Melbourne: Russian ambassador Grigory Logvinov’s recent broadside against the ‘‘disgraceful’’ behaviour of Australia’s media comes as the embassy appears to embrace a more propagandistic tone.

The embassy has in recent months released defensive statements, a blistering critique of a specific article, and talking points to cast doubt on the London’s response to the Skripal poisonings.

Even the number of Twitter followers for the embassy shot up (albeit from a low base figure). The embassy’s website shows nearly as many releases in the first three months of this year, as all of last year – and, while many of the releases are standard diplomatic fare, a change in tone on geopolitical matters is hard to miss.

“In recent years where there was this propaganda taking place at a domestic level [in Russia], whilst on the international stage diplomats continued to use a more rational factual discourse,” said La Trobe University politics lecturer Robert Horvath. “That is something that has changed in recent years.”

In Logvinov’s media conference, he aimed to refute a generally accepted account of the poisoning in the UK, by substituting unanswered questions in the place of accepted assessments.