The Anti-Corruption Foundation, which criticizes Putin and is reputed to be the best independent pollster in Russia, just did a poll in Germany & France. It asked: who’s responsible for starting the Ukraine war?

Here’s Germany’s result:

Here are the polling numbers from France:

It appears that both in Germany and France, more people believe that the US is responsible for starting the war in Ukraine than believe that Putin is responsible.

Leonid Volkov of the Anti-Corruption Foundation claims that these numbers show how effective Putin’s propaganda is in Germany & France.

This is a laughable explanation of the numbers given that populations of Germany and France are exposed to US propaganda to a far greater degree than they are exposed to Russian propaganda. In fact, much of Russian media is even banned in EU at this point.

One can only imagine what these numbers would look like if the populations of Germany and France were not being bombarded with US government propaganda about the origins of the Ukraine war.

  • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    The Anti-Corruption Foundation

    Asks "Please select who is responsible for the war? Is it:
    A) A country (USA)
    B) A person (Putin)
    C) A transnational nuclear military (NATO)
    D) A continent (European Countries)
    E) A country and its people (Russia and The Russians)
    F) This question is hard to answer "

    Not the USA and it’s people. Not Joe Biden. Not European people. Not Ukraine and The Ukrainians.

    It’s laughably corrupt

    • ComradeChairmanKGB@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      I remember taking English classes and learning about how to avoid biasing polls and such. But these professional journalists don’t even try to have the same level of integrity as school children. Western media is truly incredible. Incredibly shit.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      I noticed that as well, I love how they keep trying to pretend that Putin just rules by decree. You even see it in articles about the military news as if Putin personally commands all the forces, like he’s playing an RTS there or something. It’s absolutely incredible framing. I guess it’s necessary to keep the whole if we only got rid of Putin everything would be great narrative going.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Putin is god almighty vs all Russians are orcs - two button meme (liberals press both).

        Actually this narration is quite understandable for two reasons, first is idealism and fear of marxism, capitalist media fear doing the materialist analysis of material conditions, so they instead press the most vulgar idealist interpretation for which even Ranke and Gibbon would kick their asses. And no wonder, imagine what would happen if people suddenly started to use historical materialism! Second is the realpolitik, if they manage to get rid of Putin and vassalize Russia they would need to tone down the hatred in order to control it and direct it to next target.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          1 year ago

          I’m also at a loss as to what these people expect will happen if Putin somehow got ousted. He’s basically a moderate in Russia, it’s likely that Medvedev or maybe even somebody like Kadyrov could get in power after. The fixation on Putin shows utter lack of understanding of Russian politics.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      That’s basically the process that US was aiming to prevent from developing with the war. If Europe continued economic integration with Russia and China then US would necessarily start losing political influence over it. Now, Europe is stuck with US unless there’s a massive political upheaval, which may yet happen.

      • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        I wonder how many demands the US can make to Europe before the camel’s back breaks. No gas, no chips, no huawei, no 5G… they’re not seriously going to let themselves get strangled to death slowly right?

        • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          Slow strangling is exactly what is happening though. Problem of Europe is not even that they have compradors in power, problem is that basically every forseeable alternative are also compradors, or open fascist (who are also usually compradors).

  • Catradora-Stalinism☭@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I feel like people vastly overestimate the scale of russian influence over the internet. I can’t wait until the CIA and FBI start blaming all of the shit they do on the russians.

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      That was the point of Russiagate. The picture of Russia as weak and pitiful failed state was already ingrained since 90’s, but since you can hardly fearmonger your population with a weak and pitiful failed state, a new narration was added. So now it is a weak and pitiful failed state with inhuman propganda and corrupting power (sounds kida like… projection? or soon will be). The enemy must be at the same time weak and strong, as per usual fascism.

  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Yes, if only the United States did not send thousands of armed troops into Ukraine to kill and rape Ukrainian citizens and forcibly annex Ukrainian sovereign territory, this war would never have happened, because no one is attacking Ukraine right now except the United States of America. As a matter of fact, someone should send weapons and supplies to the Ukrainian military so they can forcibly purge these barbaric American occupiers within their borders with extreme incendiary prejudice and send the pieces of those filthy Yankee scum back to their shithole country in a box so they regret ever sending jack booted thugs to terrorize the good people of Ukraine.

