Russian keyboard generals turn Telegram into a pro-war propaganda platform
All eyes are on the Trump trial this morning, including those of Russian state media outlets. Their coverage of the run-up to the trial has been remarkably in sync with that of Fox News. Both focused on the convoy of Trump supporters headed toward New York. Both Fox and several Russian pro-government voices, like this one, have also noted the fact that Trump is in the good company of many other world leaders who have faced criminal charges: Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Memes and AI-generated images of Trump retiring happily in China are going wild on Chinese social media. People on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, are calling the former president a "Comrade Nation Builder” and say his indictment made the U.S. look so bad — and China so good — that he might as well just hang up his MAGA hat and join the Communist Party of China.
On Sunday, the Ukraine war came to St. Petersburg when a bomb exploded in a cafe. Vladlen Tatarsky (real name: Maxim Fomin) was a middle-aged, pro-war blogger. A seemingly unlikely target for assassination, he was caught on video accepting a small statue as a gift at a meeting of pro-war conservatives. It was a bomb. A woman has since been arrested for apparently bringing the statue into the cafe. Tatarsky was one of the many obscure bloggers who rose to fame after the full scale invasion of Ukraine, turning Telegram into a major platform for war disinformation.
TELEGRAMMING WAR PROPAGANDA
By: Ivan Makridin