RIA Novosti's Drama: How Russia's Propaganda Consumed Its Own Myths
Moscow's propaganda machine is particularly fond of invoking "historical memory"—especially on June 22. Every year, Russia lights 1,418 candles, one for each day of what it calls the Great Patriotic War. The only problem is that, since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has already added 1,579 days to its own wartime ledger. Needless to say, no one intends to light candles for those.
Modern Russian history textbooks enforce an equally strict taboo on the very word “war”. Under Russia's Law on Veterans, the country has fought military campaigns in some 40 locations around the world—from China to Syria—yet these conflicts have been euphemistically labeled anything but war, usually some variation of a "special military operation."
This hybrid newspeak, however, does little to protect the Kremlin from reality. That becomes especially apparent when one examines the archives of Russia's leading state media on each June 22 over the past five years. To keep the comparison fair, let's set aside the broader propaganda ecosystem—military bloggers, self-styled analysts, Kommersant, and the rest—and focus instead on the Kremlin's principal official mouthpiece, RIA Novosti, with its audience of more than three million subscribers. Its archive traces a remarkable evolution: from the triumphalist confidence of 2022 to the unmistakable anxiety of 2026.
2022: Flowers in Kherson and the First Sparks at Russia's Oil Refineries
"Residents of Kherson laid flowers at the Eternal Flame," RIA Novosti cheerfully reported on June 22, 2022. The point was never that residents of Kherson—or any other Ukrainian city—had been forbidden from honoring the victims of World War II. Rather, it was that just 142 days later, General Sergei Surovikin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu would appear before the cameras to justify the "difficult decision" to abandon that very same Kherson—a city that RIA Novosti had confidently declared was "Russian forever."
Another headline published that day proclaimed: "Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian oil facilities thanks to U.S. satellite intelligence." The claim came from military commentator Konstantin Sivkov in response to an explosion at the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery.
As events unfolded, Ukraine's campaign against Russia's oil-refining infrastructure expanded far beyond what anyone anticipated in 2022. Yet the same chorus of Russian "military experts" has since fallen conspicuously silent about alleged U.S. involvement. Such narratives no longer fit the "spirit of Anchorage," to which Russia's Foreign Ministry still seems remarkably devoted.
2023: The Chongar Bridge and the "Brave Tungus"
"On June 22, 2023, the Ukrainian Armed Forces struck bridges near Chongar on the administrative border between Kherson Oblast and Crimea, damaging the roadway," announced Vladimir Saldo, Russia's installed governor of the occupied part of Kherson Oblast.
"Transport links between Crimea and Kherson Oblast remain operational after the attack, with traffic redirected along an alternative route," he assured the public.
Things have only deteriorated for the Chongar Bridge since then—and for the rest of the logistical network, including those supposedly "alternative routes," linking occupied Crimea with mainland Russia. Following restrictions on fuel sales and rolling blackouts in Sevastopol, the city's Russian-installed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, recently announced the suspension of ferry services, public transportation, and shopping mall operations, along with the shutdown of street lighting and the cancellation of all outdoor public events.
Yet the biggest headline of June 22, 2023, was a story worthy of the annals of Russian air defense. A serviceman from Zabaykalsky Krai with the call sign Tungus became a media sensation after allegedly shooting down a Ukrainian FPV drone—with a sack of vegetables. For this remarkable feat, he was awarded the Medal "For Courage." Given that virtually all of Russia's air defense assets have since been redeployed to shield Moscow, residents of Zabaykalsky Krai may want to begin stockpiling vegetable sacks on an industrial scale.
2024: The Juche Warriors Were Yet to Come
On June 22, 2024, RIA Novosti offered readers the following promise:
"Moscow and Pyongyang are beginning work on implementing all the provisions of the new Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty. We are not stopping here. A new era has begun. We are ready for it. Our Korean friends, of course, are ready as well. The best is yet to come," declared Russia's ambassador to North Korea, Alexander Matsegora.
What lay ahead was, indeed, historic: for the first time in modern Russian history, the Kremlin would be forced to rely openly on foreign troops to defend its own territory.
The talk of "Juche warriors" had begun well before that. On March 28, Russian war correspondent Alexander Sladkov claimed that Pyongyang stood ready to dispatch no fewer than half a million troops to Ukraine and that the decision could be made quickly, pending nothing more than Beijing's approval.
Even earlier, in August 2023, Igor Korotchenko, a member of the Russian Defense Ministry's Public Council, declared:
"There are reports that 100,000 North Korean volunteers are ready to take part in the conflict with Ukraine... If North Korea wishes to fulfill its international duty in the fight against Ukrainian fascism, we should allow them to do so."
In the end, Kim Jong Un supplied around 14,000 "volunteers." This "limited contingent" would go on to fight in Russia's Kursk region, where, according to various estimates, more than half of its personnel were killed or wounded. Apparently, Russia could find no other "defenders" to protect even a single one of its own regions.
2025–2026: The "Diplomats" Won't Be Reaching Transnistria
"Speculation that Russia intends to reinforce its military presence in Transnistria is rather surprising," Russia's ambassador to Moldova, Oleg Ozerov, said on June 22, 2025.
"Suddenly there are rumors that we supposedly intend to deploy 10,000 peacekeepers. But let someone explain to me how exactly we could do that under the current circumstances. If we sent them on diplomatic passports, it would take about twenty years. More importantly, we simply do not see any need to increase our peacekeeping contingent at this time."
The most revealing part of Ozerov's statement was his question: "How could Russia possibly do that under the current circumstances?" It was, in fact, the right question to ask.
By 2025, the strategic reality had already turned decisively against Moscow—and even more so today. The contrast with April 2022 could hardly be starker. Back then, RIA Novosti quoted Major General Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia's Central Military District, confidently declaring that "the objective of the second phase of the special military operation is to establish a land corridor to the border with Transnistria, where the Russian-speaking population is also allegedly being oppressed."
By June 2025, however, Russians could safely forget about the "Transnistrian objective" of the so-called special military operation. After four years of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, they had finally reached the fifth stage: acceptance.
One final scene from RIA Novosti's propaganda drama, "June 22."
On June 22, 2025, the agency quoted Maya Lomidze, head of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, who proudly announced that "tourist demand for holidays in Crimea this summer has increased by 40 percent compared with the summer of 2024."
Exactly one year later, on June 22, 2026, the same RIA Novosti tersely reported that "summer camps in Crimea are suspending the admission of children until September 1 for security reasons."
That is the story of June 22 from 2022 through 2026, as told by RIA Novosti itself. These headlines have become genuine "candles of remembrance"—not for the past the Kremlin so eagerly commemorates, but for the days, months, years, and, above all, the human lives that Russia has consumed in the furnace of its own bloody folly.
Max Meltzer