Ambient war: Stalingrad memory and Russian state-aligned Telegram networks in the war against Ukraine

The idea of fighting World War II again has been an important feature of Russian state-aligned discourse about the ongoing war in Ukraine. This article examines how state-aligned Russian-language Telegram channels affectively mobilized the wartime past in the present in 2023 through the memory of the Battle of Stalingrad, whose 80th anniversary took place in that year. The authors conduct a meso-level network analysis of circulation around “Stalingrad,” treating the battle as the symbolic centre of Russia’s official war narrative, on almost 300 state-aligned Telegram channels in 2023 – a year that bisects both the ongoing war against Ukraine and the state-led memorization of the 80th anniversary of the battle. They chart how short textual strings that mention “Stalingrad” traverse and bind this network. The combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis reveals how an apparent heterogeneity amongst clusters of channels within the network produces a simulacrum of spontaneity around “Stalingrad.” Re-worked, re-circulated, and re-contextualized by sub-communities of grassroots news services, military bloggers, and prominent propagandists, “Stalingrad” sheds its historicity to saturate the feed of the present, entangling World War II and the war against Ukraine. The authors term this affective saturation “ambient war,” a networked condition in which repetition, rhythm, and availability make war(s) feel continuous. The saturative and consistent quality of “ambient war” challenges scholarly perspectives on connective memory and war that emphasize fragmentation of narrative in platformed conditions.