Abstract
Over the recent decades Russian television has been the main vehicle of propaganda discourse in the country. The author conducted analysis of five most popular weekly current affairs TV programs on Russian television, namely 'Voskresnoye Vremya' (Channel 1), 'Vesti Nedeli' (Russia 1), 'Itogi Nedeli' (NTV), 'Dobrov v efire' (REN), 'Izvestiya. Glavnoe' (Channel 5), broadcasted from September 2020 to May 2021.
The analysis demonstrated that propaganda discourse had a well-engineered pattern containing meta-messages and was based on a strongly pronounced opposition: us and them. 'Us' is meant as Russia and its people, while 'them' refers to the so-called 'collective West'. This pattern boasts the characteristics of universalism and flexibility. These propaganda messages carry in them a general ideological premise, which can be formulated in the following way: 'Russia is a great country but the West strives to destroy it'.
Opposition 'us' vs 'them' was promoted through the following major methods: 1) Verbal. It can be divided into explicit and implicit. 2) Contextual. It can be direct, indirect and tangential.
The universal pattern provides propagandists with the opportunity to tie all the events, facts and phenomena into a single string of meanings, making them a single context. To achieve this goal semantic and visual markers are used.
Starting from December 2020, one can feel sharp toughening of propaganda rhetoric towards Ukraine. An actively promoted the semantic construction 'Ukraine as anti-Russia' becomes the key issue modelling the stance towards Ukraine in this period. This construction brings into the recipients' minds the idea that Ukraine is not just a friendly nation, however, it is also Russia, it is 'us'. The negative particle 'anti' refers to antonymic line related to 'them', meaning the West. Consequently, if this 'anti-' particle is removed, Ukraine will become 'us' again, i.e. it will become Russia.