Amazons of Kremlin propaganda

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How Moscow’s female propagandists on TikTok support Russia’s war against Ukraine.

In my free time, I sometimes browse TikTok. And I regularly come across the Kremlin’s militant Amazons there, who almost foam at the mouth defending the war. This whole blonde-and-glasses performance of theirs astonishingly accurately copies the behavior of their chief idol. For them, Putin is not just a president — he is a budget version of Peter the Great’s successor. He constantly invokes the first Russian emperor as a "collector of lands" and repeats that they are now simply "taking back what is theirs."

The joint creation of the Kremlin dictator and his internet Amazons looks simply pathetic. Calling this content "provincial" would be paying them far too generous a compliment. This is not provincialism. It is wild, stinking, moth-eaten junk that they are trying to pass off as cutting-edge geopolitical thought.

Leading this mothball ballet is Masha Chadina. This girl, with her cold gray-blue stare, would look phenomenally fitting in a classic Hugo Boss Gestapo uniform. A genuine example of a "true Aryan" from Kaluga Oblast, who, with childlike sincerity, dreams of the final solution to the question of a neighboring state.

When people call her a Kremlin propagandist, she does not take offense. Instead, she happily claps her hands and proudly embraces the status of an "agent." Well, why not? For a provincial girl from Obninsk who desperately wanted to make something of herself, this is quite a respectable career achievement.

Her main superpower is the ability to wrap openly absurd, cannibalistic theses about the "greatness of Russia" and the destruction of its neighbors in the elegant wrapper of pseudo-intellectualism. Masha, with a knowing expression, explains to the common people that war is necessary in order to "increase influence."

True, this is where her geopolitical analytical genius develops a slight malfunction. Exactly how Russia’s "influence" is enhanced by occupying completely devastated and deserted ruins, turning its own country into a global pariah with a ruined economy, and losing up to a million able-bodied men—Masha does not specify. Instead, like a wind-up doll, she repeats the sacred mantra: "Everything will be Russia, and victory will be ours!"

The naïve child inside me inevitably wakes up and feels obliged to comment on her patriotic post: "Yes, Mashenka, of course everything will be Russia... well, except for the Far East and Siberia — those will belong to China." It seems that after a few comments like that, she blocked me.

But in return for this devoted bootlicking, Masha received an award from Russia’s state Internet Development Institute along with substantial funding from the state budget. The award was presented by the famous designer Artemy Lebedev, a man who pretends to be provocative but, in reality, faithfully flatters Putin’s cannibalistic policies. While the average Russian mobilized soldier loses limbs in the trenches, Masha successfully converts her "unique female perspective on the SMO" into million-ruble contracts from a grateful Kremlin.

The next star of our mothball hit parade calls herself "Shapoklyak TV." Visually, she looks more like an absent-minded academic: a round face hidden behind glasses of such cosmic proportions that the author herself is barely visible behind them. One would think that nothing in life interests her except dusty archives and scientific research.

But the lady philosophizes! And she aims for the highest league — exclusively "for intellectuals." Her superpower is constructing profound philosophical foundations beneath regional misanthropic talking points. In her worldview, war is "the mathematics of history" and "objective determinism," while empathy is condemned as infantilism. The pinnacle of her work is her fierce hatred of the "damned rotten West," which she tirelessly denounces in her lectures.

And here comes the peak of the sarcasm. Meet this passionate defender of Russian "traditional values." According to her passport, her name is Alexandra Kishkurno. But that sounds somehow too ordinary, so for the European community she elegantly transformed herself into the refined Madame Lumel (Lemesle).

Madame Kishkurno-Lumel reached the summit of cynicism not on TikTok but in the pages of her autobiographical book with the eloquent title Dancing on Nails, or How to Marry a Foreigner Without Getting Into Trouble. While her ideological idol in the Kremlin frightens his subjects with "Western values" and Europe’s destructive influence, Alexandra not only married a French citizen and took his surname, Lemesle, but even wrote an entire instruction manual about it!

It is a truly brilliant level of business thinking: first explain in detail how to secure a bridgehead in capitalist hell and obtain a French passport, then earn euros by providing legal consultations to other escapees from the "rising from its knees" motherland, and meanwhile safely curse the "rotten West" on camera from Toulouse. A true patriot: exposing the hypocrisy of Europeans is much more comfortable when you yourself are Madame Lumel and your marriage contract is securely protected by strict French law.

Every day Madame leaves her cozy French apartment, buys fresh croissants with euros, and returns to her computer to tell Russians how passionately they should love Putin’s expansionism. More than that, she has built an entire business around it: in exchange for euros, she provides legal consultations and helps other Russians move to that very same "terrible" France! Loving Russian tanks is much more pleasant when there are several thousand kilometers and a secure French residence permit between you and those tanks.

