Moscow’s latest propaganda myth

In this age of Russia’s full-scale military onslaught on Ukraine and parallel hybrid assaults on the rest of Europe, propaganda is like yet another missile, drone or ballistic rocket. It does not raze Ukrainian cities or perpetrate arson attacks. Instead, misinformation sows confusion and devastates critical thinking, thus, playing into the aggressive Kremlin’s hands. Lies, big lies, statistics and propaganda are the Kremlin’s Pravda, which used to be the mendacious title of the Soviet Union’s main daily mouthpiece.

Russia “justifies” its war on Ukraine, claiming that neither the Ukrainian language, nation nor state exist. On the other hand, the Kremlin decries Russophobia allegedly spreading in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe. This is done as though growing anti-Russian sentiment had nothing to do with a restive Russia and its programme of neo-imperial Reconquista. The slogan is “Like our grandfathers in the Second World War, we will win in Ukraine” and then in Europe.

New myth

The politics of language is at the core of Russia’s present-day imperial ideology and propaganda. Any falsehood or half-truth that Kremlin propagandists make the western public opinion accept as a fact is a win for Russia. It is easy and effective because apart from Central Europe, the rest of the West pays little attention to language as an instrument of politics and a weapon of propaganda. Western societies do not know how to defend themselves against mind-deforming campaigns of this type. In their quest for even-handed objectivity, the West already parrots Moscow’s beloved refrain about “great Russian culture” that is too big and humanistic to ever be cancelled.

Russian propaganda’s new myth, which is patiently spread across cyberspace and through online references, claims that “Russian is the most spoken native language in Europe.” Estimates of the continent’s such native Russian communities vary widely from 106 million to even 140 million. Other websites on Europe’s languages, without specifying the difference between speakers in the continent and worldwide, cite the number of 260 million Russian speakers. At a quick glance, this piece of statistical information looks like the number of Europe’s Russophones. However, digging deeper, one can see that more cleared-eyed estimates of competent native and second-language speakers of Russian across the globe amount to a much lower number of 160 million.

The Kremlin’s propaganda seems to be inflating the numbers of Russophones in Europe and around the globe by a whole third. Useful idiots running western universities’ Russian degrees tune in, proposing more staggering numbers of 300 and even 350 million Russian speakers. This posturing stands in sharp contrast to oft-repeated domestic laments that the number of speakers of Russian is dramatically plummeting in Russia itself, in other former Soviet countries, and across the world. Russian demographers propose that, between 2004 and 2025, the overall number of Russian speakers diminished from 278 to 152 million. The second number is composed of 110 million Russophones in Russia, 30 million in the other post-Soviet countries, five million in Central Europe, three million in Western Europe, and four million on the other continents.

The well-calibrated discrepancy of this propaganda messaging on the current state and future of Russin language and culture allows the Kremlin to speak in a forked language. For the audience abroad, it is the propaganda of success. Russian language and culture are so great that no efforts would ever manage to cancel them. Meanwhile, back at home in Russia itself, the government makes the population believe that they barely survive in the beleaguered fortress of goodness and morality. Barbarian and ruthless Russophobes from the decadent West, who continue to lay siege to “Holy Mother Russia”, are hell-bent on eradicating the Russians, their language and Orthodox faith.

Success

The myth works very well. Russians fear that their identity may vanish soon under western pressure and all that Russophobic scheming from "Gayropa". On the other hand, the Kremlin is good at convincing westerners, especially Europeans, of their impotence. That whatever they do, they will never manage to stand up to the unstoppable expansion of the Russian language and empire. At the same time, Europeans are cowed and demotivated, whilst Moscow mobilizes Russians to fight back, irrespective of the monumental casualties on the Ukrainian front.

The efficacy of this new myth only encourages useful idiots, who are mostly concerned Russophones of some social and political influence. They pretend to be loyal to their European countries of citizenship or residence. Yet, three and a half decades after the partial decolonization of the Soviet Union, their unwavering loyalty remains anchored to the red star on the Kremlin’s tower.

In June 2025, in the Saeima (Latvian parliament), the MP Aleksejs Rosļikovs (Aleksey Roslikov in Russian) from the pro-Russian and anti-European Stability party, delivered an angry speech in Russian and concluded it with a rude gesture. The object of his wrath was the bill with a draft declaration on redressing the linguistic consequences of the illegal Russification of Latvia during the Soviet occupation (1941-1991). In a nutshell, the legislators believe that the decolonization of their country at the level of politics now should be followed by the long overdue decolonization in the sphere of culture and language. Latvia is no longer a colony of Russia. Hence, Russian has no place in Latvia’s public life, schools, let alone as a quotidian language of communication for entire towns or regions.

