Wartime agendas: issue salience in Russian and Western media coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine

Public diplomacy is a vital strategy through which states seek to influence foreign publics, and international crises create key opportunities to shape global opinion through media coverage. Russia’s war on Ukraine produced one such contest, waged in part through Russian-language media directed at audiences in what Russia calls its “near abroad.” Using an original dataset of approximately 125,000 Russian-language news articles and broadcast transcripts published between January 2022 and December 2023, I apply structural topic modeling to assess issue salience in Russian and Western state-affiliated outlets over the war’s first two years. The results document clear and persistent agenda divergence: Russian outlets emphasize geopolitical confrontation, while Western outlets prioritize humanitarian consequences, domestic repression in Russia, Russian casualties, and sanctions. Focusing on the supply side of wartime communication, the study shows that the two blocs diverge in which issues they place before the Russian-speaking audiences both address, making issue salience a core dimension of wartime public diplomacy.