A Facebook user disseminated the results of a poll conducted by the British politician, David Kurten, where over 85.7% of respondents voted for Vladimir Putin when asked the question “Who is the best president, Zelensky, Putin or Macron?” The same Facebook user posted this poll and added a rhetorical question: “Liberals and moderates, wake up, is England pro-Russian and pro-Putinist too?” In this manner, the author seeks to extrapolate sentiments of a small number of Twitter users on the entire England and portray a false picture that majority in England supports Putin.
British politician David Kurten left the UK Independence Party in 2020 and joined the Heritage Party (UK) with himself being one of the co-founders. The Heritage Party is a right-wing populist party. Mr Kurten has been notorious for promoting anti-vaxxer messages and propaganda. In addition, he also made false statements that the COVID pandemic was no worse as compared to a typical influenza virus.
David Kurten’s statements made in light of Russia’s war against Ukraine are line with the widespread and false pro-Russian narrative that Vladimir Putin’s objectives are the denazification and the demilitarisation of Ukraine. On 14 December 2023, Mr Kurten tweeted to call the UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision on sending British tanks to Ukraine wrong and denounce Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime as being supported by the Nazis.
On 16 March 2023, Davit Kurten who has 113,000 followers on Twitter, conducted a poll: Who is the best President? Of the pol’s 11,0002 participants, 85.7% voted for Vladimir Putin. His attempt to manipulate people with this poll and extrapolate it over the entire population of the UK (55 million) aims to foster pro-Russian sentiments among the public.
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