U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s appearance at the Munich Security Conference offered a polished, "good cop" follow-up to the blunt speech delivered by Vice President J.D. Vance a year prior, confirming a new era of American "tough love" for Europe. While Rubio’s presence suggested diplomatic relief among allies, Russian state media broadcast a narrative of transatlantic divorce. The campaign to discredit any remaining Western unity was bolstered this week by depictions of Italy's Winter Olympics as an embarrassing failure, woven into continuing salacious and conspiracy-laden coverage of the Epstein files, branding Western elites as a "satanic" cult.

In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how the Kremlin presents its story of imminent collapse of the transatlantic alliance.

Last week's targeted shooting of General Vladimir Alexeyev in the outskirts of Moscow has stripped the Russian military of one of its most competent strategists. The assassination attempt occurred against the backdrop of growing paranoia reminiscent of the Stalin era, exemplified in a grim new state documentary warning how Ukraine recruits Russian youths as "terrorists" via the popular Telegram messaging app. Meanwhile, to preempt dissatisfaction among national minorities who bear the brunt of war casualties, state media has revived another Stalinist trope of the "friendship of the peoples."

In this episode, Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday unpack how Russian television projects regime stability by doubling down on a narrative combining theatrical patriotism with a hunt for domestic enemies.

Despite suffering over 1.2 million casualties in Ukraine—eclipsing Soviet losses in the Afghan conflict by orders of magnitude—Russian society remains strikingly silent compared to the civil strife that once challenged the Kremlin's authority in the 1980s. This domestic compliance rests, in part, on Russian state media's framing of the Ukraine War as an existential battle for the nation's survival against a decadent West.

From the systemic branding of political dissent as treasonous to the pageantry of Putin's recent Middle East diplomacy, hosts Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday look at the latest Vesti Nedeli news broadcast and unpack how state media effectively insulates Russia's urban middle class from the grim realities of a grinding war of attrition.