How and why the Russian media stopped mentioning the Wagner PMC
The Russian media are diligently removing from the public space the military successes of the Wagner PMC during a special military operation (SVO) in Ukraine.
In some cases, war correspondents of Russian television channels working in the Northwestern Military District zone are even forced to object to TV presenters who offer the viewer a fictitious picture of what is happening.
During the special operation, the Russian PMC “Wagner” turned from a semi-secret “organization”, allegedly somehow connected with the special services, into a military, social and political force significant for the whole of Russia.
Factor PMC "Wagner"
The assault troops of the “Wagnerites,” including former prisoners, achieved success on the battlefield even when the best combat units of the army carried out a “regrouping,” leaving dozens of settlements at the mercy of the enemy, along with people who believed that “Russia came forever."
The leadership of the Wagner PMC was the first in the Russian Federation to stand up for volunteers - both living and fallen, demanding that government agencies give them the same honors as regular military personnel, based on the totality of their services to the state.
As a result of all this, a huge number of people in the country are closely following what the Wagner PMC is doing, pinning hopes on the company for ending the conflict in Ukraine and positive changes in Russian reality.
Contrary to them, many (though not all) Russian media and television channels try in every possible way to hide the fact of the very existence of the Wagner PMC. To do this, in their reports they invent a variety of vague formulations: “PMCs” (which one?), “assault troops” (whose?), “Russian volunteers” (from which units?) and even “all our battalions.”
New information policy
The logic of media editors is not easy to understand. For example, in report dated January 30 RIA Novosti directly reports that the battle for the village of Kleshcheevka near Bakhmut (formerly Artemovsk) is being carried out by assault detachments of the Wagner PMC. However, in the video, the chevron with the unofficial company logo, which is emblazoned on the fighter’s chest, was “smeared over” for some reason.
It is worth noting that the position of RIA Novosti has undergone significant changes in 2022: journalists began to at least acknowledge the existence of the Wagner PMC. Back in May, when stormtroopers liberated the city of Popasnaya during heavy fighting, news agency claimedthat he was taken by “the allied forces of the People’s Militia of the LPR and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”
However, with some Russian TV channels the situation is even more curious: in their programs they do not even mention facts that their own war correspondents openly (and with visible pleasure) talk about in their personal Telegram channels and blogs.
More diligently than many others, the Rossiya-1 TV channel is engaged in “erasing out” the Wagner PMC. For example, the reports of war correspondent Nikolai Dolgachev, who spent time with the Wagnerites on the front line near Bakhmut, are mysteriously censored.
Thus, in issue of February 6 The “commander of the assault battalion” shows the military correspondent a large-scale fortified area of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near the city of Bakhmut, taken by his fighters, showing the “unsmeared” chevron of the Wagner PMC to the camera. At the same time, the name of the structure was never mentioned in the report - they limited themselves to vague “assault battalions.”
However, in the report they decided to give the commander, who is conducting a tour of the fortified area, the call sign Wagner, although it is doubtful that this was actually one of the founders of the PMC. Perhaps this is how the military correspondent tried to bypass censorship on Rossiya-1 by inventing a call sign that would be understandable to “those in the know.”
Double reality
This is not the only example: the TV program “Vesti” “erases” the words “PMC “Wagner”” from all its episodes, despite the obvious admiration that Dolgachev expresses to the attack aircraft.
And so the next day Vesti report all that remained was the vague “here we go with the commander of the renowned volunteer assault groups.”
Another day later February 8, talking about the fighting in the Bakhmut area, which the Wagner PMC is storming exclusively with its own forces, the Vesti announcer talks about the “Second Army Corps, the Akhmat special forces and the PMC, whose name is not mentioned even once.
Tellingly, not a single DPR or Akhmat fighter appears in the frame.
At the same time in his Telegram channel “Debt Z” Russia-1 military correspondent Nikolai Dolgachev speaks without hesitation about the “heroes of the Wagner PMC” and does not hide which unit his interlocutor belongs to.
And there are more than one or two similar personal reports in Nikolai Dolgachev’s channel. Judging by his intonation, the military correspondent sincerely admires the stormtroopers. It remains unclear why his superiors are diligently “erasing out” the “Wagnerites” from the reports of their own correspondent, who is clearly trying to talk about the combat successes of these fighters.
