Someone posted a poll that 57% of Russians believe NATO is the driver of this crisis. I mean I guess when you don't have a free press and your access is to only state media, you would believe it
This (the second sentence, at least) is not entirely true. Yes, you won't find any truth on tv, or in newspapers and magazines, but there are several independent media outlets you can find in the internet. The government is making lives of independent journalists pretty hard, many of them are obliged to put a "foreign agent" label before everything they publish online (which, among other negative consequences, hurts potential advertisements/ sponsorships), but they still endure.
Iirc, so far the only independent media that got designed as an "undesirable organization" and was forced to close down was "Project media", which published a lot of useful investigations of corruption, including finding Putin's ex-lover (now millionaire, of course) and his third secret daughter (born outside of marriage, obviously, because Putin is a huge supporter of "traditional family values").
The issue, though, is that a large part of Russian population prefers to just kinda avoid politics, so they are not really interested in looking for independent sources of information. And TV (where you pretty much can't avoid the government propaganda) is something that a lot of people still watch. There is also internet propaganda (Russian bots, paid bloggers, etc.), so staying away from politics and state-funded television doesn't mean that you'll completely avoid kremlin's disinformation, lol.
As for the poll… yeah, somewhat independent polls show that 48% of Russians believe that NATO is to blame, lol.
Source:
https://www.levada.ru/en/2021/05/19/escalation-in-southeast-ukraine/ (It's in English)
www.theguardian.com
www.bbc.com
