Between Self-Victimization and Shared Memory: Russia’s War against Ukraine in Russian Independent Media

The article analyzes how Russian independent media create a communicative memory of Russia's war against Ukraine after the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. Despite the condemnation of the war by all media outlets, the highest-rated ones ("Rain", "Popular Politics", "Navalny LIVE", and "Alive Nail") marginalize the testimonies of Ukrainian victims, replacing them with Russian news. The author draws attention to the fact that some ("Medusa" and "Doxa") mediatize the war using the testimonies of Ukrainians. In this way, they actualize their pain and losses for the Russian audience. In the language of memory studies, this situation can be explained as two conflicting forms of media memory. The first one reduces empathy for Ukrainian war victims and contributes to the self-victimization of Russians, while the second one opens up space for the formation of a common memory of the war. It is shown that although the first form is more convenient for the Russian audience of independent media, it makes it possible to push the experience of victims to the periphery of media memory, distancing them from the violence and suffering of "others". The resulting competition between victims is becoming one of the reasons for public conflicts between Ukrainians and Russian emigrants. The author concludes that in order to reduce the risk of these conflicts, overcome self-victimization, and make the war unleashed by Russia closer to anti-war Russians, independent media need to change their usual approaches to the production of media memory. It is necessary to pay more attention to Ukrainian testimonies, putting them at the heart of the common memory of the war.