    (hint: this was sarcasm and I was actually describing what russia was doing to ukraine)

      • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        someone openly stating that america DIDN’T lash out?

        careful, a person can get lined up against a wall for that sort of talk around here!

        • Buchenstr@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          As if you people don’t actively cheer political prisoners getting stuffed in Guantanamo bay. Careful lurking around here by the way, your three letter agencies might think you’re one of us, and you’ll disappear in some black room.

    • Krause [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      vladolf putler just woke up one day and decided to launch a full-scale invasion with his war of aggression for absolutely no reason at all putin-wink

      • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I’m sure his excuses sound perfectly salient in his own mind.

        cool motive, still warcrime

        similarly, one kid holding his finger an inch away from another kid’s arm while taunting “I’m not touching you!!!” is understandably insufferable, and maybe in 1993 I would’ve felt a nigh implacable urge to punch the other kid for “not touching” me, but even though it’s the tip of an ice berg comprising a long history of being dicked around, punching someone for “not touching you” is still the morally wrong move.

        you know, instead of thousands of people dying for no good fucking reason, maybe they could’ve just stayed home. it wouldn’t have fixed the prior (actually valid) wrongs inflicted by the ‘west’, but it wouldn’t have made everything SO MUCH WORSE on every single fucking metric, maybe.

        • Krause [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          you know, instead of thousands of people dying for no good fucking reason, maybe they could’ve just…

          1. Not coup’d the government in Ukraine with Euromaidan

          2. Not fueled a civil war against the DPR and LPR

          3. Not violated Minsk 1

          4. Not violated Minsk 2

          5. Not mobilized men near the border

          6. Not threatened to rip up the Non-Proliferation Treaty

          7. Not thrown away the peace negotiations back in April 2022 and backstab Russia after they agreed to retreat

          8. Not ripping off Russia on their end of the grain deal and making sure Ukraine didn’t use the humanitarian corridors for military purposes

          But instead we’re getting a continuation of this conflict until the literal last Ukrainian is mobilized, all for Western capital.

          • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            ah, what a convenient list of the aforementioned legitimately awful shit the US is responsible for but isn’t made even the slightest bit better by invading ukraine!

            i’d love to see the united states face consequences, but punishing ukraine instead?

            that’d be like if someone shot the neighbor’s kid because their dad cheated at bowling.

            it’s simply indefensible.

            • Krause [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              awful shit the US is responsible for

              Why are we pretending that the Ukrainian government isn’t complicit too? The people they put in power after the coup aren’t mindless slaves.

              i’d love to see the united states face consequences, but punishing ukraine instead?

              Funny how you complain about “punishing Ukraine” for these things but you suggest that Russia should have just let Ukraine genocide the Russian minority, annex the DPR and LPR and just continue with even more escalations, you know, the things that were stopped by invading Ukraine in 2022.

              • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                if someone accused you of trying to ‘annex’ your own arm and leg and then tried to dismember you with an axe in order to prevent you from genociding your own cells, i’d probably side against the axe-wielding psycho too.

                DPR and LPR have literally physically always been part of ukraine for as long as ukraine even existed

                i’m open to hearing about exactly how and when any ‘genocide’ was happening against the people who lived there, though - except the bit where russia showed up and started killiing people, of course, because that ObViOuSLy dOeSn’T cOuNt, RiGhT???

                • Buchenstr@lemmygrad.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  What a complete stupid reason “DPR AND LRP hAvE BeEn PaRT oF UKraInE fOR aS LoNG aS uKraIne eVen ExIstEd” This sentence is complete absurdity and stupidity, these regions have always had russian speaking people before ukraine even existed as you state, so in fact they actually have a legitimate claim to secede from ukraine from an historical analysis. Otherwise you’re spouting revanchist shite which you liberals so often accuse russians of doing. Seriously what does ukraine have that can connect it to these russian speaking areas? Because owning land in the past ≠ legitimate claim to these lands.

                  Ukraine has no legitimate reason for attacking a democratic process of these 2 regions from seceding, not one. And everything that ukraine is currently doing is in complete violation against the basic UN laws of freedom to self-determination.