Dr Elena Sherstoboeva, Lecturer at the Essex Law School

This week marks the second anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion, which began on the 24th February 2022, and coincides with the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. This war is a terrible tragedy for all Ukrainians and poses a serious challenge to European and global security and stability. However, it is also a disaster for Russians and Russia’s democracy and freedom of expression. In my research article, Russian Bans on ‘Fake News’ about the war in Ukraine: Conditional truth and unconditional loyalty, I explore the role of the Russian judiciary in framing the public debate and public ‘truth’ on the war against Ukraine within Russia. Published in one of the globally leading academic journals in communication studies, International Communication Gazette, the paper presents the analysis of over 500 Russian court decisions against the so-called ‘fake news,’ or ‘lies’ about the invasion.

Although according to public survey polls, most of Russia’s population support Putin’s decisions on Ukraine and the actions of the Russian army in Ukraine, it is not entirely clear whether they support the actual war in Ukraine or the myth about it constructed and amplified by the Russian courts, as can be seen from my article. The paper shows how the courts ‘condition’ the accuracy of any information on matters of public interest, including the war, on the official position of the Russian government. The Russian courts use the so-called fake news law adopted in Russia mainly to counteract COVID-19 to establish a state-run monopoly over the pubic debate within Russia, to amplify state misinformation on the war and to punish dissenting Russians.

Through discourse analysis, I was able to uncover the prevailing narrative surrounding the war. The dominant theme emerged in judicial interpretations of conditional truth. My paper details how courts construct a misleading narrative about an imaginary war, presenting it as a peacekeeping special military operation that causes minimal harm to both Russians and Ukrainians. According to this storyline, Putin leads the operation only to protect ethnic Russians and de-Nazify Ukraine. The courts manipulate international legal standards to make it create an illusion that the operation is fully aligned with them. Additionally, my analysis exposes how Russian courts twist the notion of “national hatred” to label Russian dissenters as haters of Russia and all Russians. The courts weaponise foreign news media outlets and discourage the spread of fake news, warning the public of the dangers it poses.

A historical perspective allowed me to demonstrate that the modern Russian approach is not new and reflects the Marxist-Leninist principles of ‘partyness’, ‘objectivity’, and ‘scientificalness’ that were used in Soviet Communist Russia to guide mass media practitioners. In the article, I explain the meaning of these principles and highlight the significant differences between them and the universal standards for professional journalism. The Soviet concept of ‘objectivity’ implied biased and unconditional loyalty to the Communist Party, whose decisions conditioned the ‘truth’ in the entire USSR. My article also explores how this approach was used in the Soviet era for myth construction and was integrated into laws that were used to restrict ‘anti-Soviet lies’ until the USSR’s collapse.

The paper presents a collection of empirical data on contemporary factual statements, opinions, and posters that oppose the war in Ukraine. Regrettably, these materials have been discredited and deemed ‘harmful lies’ in Russian public discourse. I express my sincere gratitude to my brave young colleagues from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, who took significant risks to obtain access to the court decisions that became the foundation of my study. These decisions are solely available in Russian and can only be found in legal databases located in Russia. I am also grateful to my former supervisor at Moscow State University’s School of Journalism, Professor Andrei Richter, who is currently a Professor at the Comenius University of Bratislava, and Professor Lorna Woods from Essex Law School for their meticulous review, sagacious guidance, and unwavering support throughout the entire process. Furthermore, I would like to thank my colleagues Professor Geoff Gilbert, Professor Sabine Michalowski, Dr. Tara Van Ho, Dr. Konstantinos Kalliris, Dr. Alexandros Antoniou from Essex Law School and Dr. Ilya Kiriya from the University of Grenoble, without whom this study would not have been possible.