Russians' war weariness can be seen in several opinion polls.
Russian the audience numbers of the most popular propaganda channels and the so-called Z-channels operating on the messaging service Telegram turned to a clear decline in the middle of last year. The opposition channel reports on the matter Well, you explained (We can explain) referring to the statistics of research institutes that track the media audience.
Audience ceiling has met at least the most popular and perhaps the most bloodthirsty of television propaganda broadcasts, i.e. the president Vladimir Putin credit provider Vladimir Solovyov daily talk show on the state-run Rossija channel. An evening with Vladimir Solovyov was the 14th most popular of all Russian television programs in December of last year.
Research institute Mediascope according to Solovyov's program had dropped to 34th place last month. Solovyov has demanded, among other things, the bombing of European cities with nuclear weapons and commented on a possible counterattack by saying that “we all die someday”.
Internet has challenged television in Russia as well. Research company Russian Field in the October survey, 36 percent of the respondents stated that they hear war news primarily on television. The channels of the messaging service Telegram had come in second place with a share of 17 percent, while 15 percent said that they primarily read war news from media websites.
On the Internet, at least the state news agency Ria Novosti, the most popular evening newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, which follows the views of the Kremlin, and the news channel Lenta have lost their audience.
Ria Novosti lost a total of 15 million monthly visitors from December 2022 to December 2023, according to research institute Liveinternet. Last month there were 60 million visitors, in December of last year 75 million.
Monthly clicks on Komsomolskaya Pravda's website decreased even more, from 107 million to 87 million. Nine million of Lenta's news readers disappeared in the same period.
Russian the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 made the messaging service Telegram an important channel for audiences following the war.
A large number of channels of activists, journalists and various experts calling themselves “war correspondents” appeared on Telegram. They are often called Z-channels after the letter code of the Russian forces, because the point of view of most channels is very Big Russian.
However, the Z-channels' information about, for example, the situation at the front and the problems of the armed forces has been taken into account, at least compared to the little information provided by the Russian authorities. The news topics of the channels quickly expanded from the war situation to the entire field of politics, and they are also followed by many Western researchers and journalists.
In exile living ex-billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky founded by Možem, one of the opposition media, explained that the audience numbers of Z channels began to decline in the spring after the late businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin The midsummer revolt of the Wagner fighters had failed.
Following the popularity of Telegram channels TGStat– according to the statistics of the research institute, Russian channels following the war lose about a thousand followers a day.
Among the Z channels, WarGonzo, for example, has lost 200,000 readers from its former 1.3 million followers in six months. TV journalists reporting on the war, for example, have followed the same path Yevgeny Poddubnovo, Juri Kotenok too and Aleksandr Sladkov Popularity of Telegram channels.
Opposition channel Možem jašnicat considers the war weariness of the people as the main explanation for the decline in popularity of propaganda and war news.
There may be other reasons: we have our own worries when inflation kicks in, the exciting Prigozhin figure disappeared from the news after the businessman died in August, the war of positions in Ukraine does not offer drama.
In addition, the public may be disappointed not only in the war but also in the president to Vladimir Putin. And if you can't change the president, you can at least turn your back on him.
However, Putin's support has remained independent of the Levada center according to measurements, as high as it was at the “beginning of the special operation” and after the occupation of Crimea in 2014-2015.
War fatigue at least there is.
Research Institute Russian Field asked in December the most important New Year's wish of Russians. The overwhelming number one was “peace” and “end of the special operation” with 50 percent support. The traditional number one, i.e. the wish for one's own health and that of loved ones, came second with 40 percent support.
According to Russian Field's October survey, the number of those in favor of ending the war exceeded the number of those who consider the war necessary last June, i.e. at the same time as Wagner's Midsummer Rebellion.
War channels and despite the decline in popularity of their propaganda, the official truth and the Great Russian threat are still the Russian mainstream. According to the Liveinternet research company, the most popular of the network's news sites is Tsargrad, the voice of Russian imperialism, followed by Komsomolskaya Pravda.
On the other hand, during the Christmas week, the most watched program
on television among citizens over the age of four was Propaganda Manager Dmitri Kiselyov hosted by the Sunday night lie marathon, or the Rossija channel Vesti nedeli. The information is based on the monitoring of the company Mediascope.
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