Only 10% of Russians are familiar with an alternative point of view on Ukrainian events – survey

Moscow - Kyiv, November 12 (PolitNavigator, Mikhail Stamm) - The vast majority of Russians trust the way federal television channels cover events in Ukraine and deny the propaganda nature of the news. They believe that it was Kyiv and Western capitals that launched an information war against Moscow. Only every tenth person is familiar with an alternative point of view, according to the latest Levada Center poll.

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Federal media maintain a strict monopoly on coverage of events in Ukraine, reports RBC . Only 12% of Russians regularly consume information about events in the neighboring country that differs sharply from the views of the main Russian television channels and other federal media. Almost half of respondents (46%) are familiar with alternative viewpoints on events in Ukraine, but more than a third (37%) never read, watch, or listen to media that cover the Euromaidan and the armed conflict in Donbas differently from the federal broadcasts, according to the latest Levada Center poll.

Only 13% of those who did not have alternative sources of information about Ukraine admitted that they could not find them. “It cannot be said that Russians are deprived of the opportunity to access alternative information; the majority of people are not interested in it,” says Deputy Director of the Levada Center Alexey Grazhdankin. At the same time, the majority of respondents are confident that alternative points of view are either deliberate anti-Russian propaganda (26%), or distort true events (17%), or - even if they are true - cause disagreement and irritation (9%). Every fifth of those who admitted that they do not turn to alternative sources of information said that they are not particularly interested in what is happening in Ukraine.

The average Russian’s picture of the world is formed by central television, and less often by central newspapers, notes Tatyana Stanovaya, head of the analytical department of the Center for Political Technologies.