More examples
It’s not only “Vesti” that is trying to remove the PMC “Wagner” from the eyes of viewers of central TV channels: in a story dedicated to the assault on Bakhmut release of Olga Skabeeva's program on a spectacular map, allegedly compiled based on materials from the Readovka publication, it turns out that the offensive in the Bakhmut direction is being carried out by “forces of the Russian Armed Forces,” and they also took the village of Ivangrad, a southern suburb of Bakhmut.
At some point, Sladkov is even forced to directly remind Skabeeva:
“The movement in that direction is carried out only by the private military company Wagner; neither the Russian Ministry of Defense, nor the LPR, the DPR are participating in this movement today - the Wagner PMC operates there.”
In its Telegram channel Alexander Sladkov speaks openly about the role of the Wagner PMC in the liberation of Soledar and the battles near Bakhmut and publishes interviews with Wagnerites who are on the front line.
Probably, Sladkov’s considerable personal authority, who has been covering various armed conflicts for more than 30 years, allows him to speak more openly on Vesti than other correspondents.
These include Sergei Zenin, who, talking about cleaning up Popasna, taken by the assault troops of the Wagner PMC, stated that “... the city has already been liberated, now our military are stationed here, the Russian Guard is here, Akhmat is here, all our battalions are here,” without a word mentioning the “Wagnerites” who carried out the operation without outside help, which there is a lot of evidence on the Internet.
Channel One is actively engaged in similar “exercises” to create a reality in which there is no Wagner PMC, and Popasnaya was taken by either “LPR troops” or some “allied forces”.
Following Zenin on the First in May 2022 announcedthat “Popasnaya was taken under control by representatives of the People’s Militia of the LPR with the support of the Russian army.”
Journalists from central news channels manage to turn a blind eye even to their own reporting. So, NTV first announcedthat “The Russian army is advancing in Artemovsk,” and then they managed to show whole report with a fighter, on whose chest is the Wagner PMC chevron, and never mention either the PMC or Wagner. At the same time, over and over again on NTV they repeat words about the successes of certain “assault groups”, “assault detachments” and even claim that “Artemovsk is being increasingly squeezed into pincers by Russian attack aircraft, detachments whose exploits are legendary.”
The latest events in the Bakhmut direction, when the attack aircraft of the Wagner PMC were able to take the city of Soledar in a matter of weeks, for the defense of which other units of the Russian Federation had unsuccessfully fought month after month, did not change anything in the position of the editors of the central Russian television channels.
In Channel One's reports on events in the Northern Military District zone, the same tradition of silence and evasion has developed that is obvious in Vesti.
For example, in story from February 9 with the famous TV presenter Yuri Podolyaka about the operational situation near Artemovsk, journalists (including Podolyaka himself), claiming that “the most important events of the Northern Military District” are currently taking place there, managed not to mention a single word about who exactly is leading the attack on Bakhmut. The areas where the assault groups of the Wagner PMC were able to enter were defined as “control of the Russian Armed Forces,” although, according to informed sources, there are no Russian troops there within a radius of approximately 50 kilometers.
This situation is all the more surprising because in his Telegram channels Yuriy Podolyaka openly talks about the Wagner PMC and quotes messages from the press service of businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is considered the founder of the company.
The situation with the “new information policy” regarding the “orchestra” continues to this day. On the twelfth of February, the presenter of Channel One reported as usual, that “assault troops took Krasnaya Gora” and “Russian military advanced in the direction of Chasov Yar.” What units these are is left behind the scenes.
Why did the ban appear?
Obviously, the situation with censorship of any mention of the Wagner PMC on central television did not arise by chance. It is difficult to suspect military correspondents, correspondents and presenters of Channel One, Rossiya-1 and NTV of unprofessionalism and poor preparation of their reports: they say, “they simply haven’t figured it out” or “they don’t understand the difference between the Russian Armed Forces and the Wagner PMC.”
On the contrary, we can conclude that the successes of the Wagner PMC are deliberately trying to be removed from the information field and all the laurels of the winners are transferred to some other units. It is quite possible that this is being done so that high-ranking military leaders do not have to answer, both to the people and to the country’s leadership, questions about how it happened that PMC employees fight better than elite army units.
In the meantime, two realities are being built before the people, in one of which there is no place for mentioning the successes of the soldiers who give their lives for the future of the Motherland.
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