way: If Ukraine wins the war, he said, “there will be no Hague. If [Russia loses], then the whole world will be in ruins.”

As in, a nuclear Armageddon.

What the polls show

The new Kremlin messaging comes as support for what Putin still calls his “special military operation” has begun to erode. In the early months of the war, despite the Russian army’s setbacks, the war was popular in Russia. So was Putin; his own favorability ratings actually rose in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine and remained high, even after his forces retreated from Kyiv and his “operation” stalled in other ways.

Now, support for the war is falling, and the best evidence for this comes from within the Kremlin walls.

The government’s Federal Security Service (FSS) conducts regular opinion polls for the Kremlin, and on more than one occasion in the past several months, the results of these surveys have leaked. On Nov. 30, Russia’s most popular independent news media platform, Meduza — which now operates from outside Russia — reported that it had gained access to the results of an opinion poll commissioned by the regime and conducted by the FSS “for internal use only.”

The poll found that 25 percent of Russians now support a continuation of the war, down from 57 percent in July. A question about negotiations brought a similar response: Today, some 55 percent of respondents favor negotiations for a peaceful settlement; in July, the number was 32 percent.

The FSS’s and other polls suggest that the first signs of a shift in public opinion appeared in late September, following Putin’s Sept. 21 announcement of a mobilization of Russian men for the war. The callup may have been a military necessity, but it provoked a backlash; an estimated 200,000 Russians left the country, and many who stayed behind began to question the wisdom of pursuing the fight in Ukraine.

An October poll conducted by the Levada Center, Russia’s only large independent polling organization, elicited similar responses: 57 percent said that they supported, or would probably support, peace talks with Ukraine. Only 27 percent expressed support for continuing the war. Two smaller polling outfits — Russian Field and Chronicles — came to similar conclusions, with some more granular details: Younger and less well-off Russians were less likely to support the war, and those who receive their news on television were more supportive than those who turn to social media for information. (No surprise there; Russian TV is where one finds a steady diet of the likes of Solovyov and Simonyan.)

One report on the various polls offered two blunt assessments: “The core of convinced war supporters is much smaller” and “time is working against the war.”

All of which may help explain why a new message was in order.

“We will all be guilty”

Solovyov and Simonyan were perhaps the best-known media personalities to put forth the warnings of a war-crimes tribunal that could sweep up huge swathes of the Russian population. But if theirs seemed like some rogue message, they soon had company.

Last Wednesday, Russian TV’s Channel One network used its most popular broadcast to make the same point.

Here was host Olga Skabeeva, describing the potential consequences of a Russian defeat in Ukraine:

“God forbid, we don’t allow it and don’t even say it out loud,” she said, “but … suppose something happens and our country is not able to win? Then we must proceed from the fact that claims will be made against everyone without exception. Irrespective of whether they are in the Russian Federation or outside. Those Russians who are outside will probably be immediately arrested. Whether they were an accomplice of the Putin regime or just ‘passing by’ — it will not matter. We will all be guilty!”

Skabeeva was taking the initial argument about The Hague and making it both specific and frightening. All those hundreds of thousands of Russians who fled the country after the February invasion of Ukraine? They would be at risk were Russia to lose the war. The masses who fled later, after Putin’s mobilization order in September? They’d be in trouble as well.

“Therefore, we should proceed from the fact that at stake is literally the existence of the country, and the existence of every citizen of the Russian Federation, and our future life, our somewhat carefree life, is also at stake,” Skabeeva warned. “Therefore, to avoid the Hague tribunals, the initiation of criminal cases, compensation, reparations, so that none of this happens, such an intensification of hostilities is needed! It is necessary to push so that [Ukrainians] turn to us for a truce or peace.”

There it was, crystal clear: We must win the war. We must do whatever it takes. Otherwise we will all be branded as war criminals.

The message — and the messengers

Having been a Russian TV anchor and knowing the people who are making these statements, I know this much: These are not the random musings of a few powerful TV hosts. In what one might call the Putin power vertical, popular propagandists are the highest officers of the information war, and theirs are not independent voices. Any message they broadcast is vetted and blessed either from the commander in chief or from his inner circle.

Which suggests that Putin and/or his top aides are desperate for yet one more rationale for continuing the fight and that they have landed on the idea of instilling a new fear among the Russian people: Your apathy or opposition to the war is dangerous. If Russia loses in Ukraine, you might well be swallowed up by this Western beast known as The Hague.

Political scientist Abbas Gallyamov, who was once Putin’s speechwriter and now lives in Prague, addressed the references to The Hague on his Telegram channel on Thursday.

“The fact that the propaganda began to speak in this new way — ‘tomorrow is The Hague’ — may reflect a change in public sentiment, recorded by the Kremlin sociology,” Gallyamov wrote.

To state the obvious, I am not a professional psychologist. But I knew most of the current Russian propagandists personally. I am quite sure that they wake up with thoughts of The Hague, and the war-crimes tribunal. Perhaps they dream about it, too. I cannot know what it must be like for them to sit there now, on Russian TV, and try to frighten the rest of the population. It’s as if they want all Russians to have the same nightmares.

These are well-read, well-informed people, for the most part. And so they must also know that when the villains of Nazism were called to the Nuremberg tribunal nearly eight decades ago, it wasn’t only the commanders who stood in the docket; the propagandists did as well.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.