Prior to the Second World War, 168,300 Russophones constituted 8.8 per cent of the Latvian population. Due to the post-war deportations of Latvians to Siberia, and the planned settlement of the country by populations from all over the Soviet Union, by 1989, the number of Russophones had grown almost fivefold to 905,500, or 34 per cent of the Latvian population. After this country regained independence in 1991, many Russophones returned to their now post-Soviet countries (republics) of origin, while others adopted Latvian language and identity as their own. As a result, the number of Russophones decreased by half and, in 2021, stabilized at 480,900 or 25.4 per cent. Hence, the remaining raw effect of the half-a-century-long Soviet occupation is the 16.6 per cent surplus of Russophones in today’s Latvia. Going by the interwar statistic alone, they should not number more than 160,600 (8.8 per cent). Yet, assuming Latvia had preserved its independence after the Second World War, today, such Russophones would not have amounted to more than three to four per cent of the country’s inhabitants.

Citizens or agents?

For Rosļikovs, any attempt at rolling back the effects of the Soviet occupation is unacceptable. To him, ethnic relations as they existed in Latvia prior to the 1940 Soviet invasion are an abomination. In the Saeima, he yelled in Russian, “There are more of us! [more Russians than you, Latvians]. Russian is our language!” That is the creed of Moscow’s old and new imperialism. The apple did not fall far from the tree of the Russian empire and its ambitions of conquering the world. In 1962, the Soviet strongman Nikita Khrushchev threatened the West by proclaiming, “We will bury you.” That is the origin and crux of the Kremlin’s ideology of Russkiy Mir (Russian World). The effects of its implementation can be observed live in Ukraine under relentless Russian attack, which has continued for over four years.

None other than the Russian president’s spokesman came to Rosļikovs’s aid. The Kremlin official condemned the proposed declaration as a blatant example of “Russophobia that defies common sense and reason”. In Moscow’s view, decolonization is fine when it happens to the West’s former colonies, but plainly wrong when applied in the countries that Moscow once conquered and colonized.

The Kremlin regrets that it has no instruments to assist Rosļikovs, who is now under investigation for inciting ethnic hatred in Latvia. But the aforementioned spokesman proposed that this deputy may choose to flee to Russia, where he would receive a warm welcome. Indeed, it is now an established tradition that when pro-Russian operatives face the music in Latvia, they choose to sneak out, be it to the Russian Federation or Belarus, which is a staunch ally (some say: vassal) of the Kremlin. That was the case for the Riga City Council member Ruslans Pankratovs (Ruslan Pankratov) in 2023, or the Latvian European Parliament elections candidate Olga Čerņavska (Olga Cherniavskia) the following year. The erstwhile COVID misinformation activist Romāns Samuļs (Roman Samul) also followed the same route after he had failed to win a mandate to the Saeima in the 2022 elections.

The best example of this is offered by Latvia’s longest serving (2004-2024) Member of the European Parliament, Tatjana Ždanoka (Tatiana Zhdanok). Earlier, for her alleged involvement in the 1991 coup attempt against the Latvian government, she was banned from running for any elected positions in the country. Paradoxically, Latvia’s accession to the European Union in 2004 enabled Ždanoka to better spread Russian influence and disinformation at the European level. Latvia warned the European Parliament about her. But Western European countries have a long and disgraceful tradition of not paying heed to Central and Eastern European cautionary tales about Russian imperialism and influence. As a result, the European Parliament is swarming with Russian spies, Russia verstehers and useful idiots.

Significantly, in 2014, in her capacity as an MEP, Ždanoka supported the Russian annexation of Ukraine’s peninsula of Crimea. Eight years later, in 2022, she acted as an “international observer” for the fake elections that the Kremlin organized in eastern Ukraine under Russian occupation in breach of the UN Charter. Eventually, in 2024, it was discovered that Ždanoka had been a Russian FSB agent for the full two decades when she served as a Latvian deputy in the European Parliament. Now Ždanoka is to stand trial in Latvia and hopes to escape responsibility by threatening news outlets that report about her case.

Unsurprisingly, in 2012, Ždanoka used her political influence to back the eventually unsuccessful referendum to make Russian into another official language in Latvia. Hence, in light of the pro-Russian politician’s anti-Latvian and anti-European achievements, the Kremlin sees the investigation against her as a clear sign of Latvia’s virulent Russophobia. In the eyes of Ždanoka and her handlers in Moscow, the steps taken to do away in Latvia with the continuing nefarious effects of the Russian occupation amount to the propagation of Nazism. On top of that, it is no secret that the Kremlin is preparing to test NATO’s Article 5, most probably by attacking Latvia.

