General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Do you believe that Putin's invasion of Ukraine was justified? [View all]Igel
(37,548 posts)Aksenov and his ilk got 4% of the vote.
3 million population.
That's 120k people. You can have a lot of "greeting as liberator" with 120,000 people. Heck, the size of the crowds in liberators could have been produced by Russia military folk in plain clothes on leave.
But you also have to take into account their news diet.
It's like being in Los Angeles in spring 1992. The LA riots started and were on the tv. A lot of people assumed that we were in imminent danger in Westwood and were terrified. Some were from out of town and unaware of the distance. Some were racist and assumed that the dark-skinned "uprisers" were going to come and get them. And that's just based on rumor, emotional thinking, and the MSMS--without an intentionally biased media feeding them streams about armed columns of fascist whatevers heading for Westwood in order to massacre us in order to scare and manipulate us.