Propaganda is a weapon as old as war itself. Moscow, though, has put a perversely postmodern twist on the ancient stratagem. Its latest is the death sentence against three foreigners captured while fighting alongside Ukrainian forces near Mariupol. 

Accused of being “mercenaries” committed to “carrying out acts of terrorism” and “seizing power,” the two Britons and a Moroccan have a month to appeal the decision handed down by the supreme court of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic. 

Widely considered by the West to be a show trial — in likely violation of the Geneva Conventions — the proceeding has been covered in earnest by the Russian press and used to gin up nationalist sentiments at home, menace would-be volunteer fighters abroad, and expose the West as supposedly immoral and uncaring. 

The pro-Kremlin broadsheet Izvestiya posted a video of the three fighters shortly after their sentence had been read out. It shows them standing in the courtroom cage, looking gaunt, pallid, and confused. Only the Moroccan, Brahim Saadoun, speaks in the recording.

“I like pizza,” Mr. Saadoun says in response to a journalist’s inaudible probing. The Russian press has turned the trial into a gruesome, undignified spectacle. In an interview conducted before the conclusion of the trial but published following the verdict, one of the two captured Brits, Aiden Aslin, speaks to the Russian broadcaster, RT.

Mr. Aslin speaks of the Ukrainian forces being unprofessional, poorly trained, and rife with alcoholics. In another segment of the interview, published by the pro-Kremlin newspaper Pravda.ru, Mr. Aslin says he feels “abandoned” by the British government. 

The Russian narrative of a West unfazed by its citizens’ fate has been a familiar theme throughout the war. According to the tabloid paper Komsomolskaya Pravda, neither the British nor Moroccan governments “take care” of their citizens.

The paper quotes the head of the unrecognized Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, as saying neither government had contacted him to negotiate on the fighters’ behalf. The death sentence, he says, is “fair.”  

President Putin has long worked to portray the West as decadent in contrast to Russia and its ostensible “traditional values.” In his annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly in 2013, Mr. Putin said that Russia would defend and advance its values “to prevent movement into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.”

Footage of captured fighters speaking of trivialities like pizza moments after learning of their horrid fate and allegations of intoxicated Ukrainian soldiers only play into Mr. Putin’s narrative. 

So do efforts by the Russian press to demean the captured men. An article published by RT asserts that the other British national, Sean Pinner, was “recognized as a terrorist” in Britain for his participation in the wars in Iraq and Syria. Nevermind that Mr. Pinner served in the British army, including for many years in the Royal Anglian Regiment.

Propaganda is surely not a new Russian tactic. That the Kremlin and its mouthpieces would turn the lives of men into a disinformation circus is not surprising. Yet while it might be easy to dismiss Russian press coverage as just another of Moscow’s antics, it might illuminate the conflict’s trajectory. 

In what Moscow sees as a battle not only for territory but against Western decadence and dishonor, time is of little essence. As Mr. Putin said Thursday to an audience of young Russian entrepreneurs and scientists, “Peter the First fought the Northern War for 21 years … if we assume that these basic values form the basis of our existence, we will succeed in solving the challenges we face.” So more show trials and staged unveilings of supposed Western failings should be expected — dignity, law, and due process be damned.