Forty percent of Germans at least partially agree that Russia's military operation in Ukraine was provoked by NATO, a survey conducted by the opinion research center Cemas found
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd November, 2022) Forty percent of Germans at least partially agree that Russia's military operation in Ukraine was provoked by NATO, a survey conducted by the opinion research center Cemas found.
The survey of 2,228 people, conducted from October 3-11, revealed that the number of those who fully or partially agree that "NATO provoked Russia for so long that Russia had to go to war in Ukraine" was up 11% from April.
A further 44% at least partially agreed that "Putin has confronted a global elite that has been secretly pulling the strings," up from 32% in April, while 24% agreed that the military operation in Ukraine was necessary "to remove its fascist regime," up from 14%.
The nine-page report, titled "Stress Test for Democracy: Pro-Russian Conspiracy Narratives and Trust in Disinformation in the Society," blames the opinion shift entirely on so-called Russian propaganda.
"The representative sample shows a rise in support for all pro-Russian conspiracy narratives in the German population," reads the study led by Pia Lamberty, a German researcher of conspiracy theories.
The research also emphasized a persisting split between western and eastern states, more than three decades after the German reunification. Almost 60% of eastern Germans agreed that NATO provoked Russia, compared to 35% in the western states.
