Perhaps Vladimir Putin’s grandest ambition is to create a “multi-polar world” that would mean the end of the United States’ global dominance. Key to his plans is other nations’ willingness to support his ambitions, which could in turn depend on their perception of his strength.
At FilterLabs, we are using our data platform Talisman to follow narratives about Putin and the Kursk invasion in Chinese, Iranian, and Israeli news media. Of course, media coverage can’t tell us exactly what politicians from Beijing to the Middle East are thinking. However, especially in countries with authoritarian control of the press, media coverage can tell us what’s of interest to them.
To understand this better, we first took a look at overall sentiment in news coverage related to Putin in each of these countries, and then dug into some of the underlying artifacts to see what issues Putin-related stories were covering, and what views they expressed.
In the Chinese new media, sentiment in discourse related to Putin fell in the aftermath of the August 6th Ukrainian counter-offensive:
Early stories reported the invasion and Putin’s response. The news reported that Putin insisted the Russian military “must drive the enemy out of the territory.”
In the days after the initial attack, sentiment in stories about Putin turned increasingly negative. “It has been ten days since Ukraine launched a cross-border attack on Russia. Why hasn’t Putin driven the Ukrainian army out?” asked several stories. One headline presented the invasion as a direct blow to Putin’s reputation: “Russian people roar: ‘Where is our army?’ Ukrainian army uses the bodies of Russian soldiers to form a Z to slap Putin in the face.”
There was criticism of the Russian military’s effectiveness compared to Ukraine’s. One in-depth report quoted several Chinese military experts, both of whom were willing to call the Ukrainian counter-offensive a surprising success. A researcher at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies said, "The Russian territory occupied by the Ukrainian army in one week is almost equal to the territory occupied by the Russian army in eastern Ukraine in the previous six months.”
Yet ten days after the Ukrainian attack, sentiment around Putin started to rise again. We took a look at stories Talisman had found in order to see what was shifting in the narrative, and we found that Kursk was still in the news, but so were Sino-Russian economic issues and other foreign affairs. There was extensive coverage of Putin’s meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang. Their talks touched on both international politics and shared economic development. Even during the initial days of the Ukrainian invasion, there was coverage of the upcoming Eastern Economic Forum, held every year in Vladivostok. The analyst noted approvingly that, with Russia frozen out of Europe, China could have a stronger hand in defining the economic relationship between the two nations.
Sentiment around Putin also fell in the Iranian news media:
The Ukrainian incursion into Kursk received extensive coverage in the Iranian media. The media portrayed the counter-offensive as a clear blow to the Kremlin. Headlines said that the attack had “shocked” Putin and “taken him by surprise.”
But starting around August 14th, sentiment around Putin rose again. Using Talisman, we looked at the coverage more closely to figure out why.
In addition to covering Kursk, the Iranian media covered Putin’s diplomatic activities in the Middle East and in the Caucuses. There were multiple stories about Palestinian president Mauhmoud Abbas’s mid-August trip to Moscow. Putin was following the situation in Palestine “with pain and concern.”
Sentiment around Putin really started to rise when he visited the Caucasus. The Iranian media covered Putin’s August 20 speech in Chechnya, his first visit in 13 years, during which he told military recruits that “we are invincible with you.” The Iranian press devoted even more coverage to Putin’s diplomatic mission to Baku, Azerbaijan earlier that week. In a story that earned him days of positive coverage, Putin lent his support to the normalization of Azerbaijan-Armenia relations, and the reopening of border crossings.
The bad news from Kursk did not disappear from the Iranian media completely, but it was balanced out by Putin’s diplomatic missions closer to home. Putin is making clear overtures to the Muslim world (Chechnya, Azerbaijan), and finding a receptive audience in the Iranian press.
Israeli-Russian relations are ambivalent, at best. But some of the same patterns we found in China and Iran appeared again in the Israeli media.
We did see a dip in sentiment on Putin around Ukraine’s August 6 counter-offensive:
The Israeli press covered the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk, making clear that it was an impressive and “unprecedented move.”
But the Israeli press covered a lot of other news out of Russia as well. It reported on Russia’s surprisingly resilient economy, while noting that the good news couldn’t last forever (“at some point, the party will end”). Like the Iranian press, the Israeli press closely monitored Putin’s diplomatic efforts in the Muslim world, including his reception of the Palestinian president on August 13, his willingness to supply missiles to Tehran, and his trip to Chechnya. One headline reported that “Putin [was] filmed kissing a Koran in Chechnya.” There were several stories on Putin’s decision to ban flights across Israel.
Again, Kursk was a big story, but it did not dominate coverage. The Israeli media seemed at least as interested in Putin’s activities closer to home.
The Ukrainian counter-attack was a blow to Putin’s prestige. The Chinese, Iranian, and Israeli press are all covering the event as a triumph for Ukraine and a disaster for the Kremlin. At the same time, it is important to recognize that Putin still has opportunities to look good to his allies–and he is taking those opportunities.
The news media in China, Iran, and Israel all followed the story in Kursk, but it wasn’t top of mind, at least after a day or two. Their Russia coverage also included stories on a variety of topics that were closer to home. There was chatter in Chinese sources about what the war would mean for Chinese-Russian economic relations. Iran and Israel were perhaps less interested in the war on Russia’s western front than they were in Russian diplomatic activity in the Caucasus and the Middle East. Their media reported that Putin is making overtures to Muslim-majority nations, and these overtures are being well-received.
Even though the discourse isn’t especially negative in tone, or particularly focused on the situation in Kursk, one thread weaving through all three nations’ news coverage should have President Putin’s attention: the invasion was not nothing. They saw it as a real blow to Russia’s war effort. Ukraine’s attack was impressive, at the very least, and Putin was caught off guard. The events in Kursk and Putin’s response are not reflecting positively on him, including in news and social media at home.
Western observers are understandably paying attention to developments in Ukraine. It's important to remember, though, that the Kremlin is pursuing its dream of a multi-polar world with partners like China and Iran at the same time. And these partners are less concerned about what is or isn't going well in Ukraine.
FilterLabs at NATO Communicators Conference
This week CEO Jonathan Teubner and COO Marguerite Benson traveled to Berlin for the 2024 NATO Communicators Conference, where Jonathan presented NATO-relevant insights from our research on the information environment following Ukraine’s Kursk counter-offensive.
New Russia Briefing
FilterLabs has just released a new Russia insights report, Putin’s Time of Troubles, which expands on the findings of our recent newsletters about how Russian people, news media, and government propaganda machine are responding to the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk. Read it and download a copy here: