“Voenkory”, pro-Kremlin correspondents covering Russia’s war against Ukraine, have a wide following in Russia and wider latitude to criticise the government’s actions – up to a point

Earlier this January, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin awarded the Government Media Prize to Russian media makers for their work in the previous year. In his speech, he paid special tribute to “war correspondents”, correspondents reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, who are “preserving and developing the legacy of front-line reporters” from the Second World War. It is therefore not surprising that it was these war correspondents, or voenkory, as they are more commonly referred to in Russia, that have accounted for the great majority of the awardees. They, of course, work for state or Kremlin-affiliated media, and openly support the invasion.

(Journalists working for independent media outlets faced interrogation only with getting closer to the border with Ukraine even months before the war. Many of them left Russia after the introduction of draconian war censorship laws days after the start of the invasion to still be able to call the war by its name and not be threatened with years of prison time.)

This is by far not the only case in which reporters working for pro-Kremlin media outlets have been praised by officials for their reporting about Russia’s war against Ukraine. Last July, the Russian State Duma passed a law, which, according to a deputy, also allows war correspondents (of course, those supporting the war) to benefit from a veteran status in Russia. In November, Alexander Kots, a reporter for the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, who has been embedded with Russian forces throughout the war, was even appointed a member of Russia’s Human Rights Council.

Telegram reporters

Kots is also known for running a Telegram channel, Kotsnews, which has more than 670,000 subscribers.

He’s not an exception among the voenkory (a portmanteau of Russian words “war” and “correspondent”). In fact, Russian pro-war reporters and commentators own some of the most widely followed Russian Telegram channels, with hundreds of thousands or even more than a million subscribers, like Russia’s state broadcaster’s reporter Alexander Sladkov, or veteran conflict reporter Semyon Pegov (nowadays most widely known for his WarGonzo Telegram channel).

Many of these reporters have been covering Ukraine for Russian state and pro-Kremlin media since 2014 and have become more widely known as “experts” on the conflict. They have been using their Telegram channels to offer their followers additional, more “colourful” reports and personal views from the field, supplementing more staid official coverage. It is therefore no surprise that their Telegram blogs turned into one of the rare places on the internet where a pro-Kremlin audience was able to access a more realistic (or, to be more precise, less censored) picture of what was going on in the battlefields of Ukraine with the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Pro-Kremlin correspondents have a wider latitude to criticise government officials and military commanders – despite the introduction of war censorship laws in Russia, among which the most devilish one chases anyone who “discredits the Russian army” (that is, opposes the invasion and says anything against the decisions of manoeuvres of the Russian military).

Some of the voenkory harshly condemned the withdrawal of the Russian forces from Kyiv last April, the negotiation initiative (calling it “hocus-pocus”), and even pointed out plot holes in the Russian Defence Ministry’s press releases on the war. They did so without any legal consequences, at least not such that would restrain them from further reporting (or getting financial offers from military officials and agencies in exchange for running PR campaigns for individuals who are trying to make a career out of the invasion, as the Russian investigative outlet Proekt notes in its recent analysis).

The criticism has always run up to a point, though – although specific officials and generals might get called out, Russian president Putin, who ordered the invasion of Ukraine, is never criticised in voenkory’s reports.

Toning down criticisms

Even this privilege, however, has been curtailed more recently. Various media outlets, alongside the war correspondents themselves, reported of at least three meetings between June and October in which they were invited to meet with Putin, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Defence Ministry’s PR lead, Igor Konashenkov, among other higher (military) officials. Proekt observed that after these meetings, the invited reporters toned down significantly the commentary on their Telegram channels.

Indeed, when last fall Russian troops withdrew to the left bank of the Dnipro river, many reporters praised the move, comparing it to a boxing retreat and calling it a “military necessity”. The ultimate withdrawal from Kherson which followed soon thereafter was accompanied by silence or dry, neutral reporting.

This trend has been present until this moment, and when the Russian president all of a sudden appointed a new Ukraine invasion commander in January, comments were either absent or played down the significance of a second military leadership change within only three months.

New danger

In October, rumours started circulating around Russian media that several Telegram channels run by war correspondents and commentators had been put under investigation for “spreading misinformation about the Russian armed forces”, the very same censorship law that was passed in Russia only days after the start of the full-scale invasion and resulted in thousands of arrests among protesters against the war and an exodus of journalists and other activists from Russia.

Rumours said that among those otherwise pro-Kremlin Telegram channels was also the Telegram channel WarGonzo, run by the veteran conflict reporter Semyon Pegov, who this January received the above-mentioned government media award.

“There’s again a hunt for military officers and bloggers,” he reacted to the rumours, which he reportedly corroborated with “reliable sources of various types within Russia’s power structures”, blaming “certain generals and commanders” and “traitors” sitting in Moscow offices far from the front.

These rumours have for now waned and there have been no further reports on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels being chased by the authorities or the military. However, only weeks after the news broke, the Russian Federal Security Services (FSB) released an order which forbids publication of information on the needs of Russian troops and the atmosphere among the Russian soldiers on the fronts, alongside a lengthy list of other types of information on the Russian army. (That is, if you do not want to land on one of Russia’s “foreign agent” lists, which drastically limits your job opportunities, among other things.) Although lawyers asked by Russian state media and even some pro-Kremlin editors and journalists dismissed any concerns on the impact of the order to the work of the media, they do point out that the wording in the order is fairly floppy.

Months have passed and war correspondents have received awards and other types of honours by the Russian authorities. Some have even become members of the Russian President’s working group on mobilised soldiers and their families.

The threat of the state machine turning against you, however, remains always present, even if you support the war and the Russian regime.

Source of the cover photo: Kyivcity.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0

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