Navalny Calls for 'Information Front' as Russia Triples State Media Funds

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has urged the West to pierce through Vladimir Putin's "information wall" and tell Russians at home the "uncomfortable truth" about the war in Ukraine, as the Kremlin has reportedly tripled funds for state media.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Kremlin has tightened its grip on independent media and news outlets in Russia.

On March 4, Putin signed a law that effectively criminalizes any narrative of the war in Ukraine that doesn't conform to the Kremlin's line claiming that the campaign in the neighboring country is a "special military operation" to liberate and de-Nazify Ukraine. The new law makes the use of the word "war" illegal and punishable with up to 15 years in prison.

The Kremlin also blocked access to Instagram and Facebook, considered "extremist," and to major news outlets accused of spreading false information about Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine. The BBC has suspended operations in Russia, and most independent Russian news outlets, fearing prosecution, have decided to close shop.

According to Amnesty International, more than 150 Russian independent journalists have fled the country since the beginning of the war, and more than 13,800 people have been arrested since the beginning of the war at anti-war rallies in Russia.

The Kremlin has spent triple the amount of money from January to March than it spent in the same period in 2021, for a total of 17.4 billion rubles ($210.5 million), according to The Moscow Times, an independent English-language online newspaper, which is now based outside Russia.

"We must admit that the 24/7 Goebbelsian propaganda on all channels (Putin spends over 110 billion roubles a year on propaganda from the budget alone, and oligarchs chip in too), the shutdown of independent media and the website blockings are slowly doing their job," wrote Navalny on Thursday on Twitter.

The Russian dissident has now called for the West to launch a massive social media campaign with targeted ads aimed at telling Russians at home "about the monstrous real losses of the army."

"About the yachts and the palaces of those who send soldiers to the slaughter. About the massacre of civilians. About Ukraine not being our enemy. About rising prices, poverty, and sanctions.

"About the monstrous lies of Putin and his propagandists. About how we would all be better off without this war, which should be stopped immediately."

"Truth and free information hit Putin's insane regime just as hard as Javelins [missiles]," Navalny wrote, calling for the West to open "the second front against the war criminal from the Kremlin—the informational front."

According to Navalny, 41 percent of Russians use Yandex, Russia's IT giant and search engine, as their main source of information.

Some Russian citizens do find a way around Moscow's censorship. Nearly a month into the invasion, The Independent reported that searches for "VPN" has increased over 1,000 percent in the previous 30 days.

But Navalny, citing unsourced data, said that over 85 percent of Russian adults are still using YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google and Facebook, and that's where the West should try to reach them.

"We need ads. Lots of ads," Navalny urged, calling for a "huge national anti-war campaign" that will start with an advertising campaign. The dissident said that the halting of sales of ads to Russia by Meta and Google has "seriously hampered the work of the opposition."

"I understand that in a democracy the authorities cannot order Google and Meta to allow advertising for some and ban it for others," said Navalny. He called on Western leaders to "find a solution to crush Putin's propaganda using the advertising power of social media."

Navalny also said that support for the war in Ukraine in Russia is not as high as data emerging from Moscow would have people believe, but it's mostly indicative of the effectiveness of the repression the Kremlin is exercising against dissidents. "There is no 75% support of the war with Ukraine in Russia. This is yet another Kremlin's lie," Navalny wrote.

"What kind of sociology is there even to talk about when both the question 'Do you support the war in Ukraine?' and the answer 'no' could result in 15 years of imprisonment for the sociologist and the respondent respectively?," wrote the Russian dissident, who was sentenced in March to nine years in a penal colony after being found guilty of fraud and contempt. He was already a two-and-a-half year sentence in prison for parole violation.

Newsweek has reached out to the Department of Information and Press of the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment.