Let's analyse what happened and why Putin's narration is actually so effective on Russian population.
For many years Ukraine was a peaceful, developing country. Unfortunately not everyone liked it that way. Once Ukrainian citizens more and more strongly supported their vision of joining European Union Putin decided to perform preventive steps against loosing it from it's shrinking influence zone. He already had Ukrainian (ex-)president Viktor Yanukovych under his influence long before. He persuaded him to stop considering Ukraine's EU membership. That made Ukrainians unhappy and on 21st of November 2013 people started their peaceful protests in (primarily) Kyiv. Those massive protests ware later called Euromaidan. Unfortunately after few days Ukrainian parliament passed a group of anti-protest laws which led to escalation of the conflict to a violent one. People didn't wanted to stop protesting, police tried to force them to. There were at least 130 casualties (that number includes 18 police officers who were killed by the protesters). Kyiv entered the stage where snipers trained in Russia were shooting people on the street. Eventually on 21st February 2014 it led to removal of president Yanukovych and many other high officials from Ukrainian government. They fled to Russia shortly after. Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine was signed and Petro Poroshenko was elected as a new president. That in turn made Putin very unhappy. He couldn't let Ukrainians just do whatever they want with their country, could he?
Same month, so in February 2014, Russia breached Ukrainian borders with soldiers and heavy weaponry. They invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. They seized the building of the Supreme Council of Crimea and the building of the Council of Ministers in Simferopol. Under military regime they performed fake "elections" where pro-Russian individuals "won" (even though the same people had only 4% in previous, real elections) to create a lie that Ukrainians actually wanted it to happen.
This is where the propaganda really started to kick in. At first it didn't look too sophisticated. Putin simply denied that the invasion took place. Even after the 6th of April 2014 where massive Russian attack took place in many regions of eastern Ukraine. Putin was continuously simply telling people those wasn't Russian troops and equipment. In fact in one of the interviews in TV when asked why those troops have Russian uniforms he answered that they must have bought them in a shop. Seriously.
This version that those aren't Russian forces, troops, tanks etc actually stands for today and it's crucial for development of Putin's propaganda. Years passed and Russian forces left in Ukraine with little support seemed to be a stupid move from Moscow side. Unresolved military conflict smouldered instead of burn once but strongly. This just generated costs for Russia to keep them operating without the situation being resolved. Yet in fact from propaganda point of view it was a smart move.
Russians were bombarded with the information of those being actual rebel forces of Ukrainians wanted to liberate themselves from Ukrainian regime for years. Videos and pictures of Russians crossing the Ukrainian border started to dissolve in the crowded space of public information. In fact it managed to be the old-news enough to be forgotten not only by more aware Russians that knew about it but also the whole world. Regular Ukrainians got used to occasional explosions heard in the background and tried to live their lives. At that point invasion wasn't touching the civilians too much. Beside the collapse of the Ukrainian economics due to the costs of the war off course. The new became the daily live for many but not for all.
In May 2014, so not long after Russian invasion, small armed rebellion groups started to form. Disappointed that Ukraine's regular army cannot definitely defeat Russian forces in the east they decided to take situation into their own hands and fight on their own. One of such groups was armed militia called Azov Battalion. Those soldiers based in Mariupol, in the Azov Sea coastal region, had some infamous sympathy to Nazism and neo-nazi ideology. Even though after they were officially incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine (on 11th of November 2014) they tried to depoliticize themselves their neo-nazi background and difficulties in keeping their actions within the law were still observable. There are reports that they used tortures and were connected with mass looting actions. In fact that was the reason why US Army decided not to train this particular military group later on. Their existence both keep local activism against aggressors alive but also was a water to Putin's mill. Using the fact they were accepted as Ukrainian forces (and in fact gained some support in Ukraine in general) Putin created a whole new propaganda story based just on them. The propaganda that the Ukraine is a neo-nazi country lead by neo-nazis wanting to destroy Russia (somehow).
Putin also did his standard trick of population relocation. He managed to smuggle very many Russian civilians into Ukraine regions under his control. Those were opposing the regular Ukraine population in the protests. Ukrainian forces obviously tried to push back such illegal immigration but that fact also was utilized in propaganda as Ukrainians "terrorizing" Russian citizens. And here we reached another propaganda trick Putin used. He mixed words of "Russian-speaking population", "Russians", "Russian population" to blur their different meanings. What should stay in mind of regular Russian is that the Russians are being bullied, Russia is at threat, it's in fact "Russian population". Not Ukrainian population. Those who speak Russian are Russians. This manipulation of words got into regular language of Russians enough to confuse them. To compare: wouldn't it be unacceptable for Spanish government officials to say that all Spanish-speaking people in the world are "the population of Spain"... and if they live outside Spain they have to be... liberated from their oppressors by force?
