Vladimir Solovyov: Putin's dangerous Kremlin propagandist

There are few propagandists more accomplished in Russian society than Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov, the mouthpiece of Vladimir Putin’s regime. 

Photo by Пресс-служба Президента России, Free Use by Kremlin.ru http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/47730/photos

“Vladimir Solovyov may be the most energetic Kremlin propagandist around today,” the U.S. Department of State wrote in March 2022 press release.” But who is Solovyov and why should we fear what he tells the Russian people?

Solovyov is first and foremost Russia’s leading non-governmental political figure. He is the host of Russia’s most popular political talk show on Russia-1 and the chief voice of the country’s far-right hardline nationalists—but he wasn’t always so popular. 

Putin’s chief propagandist first rose to prominence in 1999 after he became a presenter on the popular Russian talk show 'The Process', after which he was given a series of leading roles in various shows. 

Solovyov was an early supporter of Vladimir Putin and backed the would-be dictator during his first campaign for Russian President in 2007. He called Putin a “strong, intelligent, talented leader” that loved his country according to the Russian Gazette. 

Not much is known about Solovyov’s political influences in the West but it can be assumed that he was molded by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent decline of the Russian Federation in the early 1990s based on the content of his programs. 

A good example comes from one of Solovyov’s first broadcasts after the New Year, during which he hosted professor Elena Ponomareva and several other guests to lament the loss of the Soviet Union. 

"The West still can't forgive us for having this project," Ponomareva told Solovyov, "they can't make peace with that because all our achievements and breakthroughs were truly a Soviet miracle."

For his part, Solovyov agreed with Ponomareva’s analysis noting that the USSR was his motherland. One of the show's other guests—Sergey Mikhevev—took things a bit further and pointed out that current world maps should display Russia’s Soviet borders as well as its previous imperial borders. 

“The background to the discussion was the war in Ukraine, which has been framed by Russian state television as a fight between Moscow and the encroaching influence of the West,” wrote Newsweek journalist Brenden Cole. 

But the program ended on a sour note when Ponomareva wished Russian troops a safe return home and Solovyov interjected saying, "life is grossly overrated. Regarding death, why fear something that is inevitable."

Photo by A. Savin, Own Work, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Solovyov_(TV_presenter)#/media/File:Vladimir_Solovyov_(journalist).jpg

It may seem like a trivial statement, but it is this type of low-level indoctrination that makes Russian propaganda so effective and so dangerous according to journalists like Julia Davis. 

Davis is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the founder of Russia Media Monitor. She has been translating and dissecting Russian propaganda since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine and has taken a particular interest in exposing Solovyov to western audiences. 

“Russian propagandists aim to convince the viewers that ‘the Soviet miracle’ & the expansionist glory of the Motherland are more important than life,” Davis wrote in a tweet directly responding to Solovyov’s New Year broadcast. 

“They want new maps—or rather ‘a globe of Russia,’ because its borders end...nowhere,” Davis added. 

The reason why Solovyov is so dangerous as a propagandist is because of his ability to influence Russians with his words, prepping them to accept whatever Putin’s regime requires, even if that means escalating to a wide war with the West that includes nuclear weapons.  

Photo by Пресс-служба Президента России, Free Use by Kremlin.ru http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/47730/photos