“A NEW WORLD is being born before our eyes. Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has ushered in a new era…Russia is restoring its unity–the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war…but there will be no more Ukraine, as the anti-Russia.”

That triumphal article appeared on the site of Ria Novosti, Russia’s main state online news agency, on February 26th. It declared: “Russia restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together - in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians [a pre-Soviet term for Ukrainians].” Ukraine, it said, has returned to Russia. And the great leader, Vladimir Putin, “has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility” for this “solution” to “the Ukrainian question”.

Presumably the publication of this screed was scheduled well in advance, on the assumption that Mr Putin’s forces would win a quick and easy victory, and someone forgot to cancel it. The day it appeared on Ria Novosti’s site, heavy fighting unfolded around Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and Ukrainian forces repelled the Russian invaders.

Ria Novosti quietly pulled the celebratory article from its site; there was nothing to celebrate. After five days of war, the Russian military machine was malfunctioning. So Russian state television cloaked it with fiction. Dmitry Kiselev, a TV anchor often known as “Putin’s mouthpiece” and who also controls Ria Novosti, doubled down during his two-hour long Sunday-night programme, mixing threats against NATO with historical Russian claims to Ukraine and fictional stories of Ukrainian outrages. “The street atrocities have become a way of life in Ukraine, with newsrooms being smashed, television studios set on fire, and television stations shut down. Now there is hope that all of this medieval nightmare is a thing of the past,” he fumed.

Mr Putin’s propaganda machine is now working at full throttle. Reality be damned: the Russian army is calmly fulfilling the task set by its commander-in-chief, demilitarising and “de-Nazifying” Ukraine; it has destroyed 1,067 military targets; Ukrainian soldiers are surrendering but are treated with great respect and care. “Everything was excellent. Nobody was hitting anyone,” one supposed prisoner-of-war told the Russian cameras. Grateful Ukrainians are welcoming Russian troops. Those who are not have been brainwashed.

Russia is not conducting a war, Mr Putin’s flacks insist, but a nearly bloodless military operation to free its Ukrainian brothers from the vile West and its Nazi proxies in Ukraine. These “Nazis” are invisible and all the scarier for it. The audience does not see their faces, for they are a faceless, torch-bearing mass, but only their victims, who tell of atrocities: “torturing people, breaking ribs, burning, stabbing and stabbing, pulling out teeth with tongs and branding people with red-hot iron, with fiery iron, crushed skulls, mutilating”, as Mr Kiselev explains. Repetition, pumping music, kaleidoscopic montages; Russian TV is using the full range of tools to whip up nationalistic hatred.

The machine has been struggling to keep reality at bay, however. The Kremlin had done nothing to prepare the public or its armed forces for the largest war in Europe since 1945. For months it was telling them that Russia was not about to invade Ukraine, and the rumour that it was reflected Western scaremongering. Some captured Russian soldiers, indeed, have appeared to be under the impression that they were taking part in a military exercise, and were surprised to have found themselves in Ukraine.

Videos of Russia’s military losses are explained away as fakes; the destruction its forces are inflicting on cities like Kharkiv, in the east, as having been committed by Ukrainians. “It is hard for those who don’t know the details to make out what is happening,” a reassuring voice from Russia’s state-run Channel One told its audience on February 27th. It is far better to use information from official sources, otherwise viewers risk being told lies, it said. “Those who spread such lies want to hold the world in their hands and people in fear.”

The news that the West is imposing tough sanctions on Russia, that the rouble has crashed, that interest rates have nearly doubled and that Russian aircraft are now banned from European airspace is mentioned only in passing. Sometimes it is slotted in between television commercials for foreign holidays, fast payment systems, fancy electronics or affordable mortgages; all things that will soon be harder for ordinary Russians to obtain.

Yet reality keeps intruding. A flood of support for Ukraine from around the world and disgust with the Kremlin’s aggression is breaking through propaganda barriers. Although the mobile internet has been slowed down to prevent the exchange of information, accurate news is spreading within Russia. TV Rain, an independent internet television channel, is still broadcasting and so is Ekho Moskvy, a radio station. Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last independent newspapers, is publishing stories about soldiers who had little idea where they were being sent. Yuri Dud, one of Russia’s most popular vloggers, wrote on February 28th to his 5m subscribers that “Putin has invaded the territory of a sovereign state and is waging war there...the Russian Ministry of Defence claims it only destroys enemy military targets with precision weapons, but in Ukraine, according to the United Nations, there are already over 100 civilians dead, hundreds wounded, over 350,000 refugees.”

Unprepared for the scale of the war or its consequences, many Russians, especially middle-class and educated ones, are horrified. Despite the risk of being arrested or beaten with truncheons, anti-war protesters have massed and marched in several Russian cities. In the past five days, about 4,000 people have been detained, though most are swiftly released. Anonymous, an international hacking group, has joined the fray. It has launched denial-of-service attacks on Russian state media and posted a message on many of them: “Dear citizens. We call on you to stop this madness. Don’t send your sons and husbands to die. It is time to act–come out on the streets!”

Actors, businessfolk and even some politicians are starting to speak out. Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire industrialist, posted on his Telegram channel as the war was hammering the value of his business: “Peace is very important! Talks are needed as soon as possible.” Some Communist parliamentarians have said that they were misled over the decision, a week ago, to recognise the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the south-east of Ukraine. What they thought was a way of avoiding war was, in fact, its pretext.

But there have been no resignations by officials or ministers, so far, and the Kremlin is now trying to hold the line by accusing critics of the war of treason. “This is a difficult period in the history of our state, but united we will overcome everything,” wrote Vyachelsav Volodin, the speaker of Russian parliament. “The position of a number of cultural figures who…do not condemn the neo-Nazis [ie, the Ukrainian government] is unacceptable. This is nothing short of a betrayal of their people, and those involved in the peace-keeping operation,” he wrote.

It is not clear how long Russians will choose to believe what their televisions are telling them. For some, rejecting the big lie is too frightening a prospect to contemplate. And the more people suspect what is really happening, the more vigorously Mr Putin’s propaganda machine will spin new lies, and the more brutally he may treat those who tell the truth about what he is doing to Ukraine, and to Russia. ■

Our recent coverage of the Ukraine crisis can be found here