Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the nation in Moscow on February 24. Taken from the official website of the presidential executive office of Russia Do you support the actions of Russian forces in Ukraine? The results of which were released last week were among the questions asked in a Russian opinion poll.
More than 80 percent of respondents expressed support. The question of the poll's accuracy was still beyond my comprehension.
I searched all the available Russian news sites for an explanation.
A battle map showing the tabloid daily Komsomolskaya Pravda caught my eye. Areas marked as being under Russian control were several times more extensive than in any map I have seen in Japanese newspapers.
Russian state-run television reported on rescue operations of injured Ukrainian civilians by Russian troops. The citizens gushed before the TV cameras, We were saved and Russian forces are our hope. Reports from Bucha, the site of Russian genocide that has come under global condemnation, shocked me the most.
Images of abandoned corpses were accompanied by narrations such as, A hand of a corpse suddenly moved and This one tried to get up. The Russian defense ministry claimed that the photos and videos were prepared by Ukraine for the West. Moscow wants to say that they were faked.
Talk of fake news, and the German tragicomedy film Good Bye, Lenin in 2003! It immediately comes to mind.
The story is set in East Germany at the end of the Cold War. The mother of the protagonist is on her sickbed and unaware of the fall of the Berlin Wall. She still believes that East Germany is the greatest nation in the world.
The protagonist, out of concern for her, produces a fictional news program that proclaims that Socialism has finally triumphed over capitalism. The expression on his mother's face seems to suggest she believes all, but then it could also be that she was pretending to believe.
Do Russian people believe that the government has to say something under the nation's press censorship? Or do they have doubts but are still holding onto an image they hope is true?
Only 14 percent of the respondents said they don't support the actions of Russian forces in the above-mentioned opinion poll.
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