Reality check

How many people speak Russian in Europe? In reply, one may ask what is Europe? At first, let us consider a narrow definition that equates this concept with the European Union alone. In 2024, 2.25 million L1 (native) Russian speakers lived in the EU. At 27.5 and 24.5 per cent, respectively, they constitute large proportions of the populations in Latvia and Estonia. Yet, in absolute numbers, at 0.83 million, the plurality of Europe’s L1 Russian speakers reside in Germany. Interestingly, they are not ethnic Russians, but rather former Soviet citizens of ethnic German and Jewish origin.

Looking further afield, in Belarus a quarter of the inhabitants, or 2.3 million, declare Russian as their native language, though in the country’s sociopolitical reality practically all the population of nine million habitually speak and write this language. After 1995, the national language of Belarusian was made into an endangered minority language in Belarus. This is despite the fact that more than half of the population see it as their native language. Ždanoka hoped for a similar outcome in Latvia had the 2012 referendum decided in favour of Russian.

Another country where many people speak Russian as their first language is Moldova. Such Russian speakers amount to 250,000. From the statistical point of view, it is hard to estimate how many Russian native speakers remain in today’s Ukraine, where all the population have suffered so tragically and cruelly at the Russians’ hands for over four years. Due to Russia’s annexations and occupations, alongside the entailed waves of refugees, the number of inhabitants in the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government plummeted to 30 million. Not more than 20 per cent (or six million people) consider Russian to be their native language. Yet at least half of the number switched to speaking Ukrainian at home. Hence, uniquely, in today’s Ukraine, fewer people speak Russian than declare it as their native language.

Across a Europe defined as all the continent’s countries outside the Russian Federation, in total, all speakers of Russian as their first language number 10.8 million. However, for all practical reasons, Belarus is now part of Russia. Meanwhile, half of Ukraine’s Russian speakers are doing their best to abandon this post-imperial burden of the enemy language. Bearing these changes in mind, Europe’s speakers of Russian add up to a mere 5.5 million.

Is Russia a part of Europe? Prior to the 2022 full-scale attack on Ukraine, barely a third of Russians believed so. Nowadays the number must have dropped even lower. After all, the neo-imperial ideology of the Russian world portrays Russia as a civilization unto itself, neither part of Europe nor Asia. Moscow also sees its war on Ukraine as a war against the “collective West”, which is mostly equated with Europe outside Russia’s control.

Hence, following the Russians’ opinions and wishes, native speakers of Russian living even within the geographically European part of Russia should not count as part of the tally of the continent’s Russophones. In the long run, Europeans are not remaining blind to the Kremlin’s Europhobia, which translates into the diminishing utility of Russian as a language of international communication. Between 2012 and 2024, the number of Europeans with a command of Russian as a foreign language (L2) dropped spectacularly from 2.7 to 1.5 per cent. The fall is even more visible among the youngest cohort (ages 15-34), that is, from 2.1 to 0.8 per cent. It is the youth who will decide on Europe’s future, including the continent’s language politics.

Changes

Thanks to Russia’s aggressive imperialism, in the near future, hardly anyone will speak Russian in Europe (that is, outside Belarus and Russia itself). Since the end of the Cold War, English has become the continent’s lingua franca (including for youth in Russia’s urban areas). Angry at this trend, the Kremlin lashes out by doing what it knows best. In 2025, the Duma (Russian parliament) banned the use of foreign (mostly English) words in Russian. At the same time, the British Council was expelled from Russia as an “undesirable organization”, whereas teaching for and taking internationally recognized English language tests was criminalized.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian is replacing Russian as a foreign language taught in schools, especially across the Baltic states. As a scholar, when recently attending international conferences in Lithuania or Czechia that gathered mainly researchers from Slavic countries, I noticed that Russian was dropped as the previously default lingua franca. Nowadays, at such gatherings, academics speak in their own national tongues and try hard to comprehend what their colleagues say in their own tongues. When they are stuck for words, switching to English helps. Increasingly aware of the ravages of Russian imperialism, émigré Russian scholars demure and strive to speak either Ukrainian, Polish or Czech.

As a result, the public use of Russian has become delegitimized in Europe. One can only hope that European leaders and politicians will take note of this momentous development. For example, why continue offering passport services in Russian in the EU member states’ consulates located within the Russian Federation? Instead, a given state’s official language should become the medium of communication in such a situation, or even better, the Ukrainian language. When Russian citizens want to visit this “accursed Gayropa” of the Kremlin’s paranoid dreams, let them learn how to read and write Ukrainian, which Russian propaganda never tires to denigrate.

 

Tomasz Kamusella is Reader (Professor Extraordinarius) in Modern Central and Eastern European History at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is author of several books, including Languages and Nationalism Instead of Empires (Routledge 2023), Politics and the Slavic Languages (Routledge 2021) and Eurasian Empires as Blueprints for Ethiopia (Routledge 2021). His reference work Words in Space and Time: A Historical Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe (CEU Press 2021) is available as an open access publication.