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.
germans are probably still pissed the US took out the nord stream 2. if you want to overcome a 12% spike in energy costs, you gotta spend way more on the propaganda. like yank burgerbrain levels. we're talking multiple $100 million budget blockbuster summer movies, children's toy tie-ins, video games. smoke machines, laser lights, 100 meter tall robots breathing fire, all you can eat fried meat, monster trucks crashing into each other, music so loud even the young people think the world is coming to an end.
You can get that full experience with about an hour of uncurated TikTok.