Over the course of the war in Ukraine, a loose network of Russian military bloggers on Telegram have provided a fervently nationalistic, though at times highly critical, view of Russia’s “special military operation”. Providing more unfiltered coverage of the war and the performance of the Russian military than Kremlin-controlled state media, military bloggers have gained enormous followings and influence—as evidenced by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent meeting at the Kremlin with key members of the “milblogger” community. To better understand and analyze their outputs, the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund has created an interactive dashboard that collects, translates, and analyzes posts from 39 Telegram channels run by prominent Russian military bloggers. This piece analyzes some of the key findings from data collected from the dashboard over the past three months.
