The War? Getting Better and Better, Say Kremlin Mouthpieces

The words used by the Kremlin’s talking heads are at odds with their gloomy facial expressions.

February 26, 2026

The fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was a solemn occasion for state TV’s propagandists. Their long faces gave away just how much things have changed.

On February 21, 2022, Margarita Simonyan, head of RT, a Kremlin propaganda outlet, demanded champagne in the studio and described her euphoria about the anticipated annexation of Ukraine.

In May of the same year, Vice Chairman of the State Duma Pyotr Tolstoy appeared on state television and relished the idea of drinking coffee in Kyiv before too long.

In 2026, thoughts of beverages would likely include taking notice of how much more expensive coffee and other everyday items have become back home.

Even the most enthusiastic pro-war cheerleaders can’t avoid talking about the beating the Russian economy has taken in recent years. Host Vladimir Solovyov, obsequiously described by Simonyan as the most influential propagandist in Russia, admitted that he is tired of talking about the economy and wondered out loud why other countries have more money than his warring Motherland.

During his TV and radio shows, he rails against inflation, high interest rates, and the lack of technical innovation — but never pins the blame on Vladimir Putin for starting the war that caused and compounded Russia’s woes.

Solovyov and other prominent talking heads have, throughout the intervening years, argued that Russia is poised to achieve a resounding victory. This triumph of hope over experience is unsurprising; these, after all, were the people whose confident pre-war predictions included promises that Ukrainians would welcome their invaders or quickly be crushed trying to repel them.

When neither of these scenarios panned out, Moscow’s mouthpieces claimed that US President Donald Trump would force Ukraine to capitulate by pulling American aid and intelligence.

This propensity to deny Ukraine’s agency and misread important participants led Russia to continually make badly flawed assumptions, and the population took notice. Leading propagandists complain that they are losing viewers and subscribers as the war grinds on, while they’re now forced to admit that it won’t end anytime soon.

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During February 24’s broadcast of The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, the host tried to cheer up his remaining viewers by focusing on Russia’s territorial gains. The title of the segment exposed the intended message with total clarity: “Special Military Operation is one of the Russian Army’s most successful military operations.” A recent US think tank report called Russian losses “extraordinary” and showed Russian forces were advancing at a slower rate than British soldiers at the notorious Battle of the Somme in 1916. Solovyov did not refer to these and similar findings, but argued that the West has been lying about Russia’s achievements and described it as “a war of narratives.”

He instead compared the ongoing invasion to the Great Patriotic War, as Russians refer to World War II, and boasted that Russia’s territorial gains exceeded those of the Soviet Union (they don’t). He rejoiced that since this war is not taking place on Russian territory, its losses are also significantly smaller than the estimated 27 million casualties experienced by the USSR. The broadcaster, like his colleagues, does not refer to Russian dead and wounded, but estimates often range from 1 million to 1.2 million, more than the losses in all the country’s post-World War II wars combined.

Solovyov claimed that Russia’s demographic gap was alleviated by millions of Ukrainians who he said immigrated to join their invaders, in addition to the people living in the occupied regions. Using this Orwellian math (and effectively claiming the supposed new arrivals outnumber nearly 1 million Russians who have left the country), he went on to argue that the Russian Federation hadn’t experienced a decline in its population due to its war against Ukraine, but that the opposite was true and that it had experienced population growth. Solovyov concluded his peroration by asserting: “Truth is simple.”

Likewise, the host asserted that Russia’s economy is in a much better shape than the USSR during World War II. He described how Russia’s military-industrial complex had grown during its “special military operation” and that this exceeds the expansion achieved by the Soviet Union. Solovyov said: “Objectively speaking, if we look solely at the numbers, this is one of the most successful military operations, if not the most successful military operation carried out by the Russian Army.” He urged everyone to ponder the wealth of mineral resources and land acquired by the Russian Federation during this war, in a bid to convince the struggling population that it was all worthwhile.

Nor was the good news at an end. Solovyov explained that the number of Russian traitors or collaborators was negligible compared to the Great Patriotic War. He urged viewers to disregard Western reporting that downplays Russia’s successes and highlights its losses.

Solovyov’s grim-faced guests stood around in an awkward silence, most of them staring down, but they understood the assignment. Political scientist Dmitry Kulikov claimed that Russia’s armed forces have been advancing nonstop since 2023. “Who would have believed it?” he asked of this manifest untruth.

Professor Stanislav Tkachenko, who heads the diplomacy program at the St. Petersburg State University, chimed in with this claim: “The absence of European unity is perhaps one of the most important diplomatic results of the special military operation.”

This statement was nothing more than wishful thinking, because one of the most consistent lessons of the last four years is that Europe has continued to fund and arm Ukraine, despite the best efforts of the Kremlin and its allies.

Julia Davis is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the creator of the Russian Media Monitor. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Screen Actors Guild, and Women In Film.

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.