When Russia goes to the polls next week, Vladimir Putin will be backed by an operation that will have cost nearly £1bn to shape public opinion and boost turnout as he seeks a public mandate for his war in Ukraine and continued rule as Russia’s potential president-for-life.
Internal Kremlin documents leaked to the Estonian outlet Delfi and shared with other media organisations, including the Guardian, detail how the administration has pumped money into a network of NGOs and companies to create media content such as films and Telegram channels, conduct secret polling, organise youth festivals and establish new media in the occupied territories of Ukraine, which are expected to provide hundreds of thousands more votes for Putin.
“We will no longer tolerate criticism of our democracy and claims that it is not what it should be. Our democracy is the best, and we will continue to build it,” Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri Peskov, told a youth festival in southern Russia this week. Like dozens of other efforts meant to imitate civil society, the event held by the Znanie or Knowledge organisation was also backed by lavish spending from the Kremlin.
One analyst who has consulted political campaigners in Russia described the spending, if accurate, as a free-for-all, specifically noting the surge in spending on media. The head of one media organisation funded by the Kremlin claimed there had been a 20-fold increase in state spending on internet projects since 2018 and that the group supported 40% of all original Russian platform content to achieve “what the state needs”.
Much of that is patriotic content, just one part of the efforts at “pre-rigging” the elections to help ensure a broad turnout and reduce the need for cruder forms of manipulation.
VSquare, a member of the investigative consortium that analysed the total budget, divided the Kremlin spending into three main categories – the presidential elections, information management and the occupied areas of Ukraine. It estimated the total to be €1.1bn (£938m), of which the largest share, as much as €631m, was allocated to the “information war”.
Russian domestic politics are “curated” by the presidential administration, meaning they are largely directed centrally to provide an illusion of choice while delivering an outcome suitable to the Kremlin. That effort is led by Sergey Kiriyenko, a former prime minister who serves as a deputy chief of staff for Putin’s administration, along with his team, including Alexander Kharichev, who specialises in running elections, and Sergei Novikov, another aide named in the financial documents.
The Kremlin has rolled out a series of new tools to help its “get out the vote” campaign, including a three-day voting period and electronic voting in 29 regions including Moscow. These are on top of familiar efforts by the heads of state-run enterprises to entice or force thousands of workers to the polls.
The voting rights organisation Golos reported on Thursday that Russia’s ruling party had even developed an app that would make it possible to monitor voter turnout among millions of state employees, although it did not appear to be widely used yet.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, has said that Putin insisted on Russia continuing to hold elections after he launched his invasion in Ukraine, cutting off a torrid debate in his administration over whether or not to cancel them because of the war.
“Elections as a procedure are very important to him,” she said. “It’s a resource for him.”
She said Putin could seek a result as high as 85% of the vote this year.
Kiriyenko’s bloc is believed to have encouraged Putin to run on a positive platform of improving life and material benefits for ordinary Russians. His team sought to have him announce his candidacy at the Russia exhibition at the VDNKh centre in Moscow, also part of the nearly £1bn spending operation to promote national values.
Instead he declared his candidacy during a meeting with Russian war veterans, putting the Ukraine invasion front and centre as he seeks another six-year term. He is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin, and will surpass his time in power if he runs for re-election in 2030.
The leaked documents show the government has poured millions into content, including films and even video games that are meant to extol the war in Ukraine.
One film that received state funding was 20/22, in which a young Russian man, Danila, signs up with an unnamed private military company that resembles the disbanded Wagner Group and participates in the invasion of Mariupol. His girlfriend Alisa, who had opposed the war, travels to the warzone to search for him.
It was shot on location in Mariupol last year, among buildings hollowed out by the Russian assault that left thousands of people dead.
The point of the film is not difficult to see. “Through the fate of the heroes, the authors show how the loss of national identity, the loss of their independence, leads to a great human tragedy,” a description in the leaked files says.
A first series of the film was released on Russia’s Channel One on 23 February, the day before the second anniversary of the invasion.
It was shot with support from the Internet Development Institute (IRI), and is one of a series of films planned for this year to keep patriotic content on TV in the run-up to the elections.
The IRI is run by Alexey Goreslavsky, a Kremlin-linked media executive whose appointment led to an exodus of liberal journalists from the outlet Lenta.Ru, and who later worked as a member of Putin’s presidential administration. It was given 22bn roubles (£190m) from the state budget in 2023, including 18bn for election-related projects.
As of 2023, Goreslavsky said, IRI produced more than 40% of all original content in the Russian market. “We own a certain share of this market in order to convey, quite simply and clearly, what the state needs,” he said last month. The budget dwarfs that of the Russian state film fund, which bankrolls much of the industry.
Other efforts detailed in the documents include funding pro-Kremlin pundits such as Vladimir Soloviev, whose compensation is listed as almost £13m and is said to depend on an upcoming meeting with Putin, mass spending on pro-Kremlin Telegram accounts, sponsoring polling in the occupied territories of Ukraine and commissioning reports on internet censorship.
