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Olga Skabeyeva is one of Russian state media’s most prominent propagandists.
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Her recent remarks about the onset of “World War III” raised eyebrows across the world.
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Experts say her escalating rhetoric marks a pivotal shift in how the Kremlin discusses its actions.
Of all the Russian TV propagandists who have pushed Kremlin talking points about the war in Ukraine, perhaps none has drawn as much attention in Western media as Olga Skabeyeva.
Her nicknames include “propagandist-in-chief,” Russian state TV’s “special operation forces,” and the “iron doll of Putin TV.”
In recent weeks and months, Skabeyeva has delivered wild, fervent rants on the government-owned TV channel Russia-1. She has thundered about the Russian military’s struggles on Ukrainian territory, fabricated claims about Western leaders, and spread a baseless conspiracy theory that the Ukrainian army was responsible for the massacre of hundreds of civilians in Bucha.
Skabeyeva is just one of many voices on Russian state media who has distorted facts and misled the public about the war in Ukraine. But experts say her escalating rhetoric is indicative of an important shift in the way the Kremlin speaks about its actions, and could be a harbinger of what’s to come.
She’s a “monster,” according to Vasily Gatov, a Russian media researcher and visiting fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy.
Skabeyeva, alongside her husband Yevgeny Popov, has hosted the political talk show “60 Minutes” on Russia-1 for years, and has a long history within Russian media of being a “chauvinistic, patriotic, pro-government, non-critical, clearly scandalous” figure, Gatov said.
Earlier this week, Skabeyeva made waves internationally when she declared on television that Russians were in the middle of “World War III.” A number of Western media outlets seized on the statement as yet another example of Skabeyeva’s hyperbolic and conspiratorial claims.
‘This moment shows a shift in acceptable state rhetoric’
But Sarah Oates, a professor and senior scholar at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, told Insider that Skabeyeva’s declaration marked an important shift in tone that could help reveal just how far the Kremlin will go to spite the West and achieve its goals in Ukraine.
“Propaganda’s not very useful for figuring out what’s true and what’s not true,” Oates said. “But propaganda is incredibly useful for figuring out what the Russian state wants to do.”
Oates said Skabeyeva’s “World War III” reference was notable for two main reasons:
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The remark leaned on World War II as an “important reference point for Russian nationalism” and insinuated that Russia has a “moral high ground” to stand on.
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Skabeyeva’s remark used the word “war” — a conspicuous departure from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s and state-run media’s previous descriptions of it as a “special military operation” for the “denazification of Ukraine.”
Skabeyeva’s words were no accident, Oates said. Russian propagandists rarely go off-script, wax poetic, or exhibit any creativity at all in their descriptions. Oates said it’s highly likely that Skabeyeva received her “World War III” talking points directly from the government itself.
“This moment shows a shift in acceptable state rhetoric, because she’s a mouthpiece for the state,” Oates said. “Anything she says is reflective of the official Kremlin line.”
She continued: “Invoking World War III is extremely problematic because we know that Putin has threatened nuclear weapons, and we don’t really know where Putin’s ambition stops.”
A ‘polarizing’ and ‘outrageous’ figure in Russian media
Skabeyeva has become one of Russian state-run television’s most prominent figures after years of echoing Kremlin-backed lines on current events and modern social issues.
She’s known for overly dramatic and embellished statements and actions — she once even got into a physical confrontation with the German journalist who broke the news of Russia’s state-sponsored doping scandal, demanding that he reveal his sources and then accusing him of attacking her.
In one particularly bizarre report about gay marriage in France and the United Kingdom, Skabeyeva falsely told viewers that 40% of children raised by same-sex couples “have venereal diseases.”
“Cable TV channels in the United States will use talk shows or political chat shows for the most outrageous comments — the same is true on Russian television,” Oates said. “So she’s being quite deliberately over-the-top and provocative.”
Skabeyeva has even come under scrutiny from the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, whose Anti-Corruption Foundation published an investigative documentary claiming that Skabeyeva and her husband owned real estate in Moscow that was worth $4 million.
Skabeyeva and Popov responded to the claims with “outrage,” the documentary said, dismissing the claims as “all a lie, we are not paid so much and in general this is not your business.”
Another investigative outlet, The Insider (which is unaffiliated with Insider), reported that Skabeyeva and Popov each earn annual salaries of 12.8 million rubles, the equivalent of roughly $160,000.
Experts said Skabeyeva is a divisive figure in Russian society. Though she is highly influential among loyal viewers of Russian state TV, many Russians — particularly younger ones who get their news from a variety of sources — dislike and distrust her intensely.
Gatov likened Skabeyeva’s reputation to that of the American Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a highly polarizing figure in American media who draws attention from both fervent supporters and enraged critics.
“She is, to some extent, very similar to Carlson’s popularity. A controversial, scandalous person who polarizes,” Gatov said.
Skabeyeva’s work follows decades of well-established, yet unsophisticated Russian propaganda
State-sponsored Russian propaganda has existed for decades. But unlike Soviet-era propaganda, which frequently relied on positive messages about Russian resilience and peace, Putin-era propaganda has veered into a decidedly negative and “absolutely fascist” tone, Gatov said.
“One of the things that came as the main tone of the Putin propaganda is that the rest of the world is so awful, disgraceful, decadent, and we, the great nation of Russia, are the last remaining bastion of morals,” Gatov said.
“Military propaganda, and especially totalitarian propaganda, which Russian media has finally turned into, relies on extremely simplistic models — the worldview of the besieged fortress, the worldview of ‘the world is against us and we are the last man standing.'”
Skabeyeva, who built her career throughout the last 15 years under the Putin regime, often propagates those tropes, complaining bitterly of the debauchery and excess of Western nations, while simultaneously portraying Russia as their morally superior, yet woefully mistreated opponent.
Oates said propaganda, including Skabeyeva’s, may have enamored certain factions of Russian society — mainly, older Russians who primarily get their news from state-run nightly news programs — but she said she expects that effect won’t last forever.
“You can get away with a lot of wartime propaganda, and governments do everywhere,” Oates said. “But it’s just so clownishly bad sometimes and so over-the top.”
The existing Russian propaganda is effective mainly because it’s reassuring to certain viewers, offering bursts of nationalism they can identify with and derive a sense of pride from, Oates said. But she added that those propagandistic messages will ultimately crumble when audiences begin to feel doubts or fears about their futures, or when everyday Russians begin experiencing dire economic consequences of the war.
“Complete denial and basically relying on a 1940s anti-Nazi rhetoric is not going to work in the long term. It’s just not,” she said. “Russians aren’t idiots.”
Translations by Oleksandr Vynogradov.
Read the original article on Insider
