The staggering costs of the war in Ukraine are obvious to the whole world, and Western powers have imposed sanctions to change the Kremlin’s course. Yet Russia’s military aggression continues unabated. Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes have hit deep into Russia’s economic and military core. While this is strategically significant, it is a mistake to assume increased Russian costs will lead to de-escalation.
That assumption rests on a specific model of state behavior: that leaders respond to cost incentives. In an authoritarian system, like Russia’s, the calculus follows a different logic.
Changing an autocrat’s perception of reality is nearly impossible. An authoritarian leader has considerable latitude to interpret reality in ways that serve him, and Vladimir Putin has used it regularly.
The objective of Western policy should therefore not be to change the Russian leader’s worldview; it should be to weaken the regime’s ability to make that worldview credible to Russia’s people.
Modern autocracies do not rely on coercion alone. They also depend on narratives to justify their actions and sustain an image of competence and strength.
Political scientists Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman have described it as a central feature of the modern “informational autocracy,” in which political control depends not only on suppressing information, but on shaping how citizens interpret the information they do receive.
The gap between a regime’s constructed reality and the population’s actual experiences is a source of vulnerability. If that gap grows too large, the regime may have to rely on coercion to sustain compliance, which can markedly weaken its political control.
Putin has framed the invasion of Ukraine as a defensive response and has repeatedly questioned Ukrainian sovereignty. Violence has become a normalized tool of statecraft, used both against his own citizens and neighboring countries, and military aggression is routinely presented as “necessity” and “liberation.”
Similarly, attacks on residential areas are presented as vital acts of self-defense. The Kremlin does not necessarily need the public to believe its version of reality, but it benefits from flooding the information space so citizens distrust every source.
Yet experience creates openings for alternative interpretations. By supporting independent Russian voices that document the costs of the war, including economic hardship, systemic corruption, and enormous human casualties, the West can help.
Media in exile is a crucial source of information for millions of people inside Russia. A report by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) refers to the importance of “epistemic anchoring” by credible independent voices as a basis for alternative interpretations to those propagated by the state.
The struggle over Russia’s future is not simply a struggle over territory, military capacity, or economic resources; it is also a struggle for reality. That suggests media in exile are part of a broader strategic contest over the regime’s legitimacy.
One might ask what the point is of establishing an alternative to the regime’s worldview if the Russian public is resistant to outside facts, but it might be more useful to ask how the regime’s monopoly over reality is reinforced.
Washington’s inconsistent messaging on support for Ukraine is an example of the way that has happened. On several occasions, it has echoed elements of the Kremlin’s narrative, including framing NATO expansion as a cause of the war.
Similar mixed signaling has periodically emerged from other Western capitals. When they validate Putin’s arguments, they risk undermining the credibility of independent Russian media.
Such signals are quickly incorporated into Moscow’s domestic narrative, and are presented to the public as evidence the regime’s account of the war is justified and the West has accepted its claims.
Exposing the gap between the Kremlin’s narrative and the West’s requires an active information strategy in which Western politicians reinforce, rather than undermine, the credibility of independent Russian voices. Most importantly, the West should never adopt diplomatic postures that suggest agreement with the Kremlin’s worldview.
While ambiguous statements may be motivated by a desire to prevent escalation, coercion and violence remain deeply embedded in Russian statecraft. What the West can control is whether its signaling reinforces the regime’s monopoly on reality or challenges it.
This does not mean the West should refuse to negotiate with Russia, but negotiations must be seen as an opportunity to articulate clear Western positions.
The aim is not to impose a Western narrative on Russian society, but to break the Kremlin’s monopoly on reality. Putin’s most dangerous opponent may be moral clarity from the West, especially the conviction that core human rights cannot be negotiated, sovereignty is not a bargaining chip, and aggression cannot be normalized.
To deliver this, the West needs an information strategy built around access, credibility, and consistency.
Access means funding the digital infrastructure that allows independent media to reach audiences in Russia, credibility means treating such journalism as a strategic capability rather than a series of ad hoc projects, and consistency means ensuring Western diplomatic messaging aligns with Russian exile media and never reinforces the Kremlin’s account of reality.
Ending Russia’s reliance on military force as a tool of statecraft requires change from within, and independent Russian voices are uniquely positioned to foster the critical awareness needed for such change.
Signals to the Russian people from outside Russia matter.
John Christer Tønnessen is a lecturer at the University of Bergen, Norway, where he works on the clinical and research aspects of severe personality pathology. His work focuses on how these psychological dynamics become institutionalized within authoritarian state structures. He has also contributed to the Norwegian security debate through articles and commentary in major national newspapers.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
