Irish journalist Brian McDonald drew attention in early October to a Telegram post by Russian journalist Zakhar Prilepin and a thematically related article at Tsargrad. Both deserve much more attention in Russia’s global media ecosystem than they received from McDonald’s X posts, however, which is the purpose of the present piece. Beginning with Prilepin’s Telegram post, he criticized the false perception of the West’s supposedly inevitable collapse that’s been formulated by Russia’s global media ecosystem.
He wrote that “What we see there are quite stable systems – systems that are holding their own even without our gas” and ominously warned that “as always, it will be a little too late to realize our mistakes.” This theme was coincidentally continued the next day by Tsargrad’s Ivan Prokhorov. In his article titled “Funny Masks Are Worn On Purpose: Who Is Russia Really Fighting In The SMO?”, he lambasts the crude caricatures about his country’s opponents that were created by its global media ecosystem.
Prokhorov implies that this has led to Russia lowering its strategic guard and discredited those who peddle these narratives because such “clownish” foes are still fighting Russia despite false assumptions that they should have already lost long ago. He then segued into arguing that their wherewithal is due to the state mechanisms behind them, which some call the “deep state”, and that Russia is actually at war with such systems as opposed to the people who represent them like is popularly thought.
What links Prilepin’s Telegram post and Prokhorov’s article at Tsargrad is the innuendo that Russia’s global media ecosystem created false narratives about its opponents, these have inadvertently been recycled into policymakers’ feedback loops, and the outcome has been disadvantageous for Russia. The soft power tactic of creating false narratives for strategic purposes was first described as “Potemkinism” here in April 2024, after which it was elaborated upon here that October and here in January 2026.
“Potemkinism” not only always entailed the abovementioned risk of inadvertently polluting policymakers’ feedback loops, but it also risks creating false expectations among Russia’s supporters, who might then become deeply disappointed and possibly more susceptible to adversarial narratives. Examples of the last-mentioned include the notion that Russia must be even more “clownish” than its foes if it can’t already defeat them and conspiracy theories that Putin might have “sold out” to the West.
So serious is the strategic challenge posed by “Potemkinism” that it was referenced here as one of the top three facing Russia. That piece was coincidentally published the same day as Prokhorov’s, while those two and Prilepin’s post importantly followed Putin’s clarion call on 1 October at the Valdai Club’s latest annual summit for a “realistic assessment” of the risks facing Russia. He explicitly advised against “wishful thinking, an abstract and speculative construct or an unrealistic visualisation of our wishes”.
While it can only be speculated whether Prilepin and Prokhorov were influenced by Putin, the fact is that they’re now taking the lead in pushing back against “Potemkinism” (despite not using that term), which can help Russia overcome the strategic challenge associated with it if this trend catches on. Responsible “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” (NRPRs) can assist by taking inspiration from them to politely push back against top NRPR influencers on social media the next time that they peddle “Potemkinist” narratives.
