The forceful moves ordered by Donald Trump earlier this year — the arrest of Nicolas Maduro and the seizure of the Russian oil tanker Marinera — have short-circuited the Russian Federation's propaganda machine. According to an analysis published on Think Tank– the CEPA, after threatening no more and no less with the sinking of the American fleet, the propagandists of the Kremlin came to recognize the impotence of the Russian Federation.
Vladimir Solovyov. PHOTO: Scanpix, Korotayev Artyom
Only a month ago, Russian television screens were overflowing with confidence. Sergey Karnauhov, one of the channel's shrill voices Solovyov Liveboasted on his show, “Karnaukhov's Labyrinth,” about the geopolitical success of the Russian Federation in Latin America. The message was clear: the Kremlin has strengthened its Venezuelan “comrade,” President Nicolas Maduro, and the United States can't do anything about it.
“Maduro made the right decision: he started relying on Russia… If it wasn't for Russia, Venezuela would be on fire now,” Karnauhov cried, adding a prediction that today seems bitterly ironic: in the event of an American intervention, Russia would be able to sink all US ships with its superior weapons. “At some point movies will be made about it, books will be written,” he said.
The reality of January, however, brutally hit Moscow's narrative.
From “we're sinking US ships” to “they're going to crush us too”
After the raid by US forces, which ended with the extraction and capture of Nicolas Maduro, the tone in Moscow changed radically. The same Karnaukhov, visibly tempered, had to admit a harsh reality for his audience: “If Russia gets in America's way, it will crush us too.”
This “awakening to reality” was also visible in Russia Today. Margarita Simonian, head of RT and one of the main mouthpieces of pro-Kremlin propaganda, has expressed undisguised envy of the United States' operational capabilities. Her comment was a tacit admission of the failure of Russian services, contrasting American effectiveness in Maduro's case with Russia's multiple failed attempts to oust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Stop looking for our president”
While the TV “experts” swallowed their words spoken a month before, the Kremlin adopted the tactic of silence. On the radio, political scientist Aleksandr Kazakov suggested that Russians adopt a stoic attitude, quoting Spinoza: “Weep not; be not indignant.”
Moreover, the moderator Marat Bulatov felt the need to intervene to calm the population who were waiting for a firm reaction from the supreme leader. “Stop looking for our president, because many are now asking: 'Where is the president of Russia? What happened?'“, he said, correctly anticipating that Vladimir Putin will not publicly comment on the humiliation.
Instead of geopolitical answers, Putin offered in his Christmas speech a reconfirmation of the mystical narrative: the invasion of Ukraine is no longer just a special operation, but a divine crusade, a state-sanctioned “holy war” designed to distract from external failures.
The Trump illusion
The confusion of Russian propaganda was deepened by a second major event: the seizure by the US, with British support, of the oil tanker “Marinera” in the North Atlantic. The ship, part of Russia's “shadow fleet”, was transporting oil in defiance of international sanctions.
This incident dispelled another favorite theory of Moscow. In December, the Kremlin's chief propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, enthusiastically predicted that under Donald Trump, Ukraine would be abandoned and the US would ally with Russia against Europe. The reality of January 2026 showed the opposite.
Moscow's official reaction was standard, with TASS reporting Foreign Ministry requests for “humane treatment” of the crew. But in the TV studios, the atmosphere was heated. Karnaukhov warned that the lack of a tough reaction would be interpreted by the Americans as a fatal weakness: “If we respond only with notes of protest, waving our hands and drawing our long-blurred red lines, Americans will understand that everything is allowed.”
Public anger
Armen Gasparian, another TV producer, reported “huge discontent” among Russian viewers. People are angry not only at the Americans, but also at the propagandists who lied to them. They had been assured that the US-UK alliance was “dead” and that Trump would be Russia's savior.
“some idiots”Gasparyan called out his fellow peddlers of those illusions, acknowledging that the public feels betrayed by seeing Trump's expectations fall short.
Disappointment also reached the radical zone. The so-called “Z-bloggers” began to question the mandate of the American president, and the ultranationalist ideologue Aleksandr Dughin drew a gloomy conclusion on the X platform: any peace agreement is a waste of time. “Russia is now morally prepared for a radical, full-scale war with the West,” he wrote, signaling that, in the absence of real victories, the regime can only take refuge in an escalation of apocalyptic rhetoric.