The third specimen in our mothball collection is Elizaveta Korchagina, who for some reason decided to call herself by the expressive online nickname Zanoza ("Splinter"). Liza’s main weapon is her acting ability. She performs for the camera with such exaggerated melodrama and artificiality that not even the most remote provincial youth theater would cast her as a tree stump. But for exposing "Nazi" Ukraine, this low-grade circus is perfectly sufficient.

Liza’s career path is a comedy in itself. She began as a reviewer of Moscow restaurants and cozy cafés, as anyone can verify from her Instagram profile. But at some point, the food critic inside Liza heard the Kremlin’s call, and Madame decided to pull off a trick—brilliantly mixing apples and oranges.

Right between reviewing tom yum soup and prosecco, she suddenly began authoritatively commenting on the Russian-Ukrainian war. Elizaveta Korchagina’s culinary logic is a true gastronomic masterpiece. In her blogger’s cauldron, slogans about "Hang the Moskals," the Maidan, supposedly anti-Russian graffiti on fences, and Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO somehow all boil together into one porridge. And — miracle of miracles! — inside her head, this wild vinaigrette instantly transforms into an ironclad justification for going out and killing Ukrainians.

It is impossible to comprehend this trajectory. In absolutely every one of her videos, emotion and exaggerated facial expressions dominate common sense. When there are no arguments but the Moscow ration still has to be earned, all that remains is rolling one’s eyes and wringing one’s hands dramatically before the camera.

If you thought that Soviet political instructors who spent decades talking about the "decaying West" disappeared together with the shortage of sausage, you were mistaken. They did not die out. They simply received an upgrade. Now, instead of a gray-haired lecturer with a folder labeled "International Situation," we have a TikTok blogger speaking at machine-gun speed, with the enthusiasm of a district Komsomol secretary and a level of critical thinking that seems to have been lost somewhere between the propaganda manual and the teleprompter.

Meet Ksenia Buglak. She is not Russian. She is Belarusian.

An almost museum-quality type. The same Komsomol activist who has not even finished speaking yet, but already knows who is responsible for all humanity’s misfortunes. Had she been born in 1978, she would have exposed American imperialism in a wall newspaper. Born later, she now exposes it on TikTok.

It all started quite routinely: studying at Mogilev University, carrying a camera, working for a regional newspaper. But photographing model workers is a thankless job. Social media algorithms have long explained one simple truth: a tractor driver gets fewer likes than NATO.

And Ksenia made the career choice that was right for life in an authoritarian state. If you want to be noticed, you should not ask the authorities uncomfortable questions. Instead, you should answer, as loudly as possible, questions that nobody ever asked.

Thus, the project Politics Without Makeup was born. The title, however, is somewhat inaccurate. There is indeed no makeup there, but there is a thick layer of propagandistic cosmetics covering almost every sentence.

Career advancement came quickly. An aggressive style, the correct intonations, and flawless reproduction of official narratives soon opened the doors to Belarus’s main state mouthpiece — SB. Belarus Segodnya. In systems of this kind, talent is appreciated. Especially the talent of flawlessly repeating what others have already written.

Recently, Ksenia once again explained to her audience that the spirit of Anchorage had evaporated, American power had come to an end, Russia had defeated everyone, and the strikes against Ukraine had been a brilliant military operation.

There is just one inconvenience, however.

While she enthusiastically spoke about the "destruction of military targets," the bodies of dead civilians were being recovered from beneath the rubble of Ukrainian apartment buildings.

But this is one of those cases where reality simply gets in the way of a beautiful picture. If the facts do not match the propaganda manual, then so much the worse for the facts.

Yet perhaps the best way to understand Ksenia is not through geopolitics but through her stomach.

During one Belarusian talk show, while condemning artists who had left the country after the 2020 protests, she indignantly declared that in Belarus they had lived "do raspiraniya v zhivote" ("until their stomachs were bursting").

The phrase may have been accidental.

Or perhaps it was brilliant.

Because it describes with astonishing precision not those artists but the entire value system served by state propaganda. There, loyalty is measured not by freedom, professionalism, or conscience. Loyalty is measured by the feeding trough. If the trough is full, then everything is wonderful. And if that requires going on TikTok every single day and, with Komsomol enthusiasm, proving that black is white and missiles striking residential neighborhoods are a struggle for peace, then... well, that is simply the job.

You watch these videos and realize that the Soviet Union really did collapse. But Komsomol enthusiasm turned out to be remarkably resilient. It merely exchanged its red necktie for a smartphone and political briefings for vertical videos. And, apparently, it feels in this format "do raspiraniya v zhivote."

How "different" and "unique" these internet Amazons of Putin’s Middle Ages truly are! The diversity of characters in the Kremlin’s cabinet of curiosities is simply dazzling.

But if you wash away the cheap makeup, the theatrical antics, the giant glasses, and the Komsomol enthusiasm, one single, ironclad common feature is revealed. All of them — from Parisian cafés to Minsk offices — unanimously, in one voice, support the savage, cannibalistic, and bloody policies of their Kremlin idol.