How Ukrainians lost faith in Russian opposition
Joined "Cultural space"
Before February 24th 2022 most Ukrainians consumed online content primarily in Russian language. Ukrainian content makers also produced videos and blogs mostly in that language. Language that now many Ukrainians consider a weapon against Ukrainian identity.
After many years of russification, practically all Ukrainians knew Russian, and it worked as lingua franca in USSR and between newly born counties after it's collapse.
Many Ukrainians who decided to start a Youtube channel, had a choice between Ukrainian and Russian languages, the later option was more appealing because of larger audience and better sponsor opportunities.
While Ukrainian speaking channels existed, they were a rarities compared to prevalent content. As such there was little difference in online content created in Ukraine and Russia.
But that day everything changed...
Opposition before full scale invasion
Opposition in Russia was operating in limited capacity. While technically there were several opposition parties, in practice they weren't so opposed as their "title" might suggest. They hardly ever criticized the main party, and in the rare cases they did, they still praised the president.
Absolute cinema. fragment from TV Rain broadcast, 2022
Truly opposed Russians were denied any official registration opportunities for political parties or individuals. I won't go into what tools Kremlin used to do so, but as a result, Russian opposition was limited to making Youtube videos, and organizing protests which were also curbed.
Most popular of them was Navalny. He was denied a place on ballot in 2018 presidential election, and every political party he created were banned. As such most of his work was making investigations into corruption among ruling party.
At its peak in 2021 his Youtube channel had just over 6.5 million subscribers. Which is not really decisive in a country with a population over 140 million people — and that before you consider that some of those subscribers were from other countries and some were under voting age.
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