Our Senior Program Officer and Researcher Eva Bognar talked to the primetime news program of RTL Klub, the TV channel with the largest reach in Hungary, about the impact of government propaganda.

She was asked about the results of a new survey conducted by Median Opinion and Market Research company for online news portal 444.hu, which found that Hungarians have a negative view about both Russia and Ukraine, with government supporters having a clearly more favorable view about Russia. On a 0-100-point scale where higher points signal a more positive view, Russia was given 32 points by the respondents. Ukraine scored 33 points, even though Russia started the war on Ukraine

This is unusual in the international context, Eva Bognar said. She thinks the Hungarian government’s communication, portraying Ukraine and Russia as almost equally responsible for the war, probably plays a large role in the results.

Watch the news report (in Hungarian) here.