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Poll: Most Russians believe Ukraine downed MH17
Published:  Jul 31, 2014 1:18 PM
Updated: 7:31 AM

MH17 A poll in Russia reveals most of its citizens believe that the Ukrainian military was responsible for the downing of MH17.

According to UK daily The Guardian yesterday, a new independent poll in Russia has shown that 82 percent of Russians surveyed believe the Ukrainian military shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

Levada Centre, an independent Russian research organisation conducted the poll on 1,501 respondents in Russia’s six biggest cities.

Levada Centre sociologist Denis Volkok said public opinion on MH17 was largely shaped by the state-controlled TV as over 90 percent of Russians rely on it as the main source of information on events in Crimea and Ukraine.

Unlike the western portrayal of Russia as the alleged culprits in the MH17 saga, the state-controlled TV has brought up various arguments, including a popular one that Ukrainian forces had intended to fire at President Vladimir Putin’s plane but mistakenly took down the Malaysian airliner.

Also, TV and print media have been revisiting the story of Ukrainian military downing the Siberia Airlines flight 1812 over the Black Sea in 2001.

 

Out of the 82 percent respondents who blamed the Ukrainian forces for downing the plane, 46 percent said they believed a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile was responsible, and another 36 percent said it was a Ukrainian warplane instead.

While it is widely believed in the West that the pro-Russian rebels fired a surface-to-air missile at the Malaysian airliner, only three percent of the Russian respondents in the poll believed this to be the case.

The remaining sixteen percent of respondents admitted that they didn’t know, said The Guardian.

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