“Ukraine’s elections declared ‘rigged’ by country that knows president’s name years in advance,” by Halya Coynash, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 29 (http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id =1553784539):
… A monitoring report by the media watchdog Detector Media has found a high focus on Ukraine in over half of Russia’s TV talk shows, with most pushing the idea that the imminent presidential elections will be rigged.
… DM journalist Yaroslav Zubchenko was able to report that Ukraine was discussed in 60 percent of three Russian mainstream talk shows between January 14 and March 17, 2019. Three messages were most often pushed:
the claim that Ukraine was being controlled by the West (68 percent of the shows);
the idea that ‘Nazism’ is thriving in Ukraine (64 percent);
the Ukrainian elections will be rigged (55 percent). He heard calls to refuse to recognize the election results, although these results, unlike in Russia, remain entirely uncertain.
There were other favorites, including stories about Ukraine’s supposedly repressive regime and restrictions on freedom of speech.
The monitoring found that the presenters and guests on such talk shows do everything to denigrate Ukraine’s authorities, …mention of the Ukrainian government and leaders prompts talk of Russophobia, Nazis, claims that Ukraine’s leaders want war, that they are corrupt, that they’re stupid or traitors…
There are regularly calls to invade Ukraine, to retake what is purportedly “primordially Russian” land and/or to “de-Nazify Kyiv.”
Such messages are also used to push the idea that the occupied territory in Donbas will never come under Ukrainian government control again, and, indeed, the report suggests that the talk shows do everything to get people on occupied territory to hate Ukraine.…
In monitoring earlier in March, Zubchenko detailed some of the rhetoric used on Russian talk shows to discredit the Ukrainian elections. There were claims they would be rigged, that votes would be bought, that the U.S. State Department would “appoint the Ukrainian president” and that if something went wrong, the current President Petro Poroshenko would simply “set Donbas alight.” …