The Night Wolves: Evidence of Russian Sharp Power and Propaganda from the Victory Roads’ Itinerary

ABSTRACT

The article researches the Russian Night Wolves Motorcycle Club from the perspective of the sharp power concept. It is argued that NWMC serve as a proxy for Russian sharp power, playing the role of messenger for pro-Kremlin propaganda in European countries through Victory Roads events. Using a mixed-methods Google Search data and media content analysis, the article analyzes the effectiveness of the Victory Roads events as a sharp power propaganda tool. It provides evidence that the physical presence of NWMC is indeed a powerful tool of Russian sharp power, increasing interest among the targeted population and creating long-lasting political impact.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Jahedi et al. (2016, 4–5) argue that search queries are in fact communication acts in which users formulate phenomena they are interested in. Such a process can reveal the perceived benefits and setbacks of an action (joining the US Army, in their case) and a propensity to perform that action.

2. This question inherently encompasses the “if they correlate” factor which we checked and for which we found a positive answer during the pre-study phase.

3. Ночные волки (Belarus), Noční vlci (Czechia and Slovakia), Nachtwölfe (Germany and Austria), Nocne Wilki (Poland), and Éjszakai farkasok (Hungary).

4. The interest-over-time variable represents the operationalized and aggregated form of the search volume.

5. All Hungarian searches come from the capital Budapest; other regions showed no interest in the NWMC during 2015–2019.

Additional information

Funding

The article was written as a part of the research project, “Hey Slavs! Visual culture of propaganda inspired by Slavic nationalisms in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and its anti-European character” (GA20-07592S) funded by the Czech Science Foundation (Grantova agentura Ceske republiky).