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With Internet access, citizens in non-democracies are often able to diversify their news media repertoires despite government-imposed restrictions on media freedom. The extent to which they do so depends on motivations and habits of news consumption. This article presents a qualitative study of the motivations and habits underlying news media repertoires among a group of digitally connected university students in authoritarian Russia. Interviews reveal awareness and dissatisfaction vis-a-vis the ‘propagandistic’ nature of state-controlled news content, resulting in a preference for using multiple different sources – including foreign websites and ‘non-official’ citizen accounts – to build a personal understanding of what is ‘really’ going on. The article then examines how the students make sense of conflicting narratives about international affairs which they encounter in state and non-state sources. Paradoxically, low reported consumption of distrusted, ‘propagandistic’ state television is often accompanied by reproduction of the overarching strategic narrative which state television conveys.

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The mass media are closely associated with the concept of 'soft power'. In Russia, as in the West, politicians believe that favorable foreign media coverage can facilitate their foreign policy success. This article considers news coverage of Russia in Ukraine, a geopolitically important state where Russian 'news exporters' have been a prominent feature of the media landscape in recent years. Using content analysis and original interviews with editorial staff, the article reveals factors which shaped reporting about Russia in Ukraine in 2010-2011. It demonstrates that news providers in Ukraine which had a Russian shareholder or partner tended to be more restrained in their criticism of Russia than comparable news providers without such Moscow connections. Yet it also reveals diversity among Russia's news exporters: some clearly served Kremlin interests, while others were commercially driven and balanced demands from Moscow against the demands of their audience. The findings are relevant to assessments of Russian regional influence, as they highlight opportunities and challenges facing the Kremlin in its aspiration to secure an advantage from 'Russian' media operating in the post-Soviet republics. More broadly, this article questions whether the conceptual framework of 'soft power' is adequate to capture the complexities of Russian involvement in Ukraine's media environment.