Historically, if the news wasn't good or the situation needed a larger boot to step on people then martial law was taken out of the cupboard to control the population. With 8000+ Russian protestors arrested, a ban on factual news, lots of other restrictions put in place and so on talk of martial law is not all that strange.

Maybe for you it is strange, but for me it is a fairly logical next step in a series of domestic escalations. The same happened in Poland in the 80's in response to the Solidarity movement, authorities used it to be able to use the military against their own civilians. Not that that worked, but that's besides the point, they did in fact try.

And just like with the invasion being a total fabrication of the West right up to the point that it was a fact you could of course do the same thing with martial law.

But some elements of martial law are already present today, some more may follow and who is to say when it becomes enough to say that it actually happened? Would you be satisfied with 8000 people jailed and a ban on the media to report the facts or will it take a Russian army battalion shooting at protestors? Maybe some kids protesting the war jailed? Oh, sorry, that already happened. Or do you believe that is Western propaganda?

That makes sense, but what doesn't make sense is why it is presented in such a duplicitous way. It's one thing to say "When a country has this kind of internal turmoil, martial law is something that we need to watch out for." It's another thing to say "Unnamed official sees 'signs' on social media about martial law."

One way is transparent, re-enforces critical thinking, while the other way is "believe this because we told you."

I see the same signs, I am thinking in the exact same direction as that unnamed official. Mostly because I lived under official 'martial law' for a while to understand what it means and when dictatorial governments reach for it: when they can no longer control the narrative. As soon as that becomes the danger martial law is on the menu, because it allows the government to crack down on the second order effects (since they can't do anything about the root cause, bad news is bad news).

The main thing that right now seems to keep martial law at bay in Russia is because, besides being a tacit admission that not all is well and that there is an internal problem in Russia that that would require Putin to give the military more power, something that he is absolutely loathe to do because that very same power could be used against him. But if not for that I am pretty sure we'd already be there.

Rumours are not propaganda.

No you haven't discovered a vast EU-wide conspiracy or someone 'saying the quiet part out loud'. Nobody knows what is going on and naturally there is lots of speculation to fill the void.

Rumours are not official propaganda; but they can certainly be a psy-op.

(Not suggesting that that’s the case here; just that you shouldn’t forget how e.g. the US CIA engineers coups in other countries, when thinking about how other large states work.)

Rumors is how politics gets done in my backwards country. You start a rumor about the opposition, they start rumors about you. You start rumors about great projects, the opposition starts rumors about how bad it is. The opposition shits on your project, you start rumors about their vested interests in stopping it. Before elections you start rumors about anything and everything and then back again.

Someone in your way? Start a rumor that they do X and then attack them for not stepping down from power. Want to check if people agree or disagree with something? Start a rumor on Friday, monitor for responses, fight in rumors during the week-end and next week, if the rumors align, maybe start that something.

I don't see how rumors are never propaganda.

I didn’t use the word never. I said they are not, i.e. the two words are not equivalent.

Yes there are rumours, are they propaganda? I don’t think so in this case - young male Russians are being questioned at the border, flights are being stopped, and the idea has been floated of forced conscription of anti-war protesters. Even mentioning the word war is a crime. Russia is very close to martial law already and I’m not surprised there is speculation about it.

Also, quite frankly no one in the west cares much if Putin imposes martial law, it’s already a pariah state and a dictatorship. As propaganda this rumour would be pretty useless.

Rumors can absolutely be propaganda.

> Am I saying the quiet part out loud?

Yes, in some sense. This is your own internal process of turning all the information into a picture of what is really going on.

When you start projecting it on other people and making judgements about whether they are “reasonable”, you’re going find out that they have a very different picture from you. There are a lot of people who have lived or worked in that part of the world, speak the local languages, and have a much higher ability to filter the news stream into an accurate picture of what’s actually happening on the ground.

Well, this was coming straight from Russian officials: https://tass.ru/politika/13873997

Ah found it - it denies they will institute martial law, but that definitely qualifies as it being talked about

https://tass.ru/politika/13980355

(Clearly very a pro-Russia site fyi)

Does anyone understand what this means: “Russia is considering the decriminalization of economic crimes, especially damages”?

Very interesting site to read! Perhaps you linked the wrong article though, that one is about Russia being kicked out of some EU groups and them saying they don’t care.

they essentially allow software/etc piracy, companies instead of paying back $$ loans taken abroad can pay them out in rubles to local accounts. also looks like they are going to steal all leased planes

I mean, does it even matter what the Russian government claims or denies at this point? They were clearly dishonest about Ukraine in the months leading up to the invasion. The West was clearly sharing good intel on the Russians' intentions. There is obviously propaganda on both sides, but that does not make the information from our respective governments equally worthless. I think the government that just shut out most foreign and independent press, spins insane stories about Jewish Nazis and make it illegal to even print "war" is probably the less credible propaganda maker in this situation. The truth may be the first victim in war but that does not mean it's dead.