An Ecology of Everyday Violence: Russian Telegram Discourse and War Atrocities in Ukraine

Abstract This article conceptualizes an ecology of everyday violence within Russian state-aligned Telegram channels during the first six months of the invasion of Ukraine. Through qualitative analysis of propaganda posts about Bucha, Irpin, and Mariupol, it shows how denial, euphemism, and moral justification normalize harm while heroic and redemptive framings render violence virtuous. Rather than relying on explicit exterminationism, the state’s digital discourse embeds militarized values in ordinary communication. Telegram’s networked architecture absorbs the ‘flashbulb’ shock of mediatized content about sites of atrocities, collapsing boundaries between soldier and civilian, front and rear, and time and space to produce a communicative environment in which violence becomes routine, integral, and heroic within broader processes of everyday militarization in Russia under the Putin regime.