By Sultan Musayev | 2025-10-08

In Russia today, even the circus has gone to war, with real T-34 tanks rolling onstage alongside acrobats in soldiers' jackets.

Cinemas show Our Own: A Ballad of War, filmed by a participant in the so-called "special military operation," and Best in Hell, which follows mercenaries from the Wagner private military company in their assaults on eastern Ukrainian cities. Dozens of similar movies glorify "our boys in the trenches," all told from the Kremlin's perspective.

Theater offers no escape. Productions across the country dramatize the war. In Khabarovsk, a teacher on stage with children and Z symbols shouted, "Together we will defeat the enemy!" In Valuyki, students chanted, "We will win! Both alive and dead! We’re clever. We use bullets, tanks and mines."

The message extends outdoors, plastered on billboards and LED screens. Slogans praise soldiers as "The pride of Russia!" and urge enlistment as a path to becoming a "national hero." In Saint Petersburg, officials even placed a military display outside the city's marriage registry building.

Officials defend the saturation campaign as a morale booster.

"When the country changes, the culture changes too," Deputy Culture Minister Sergei Pershin said in March, as cited by Novaya Gazeta. "The special military operation has become a relaunch point for our industry."

War's cultural grip

The flood of military and patriotic content is wearing thin for many Russians.

"I got tired a long time ago of the war propaganda in Russia, and it's the same for many people I know," Olga, a Moscow entrepreneur who moved to Almaty, Kazakhstan, last year, told Kontur. She asked not to use her last name, fearing repercussions from law enforcement.

Olga said most Muscovites want peace and stability -- work, family and ordinary life -- not talk of war or "victory over the enemy."

Maxim, an IT specialist from Orenburg now living in Almaty, voiced similar frustration.

"Times are very strange in Russia. I don't recognize my own country," he told Kontur. "I want this war to end as soon as possible and for us to finally go home and start living a normal life."

Sanzhar Iskanderov, PR director of the Almaty-based publisher Drakkar, said excessive propaganda backfires.

"You start seeing a boomerang effect, when people get tired of the intrusive messages and begin to reject the message … and sometimes even the source itself," he told Kontur. He warned the flood of military messaging could become negative publicity for the government.

Russian film director Roman Kachanov voiced a similar view in a May interview with Current Time, saying state funds poured into "Z propaganda" are wasted because audiences recognize it as brainwashing.

"It's clear that both the system and everything that serves this system is completely false, completely corrupt and completely useless," he said. "It's hopelessly being driven into mediocrity and stupidity."

Theater producer Evgeniya Shermeneva added that "he people who are making art are becoming fools and yes-men of the government." Those who resist, she told Current Time, risk losing funding or even facing criminal charges.

Patriotic show business

The patriotic agenda has seeped into Russian show business, leaving the industry in decline, observers say.

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many prominent artists have left the country, foreign stars have stopped touring, and authorities have blacklisted Russian performers who condemned the war.

Across the country, music festivals are held under names such as Russian Summer: ForRussia and Homeland – Hero, funded by the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives.

Audiences complain festival lineups never change, but organizers say they have no choice.

"There is a group of festival artists who are in some configuration for everyone. We're operating on scorched earth," a Russian music industry insider told Meduza in September. "It's like being surrounded only by Chinese cars after Mercedes and Volkswagens disappeared."

Many Russians are finding escape abroad. Kazakh media reported that Russians made up most of the foreign visitors at Jennifer Lopez's concert in Almaty in August, followed a month later by another wave for the Backstreet Boys. Increasingly, exiles are also flocking to shows by local Kazakh performers.

"For me this is like a breath of fresh air," Maxim said. "There's nothing here reminding me that our soldiers are off somewhere killing people on their own land, and this is held up to us as an act of patriotism."