ABSTRACT
National television serves as a key facilitator of the process, both aspects of which were epitomized in Mamontov's Spetsial'nyi korrespondent series on Pussy Riot and migrant workers respectively. The symbiosis of national self and antithetical western 'other' in the Russian patriotic imagination, and the fragile condition in which free expression, and with it the future of Russian civil society, and of the Federation, finds itself place great responsibility on European broadcasters when reporting events in Russia. The pretext for Russia's actions in Crimea, and later for its support both tacit and explicit for the separatist rebels in Eastern Ukraine, focused on the protection of its 'compatriots', a term whose arbitrary conflation with 'ethnic Russians' and 'Russian speakers'. The compelling significance of the ethnic diversity factor lies in the fact that it introduces into post-Soviet official discourse few related sets of tensions.