Anyway, years were passing, Europe became more dependent on Russian energy sources, decisions after COVID appearance disrupted many economies and downgraded EU cohesion, Belarus became Russian's ally, everybody was concentrated on growing economic dominance of China, world got used to situation on Ukraine so much that it wasn't in any news anymore. That was the perfect moment for Putin to attack with full force. In fact it was so perfect that even Ukrainians themselves couldn't believe it happened even though the concentration of forces on Russian side made it obvious for weeks.
Interestingly, there was a flaw in Putin's propaganda right before the invasion. He explained to the public that those forces were there only for military manoeuvrers. They were just practising how to push back potential sudden attack. That quickly turned out to be another lie but Russian public supporting Putin as a president behaved like they didn't notice it. That lie helped to gather troops and boost army's morale, though. There weren't going to war. They were going to another practice - this time biggest (and more exciting) than ever. Why complain, right?
Putin obviously couldn't just attack all of the sudden, he had to invent a story how good and diplomatic he was. He "negotiated" by placing some demands on NATO (not even Ukraine). The demands were for instance that the NATO will never expand. Those were ridiculous and he knew it was just a formalism before he could start the invasion. His demands were properly "translated" to the Russian public, though. The public was lied that he had demands around bringing peace to the region which wasn't even the topic of real discussions that took place.
The last step of propaganda was to connect the dots. Putin spread the news about popularity and background of Azov Battalion (which wouldn't exist if he never invaded Ukraine in the first place) to the maximum, compared all 37 million Ukrainian citizens to neo-nazis, counted his previous military losses (troops) as "homicide of Russian-speaking population", fabricated many news about Ukrainian army killing innocent people and called the whole invasion a "liberation" from tyranny where nobody unarmed will be hurt. Lovely.
Then he started his mass murder, destruction of civilian infrastructure, demolition of whole country, bombarding the towns, shooting the kindergartens, bombing the nuclear waste warehouses, treating the stability of Chernobyl reactor, etc. Obviously Russians were kept away from any information about this horrible evil he caused and they still are. Even the soldiers.
Putin's propaganda obviously has reached also places outside Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Fortunately outside observers never actually felt for it. The difference in how many people actively oppose the war outside Russia and Belarus (not only on the west but also in the east from Russia) and how many Russians protest against it doesn't only come from propaganda, though. You can't just protest in Russia. You can't. Because it's a "democratic country". If you don't like it, you go to jail. And some of them were brave enough to actually show they don't like it. Many of them. Not that many as in Berlin lately (more than half a million people)...
..although still many enough to fill out arrests that much that they had to be imprisoned... inside a police van like those brave folks below.
Still Russian agencies continue to spread it's propaganda and fake-news even here at this portal. Most of it is easy to recognise, though.
- It repeats the same sentences, same links, same assumptions, often without even changing wording (copy-pasting).
- It is mostly violently offensive, trying to spread hate against regular Ukrainian people (and sometimes also all their supporters around the world... so in fact almost all the people in the world).
- It is either skipping the fact of current homicide (more often) and concentrating on neo-nazis thread or actively denying it is happening (less often). BTW: for some reason their templates for pasting use double capital "N" in words "Neo Nazism" most of the times.
- Azov Battalion bazillion times.
- They use limited set of accounts.
- They mostly ignore who they are responding to (not reacting adequately to the person they answer, ignoring sex, nationality, sometimes even language) like they were always responding to aggressive nazis that threat... the whole Russia off course.
In those difficult days, stay strong and stay sane, guys. 👋
Peace to all nations.
The examples of Russian propaganda can be seen in comments below.
Please note they have all the features mentioned at the end of my post. That includes pasting a block of text that the comment was supposed to refer to and then pasting not truly related text concentrating mostly on nazism rhetoric. That action is supposed to gain attention of the original author of the text. Such person is tempted to go though the whole reply to find the place of his argument being negated. That way this person is exposed to more propaganda than he/she would be with a simple and short answer. What is more it's simpler to spam that way as the troll doesn't need to actually construct the sentences strictly referring to the subject of discussion and he/she can use templates instead.