Kremlin Bots Have Started Justifying Putin’s Falling Rating by Saying Other Politicians’ Ratings Are Even Lower

Kremlin bots have started justifying Putin’s falling rating by saying other politicians’ ratings are even lower

Over the past five days, pro-government bots on VKontakte have left almost 700 comments under posts about Vladimir Putin’s approval rating continuing to fall for the sixth week in a row. This is shown by data from the Botnadzor project, which Verstka analyzed.

To downplay the significance of the rating decline, the bots resort to comparing Putin with Western politicians.

“Remember old man Bidon with 38% or Macron with 25%, and the fact that the rating dropped from 70% is normal seasonal dynamics, besides the trust rating remains at 72%, which is much more important),” the messages say.

The bots also often express doubts about the reliability of the VTsIOM data itself, since “a sample of 1,600 people is nothing at all,” while FOM’s “poll is more reliable.”

“Are these numbers definitely true? Where do they get them from? Are some kinds of polls being conducted?”, the bots write.

One of the bots’ main narratives is praise for the president. Under posts about the rating, they write that “Putin is the only guarantor that the country will not fall apart” and that, despite inflation, wages “grew by 10 thousand over the year.”

🩵Last week, VTsIOM reported that Vladimir Putin’s approval rating from April 6 to 12 was 66.7%, down 1.1 percentage points from the previous week. This is already the sixth consecutive week in which a decline in the president’s rating has been recorded.

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