A revolutionary new study shows that Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine not only genuinely believe state propaganda but also that the strength of their beliefs strongly correlates with their dehumanization of Ukrainians, their conviction that the war against Ukraine is necessary and legitimate, and their self-identification with the broader “Russian world” for which they are willing to fight and die. These findings illustrate how state rhetoric can create the conditions for atrocities on the ground, helping to close one of the most persistent legal gaps in holding propagandists accountable.
Working with support from the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, Ukrainian nongovernment organization LingvaLexa surveyed 1,060 Russian prisoners of war held in Ukrainian camps. The findings are stark: Belief in Russian propaganda is widespread. Seventy-six percent of respondents endorsed at least one of the 18 narratives tested.
The most widely accepted narratives echoed core Kremlin talking points: that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, that armed groups in the Donbas and Crimea were ordinary Ukrainians defending their rights, that “Ukraine is a ‘Western puppet,’ and that “NATO is waging war against Russia ‘through Ukraine.’
Even the least popular of these narratives—the idea that Ukraine’s leadership and military are “Nazis,” that “NATO has biolabs in Ukraine to attack Russia” and that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are using civilians as human shields—are still believed by more than 60 percent of the prisoners of war who were surveyed.
These claims are demonstrably false. Russia’s military involvement, political control, and the economic and administrative integration of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics—as well as its annexation of Crimea—are extensively documented. While NATO countries provide Ukraine with military and financial assistance, it is Ukrainian forces that bear the brunt of the fighting. The notion that Russians and Ukrainians are one people draws on 19thcentury imperial historiography shaped by the political needs of the Russian Empire and rooted in selective readings of history.
Hundreds of international journalists and observers working in Ukraine over the past four years have found no evidence of NATO-run biolabs, Nazis in the country’s leadership, or Ukrainian Armed Forces deliberately using civilians for defense purposes.
To capture the strength of these convictions, the researchers asked prisoners of war to rate their agreement with each narrative on a 0-to-10 scale—allowing for nuance rather than concealment. They found that the strongest-held beliefs mostly overlap with the most popular.
Respondents were also asked, using the same scale, to assess whether the so-called “special military operation”—the Kremlin’s term for the war—was “necessary, justified, and legitimate”—and whether they would consider returning to the Russian Armed Forces in a prisoner exchange.
To probe identity and attitudes toward Ukrainians, the researchers used visual aids. In one, the respondents were asked to mark their location relative to a circle representing the so-called “Russian world,” defined as “an ideology centered around the belief that there is a single, unified cultural and civilizational space centered around the Russian language, Orthodox Christianity, and shared historical experience.”
In another, based on a standard evolutionary diagram, they were asked to indicate where they believed Ukrainians fall on the scale from ape to modern human.
Comparing two sets of responses reveals a clear pattern: A stronger belief in propaganda correlates with greater justification for war, deeper identification with the so-called “Russian world,” and a greater level of dehumanization of Ukrainians.
Soldiers who fully embraced propaganda were six times more likely to view the war as completely legitimate. About half of strong believers identified “feeling completely ‘fused’ with the Russian world ideology,” compared with roughly 40 percent among those with weaker beliefs.
The most striking findings concern dehumanization. Some 43 percent of respondents did not attribute full human characteristics to Ukrainians, placing them on average at just 88 percent of full human development—roughly midway between Cro-Magnons and modern humans. Among weaker believers, this view was held by 36 percent; among strong believers, it rose to 54 percent.
Consider the level of conviction required for soldiers to admit that they view Ukrainians—who have captured them, held them in a prisoner-of-war camp, and administered the survey itself—as less than fully human. That assessment is all the more striking given that many of the same respondents simultaneously embraced the notion that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people.”
Finally, the clearest link between propaganda and action emerges in willingness to return to fight. Overall, 12.8 percent of prisoners of war said they would rejoin the Russian Armed Forces after release. This may seem relatively low, but consider that these are the individuals who have directly experienced combat in Ukraine, where Russian forces are estimated to have suffered nearly 1.4 million killed, wounded, or missing since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Among those with strong beliefs in propaganda, the number rises sharply: Roughly one third expressed some willingness to rejoin the Russian Armed Forces, and 22 percent of respondents were willing to reenlist in combat roles.
Propaganda is not the sole driver—economic pressures, coercion, and the willingness to avoid prison also shape decisions. But the findings underscore propaganda’s key role in dehumanizing the enemy and sustaining the willingness to continue fighting.
All respondents of this study had lived in Russia prior to deployment and had no firsthand experience of Ukraine outside war; their perceptions were shaped almost entirely by propaganda.
By contrast, those mobilized from occupied Ukrainian territories—approximately 50,000 Ukrainians since the start of the full-scale invasion—conscripted via the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic/Luhansk People’s Republic militias and directly by Russia—had lived in Ukraine before 2014 and had firsthand experience.
