NATO-backed study finds Russia’s propaganda is weakest in the first 18 hours of a crisis

A new study by NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, commissioned with Repsense, says Russia’s propaganda system is most vulnerable in the first 18 hours after an unexpected crisis. The 194-page report says speed, not volume, is the key opportunity for counter-messaging before the Kremlin locks in a single narrative.

Why it matters: - The study says Russia’s propaganda machine is most exposed before an official line is set. - That window creates a short but meaningful opening for fact-based responses and competing explanations. - The finding matters for governments, media and researchers tracking disinformation during fast-moving crises.

What happened: - Repsense shared "Crisis, Control, Crusade: Russia's Propaganda Architecture," a study produced by NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence and carried out with political science researchers. - The report examined about 3.13 million Russian media and social network items over 15 months. - The study covered the period from 1 January 2024 to 31 March 2025. - The full 194-page report is available at stratcomcoe.org.

The details: - The researchers say Russia’s information system follows the same order in each crisis, making its behavior predictable. - In the first phase, competing versions of events circulate and no official story is settled. - In the second phase, one Kremlin-backed interpretation is repeated across state websites, television and Telegram. - In the third phase, the event is reframed as part of a broader confrontation with the West. - The researchers call the model Crisis, Control, Crusade, or 3C. - Mykolas Katkus, Repsense chief executive and one of the study’s authors, said the Kremlin takes an average of 18 hours to agree on an official position. - Katkus said the speed of the response matters more than completeness because audiences may already have settled on an interpretation after a day. - The clearest example came on 6 August 2024, when Ukrainian forces crossed into Russia’s Kursk region. - Russian state media said nothing for seven hours after the operation began. - During that window, Telegram channels and military bloggers tested competing explanations. - Channels presenting themselves as independent often published near-identical text within minutes of one another. - After the Kremlin agreed on a line, state websites, television and Telegram repeated the same version simultaneously. - The final phase cast the event as Russia under attack by the West and defending its values. - In the Kursk case, Russian messaging escalated into nuclear rhetoric, including accusations that Ukrainians were "nuclear terrorists" allegedly targeting the Kursk nuclear power plant. - The report says the Kremlin later updated its nuclear doctrine in the autumn, lowering the threshold for threats to use nuclear weapons. - Nerijus Maliukevičius of Vilnius University said the system’s weakest point is the transition from chaos to control, when informational interventions and fact-based explanations are still possible. - The study says each platform has a different role: state websites move slowly and provide institutional authority, television supplies the emotional account, and Telegram is the fastest channel for testing narratives. - The researchers say Russia has since started replacing Telegram with Max, a state-controlled messenger. - The report concludes that the primary audience is Russia’s own population, not foreign audiences. - The study says Kremlin narratives still reached some foreign media in the Kursk case because early coverage drew on regional Russian accounts when other sources were scarce. - In the other cases examined, foreign outlets generally did not repeat Russian versions uncritically and instead paired them with denials or critical framing. - The study says a separate propaganda infrastructure operates abroad through comment sections, bots, trolls and sympathetic local actors.

Between the lines: - The report suggests the Kremlin is not just pushing content. It is managing the timing of interpretation. - That makes the first hours of a crisis more important than a later flood of talking points. - The findings also point to Telegram’s declining exclusivity inside Russia if Max becomes the main testing ground for new narratives.

What’s next: - The report’s main policy implication is that rapid response is more effective than waiting for a fully polished counter-narrative. - Researchers and communicators are likely to focus more on the first hours after a crisis, when narrative control is not yet locked in. - The study may also sharpen attention on how Russia shifts propaganda distribution from Telegram to state-controlled platforms.