[V-2]

It is generally hard to reason about public support in an authoritarian state, because such states largely control the access to information. So yes, people do hold opinions, but how do they go about forming these opinions? How many are in a position to make an informed decision?

[robotnaoborot]

This is an interesting topic btw. As someone who grew up in USSR I would have to note that nobody took soviet propaganda seriously. People knew media is lying and took all information with a HUGE grain of salt. Meanwhile information is interpreted, silenced and manipulated in (at least mainstream) media all around the world. But people there often take that information for granted because they have trust in there media and believe they live in a free world. And cmon I watch western news a lot and it's full of NLP stamps and very strong opinions which you wouldn't expect from professional journalism but it's just there. The sad truth is that we all live in dystopia. Especially with modern technologies. No KGB or stasi ever dreamed of such having information about peoples lives as some facebook(or government agencies) now have. The scary thing is not surveillance it's mass surveillance. When some opposition can be detected until even they did something wrong just by some patterns like books they read or visiting hackers news.

[sam_lowry_]

> How many are in a position to make an informed decision?

State TV was not very popular even when I lived there some 20ish years ago, and now everyone and their grandma gets their news from Telegram. Telegram usage dropped a bit because many are afraid of having it on their devices, but it is still by far the most popular way of getting news.

It's really hard to estimate the number of those who continue watching state TV. The least educated and people with disabilities watch easy-to-reach Russian propaganda channels as much if not more. Those are at least captivating ;-).