Seventeen in-depth interviews conducted by the Reckoning Project— a global team of journalists and lawyers documenting, publicizing, and building cases of atrocity crimes—with prisoners of war from the occupied territories show how propaganda creates a framework that allows individuals to justify participation in a war against their own country.
All interviewees said they had no problems living in Ukraine before 2014, speaking Russian or interacting with people from other parts of the country. The imprint of propaganda is evident in their language—referring to Ukrainian forces as “punishers” and repeating claims that Ukraine shelled the Donbas for eight years.
The narratives shaping these groups differ, but they overlap in important ways. Unlike Russian POWs, those mobilized from occupied territories did not insist that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people.” Instead, many expressed uncertainty about their own identity, defining it in regional or linguistic terms. Many acknowledged Russian military involvement and coercive mobilization while still rationalizing both the separatist movement and Moscow’s role.
The sharpest divergence concerns the broader war. Most said they believed that they were defending the Donbas—with Russian backing—from Ukrainian forces and struggled to explain the conflict beyond this territory, resorting to different conspiracy theories. As one 24-year-old from Luhansk put it, Russia acted to prevent Ukraine and the United States from moving “closer to its borders,” suggesting, hesitantly, that American ships or even nuclear facilities could otherwise be deployed nearby.
What unites both groups is their hostility toward the 2014 Revolution of Dignity or Euromaidan, a mass popular uprising that began in Kyiv after President Viktor Yanukovych abruptly reversed course on closer integration with the European Union. The propaganda narrative that the 2014 revolution was a coup d’état was the fourth strongest-held belief among Russian prisoners of war in the study.
For prisoners of war from the occupied territories, Euromaidan also was something orchestrated. “People don’t just rise up on their own—there’s always a leader behind it,” one respondent said. Another dismissed the protests as the work of people with “nothing to do.”
Taken together, the LingvaLexa study and the Reckoning Project interviews point to a clear link between belief in a propaganda make-believe world and the willingness to act in a real world—including in engaging in war crimes and mass atrocities.
In 1945, at the International Military Tribunal (better known as the Nuremberg trials), two high-level Nazi functionaries faced the accusations of spreading hateful propaganda that fueled the genocide of the Jewish population—but only one of them was found guilty. Julius Streicher, a founder of the newspaper Der Stürmer, was sentenced to death by hanging for crimes against humanity.
The tribunal concluded that his relentless antisemitic propaganda helped create conditions for the Holocaust. The prosecution was able to prove that Streicher knew about the atrocities committed against the Jewish population but continued, as a publisher and a writer, to call for exempting Jews from the German society, maligning, slandering, and dehumanizing them.
But Hans Fritzsche, who until 1938 headed the German press department at the Ministry of Propaganda and later led radio broadcasting, was acquitted. Fritzsche issued daily directives to German editors on how to present key Nazi ideas, including the so-called “Jewish question,” and then hosted a radio program in which he personally disseminated antisemitic messages.
During his trial, Fritzsche was able to minimize his responsibility, denying the destructive impact of propaganda. Ultimately, he didn’t escape accountability. A German denazification court later found that he played a significant role in sustaining the Nazi regime and that his propaganda materially contributed to its crimes. He was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment—the maximum penalty available.
Since 1945, international law defining propaganda and its role in inciting violence—including genocide—has evolved through legal developments and case law, notably in relations to the Rwandan genocide, where radio broadcasts played a key role in inciting mass murder, as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
These findings of the LingaLexa study may carry evidentiary value for future accountability mechanisms, whether through a new tribunal addressing the crime of aggression or through existing international and domestic jurisdictions.
In particular, the data may help substantiate arguments that propaganda was not merely a parallel phenomenon accompanying the war, but a functional instrument that facilitated its preparation, justification, and continuation. For example, evidence showing a link between propaganda exposure and the internalization of narratives legitimizing the war can help demonstrate that such messaging was not politically incidental, but operationally significant. Likewise, correlations between propaganda adherence, dehumanization of Ukrainians, and willingness to reengage in combat may be relevant to showing how propaganda contributed to the broader machinery of aggression and violence.
These findings contribute to the growing body of work on identifying legal ways to hold propagandists accountable. In a recent report, the Reckoning Project and Global Rights Compliance—an international law organization focused on accountability—examined how propaganda can cross into criminal conduct. They argue that when propaganda intentionally and materially supports crimes—by enabling, coordinating, or helping to conceal them—it can meet the legal threshold for liability, including aiding and abetting a group’s common criminal purpose.
At a minimum, the findings can assist investigators in contextualizing propaganda not as isolated expression, but as part of an organized system capable of shaping attitudes, legitimizing criminal conduct, and reducing moral restraints on participation in violence. They may help bridge a persistent evidentiary gap between propaganda outputs on the one hand and legally cognizable contribution, intent, or knowledge on the other.
Victoriia Novikova, a Reckoning Project researcher, contributed to this piece.
