This study focuses on the specifics of the discourse of the Russian virtual public sphere as exemplified by the politicized virtual communities of the Vkontakte social network and the Telegram messenger. The relevance of the topic is linked with the special military operation as a factor exerting a substantial influence upon the transformation of both a political discourse and the communicative practices in the cyberspace. The novelty of the research is determined by the accent on the developments that occur in the Russian communicative space under the conditions of the SMO. The objective of this paper is to reveal the specificity of the virtual public sphere functioning in conditions of the Special Military Operation, while also considering the platform features of the Vkontakte social network as well as of the Telegram messenger. The analysis of the discourse of virtual communities was the main method of research. The analysis of the virtual communities discourse was used as the main research method. 105 communities on the Vk.com and Telegram were analyzed, where 100 comments were considered in the two most popular posts. The article makes it possible both to draw conclusions about the specific nature of communication under conditions of the Special Military Operation and also to characterize the state of the virtual public sphere. The author identifies a fundamental impact of the SWO factor on political communication in the Russian- speaking Internet. The virtual public sphere is described as a reasonably segmented area, incorporating many communities that tend toward homogeneous communications of the “echo-chamber»” type. This is conditioned by consolidation of the Russian society with regard to the Special Military Operation. The evidence of this is the fact that the prevailing discourse in the context of SMO in the Russian virtual public sphere is that of discourse of patriotism, while the most prevalent group identity is that of civic identity. In addition, the author makes a number of conclusions concerning inter-­platform specifics of political communication.