U.S. President Trump usurped his Kremlin counterpart last month as the most-discussed figure in Russian media, a Moscow-based analysts firm said Wednesday.
Mr. Trump’s name was mentioned 202,000 times by the Russian press during the month of January, according to data reviewed by the System for Comprehensive Analysis of News (SCAN), a search-and-analysis system maintained by Interfax, a privately-owned Russian newswire.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, was only mentioned a comparable meager 147,000 times by local media last month, causing the country’s longtime leader to lose his spot as the nation’s most-discussed celebrity for the first time since 2011.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama came in third place with 61,155 mentions, while former White House hopeful Hillary Clinton landed the seventh spot on account of garnering 23,843 mentions in the Russia media last month, Interfax reported.
The firm’s findings are the result of analyzing more than 240,000 articles published by Russia’s national and regional press during January, in addition to television and radio broadcasts as well as online news sites, according to Interfax.
Mr. Trump secured the top spot as the country’s most-discussed figure in spite of recent polling suggesting Russians are beginning to show signs of skepticism with respect to whether the newly inaugurated U.S. president will mend relations between the former Cold War adversaries as promised on the campaign trail.
Only 46 percent of Russians interviewed last week said they believe bilateral ties will improve under Mr. Trump, down from 54 percent when the same question was posed shortly after he was elected last November, according to research undertaken by the Levada Center, an independent pollster.
That same poll found that 42 percent of Russians surveyed named Mr. Trump’s inauguration last month when asked to state which recent international or domestic event of importance comes to mind first.
The Obama administration last month said the U.S. intelligence community concluded with high confidence that Mr. Putin personally directed a hacking campaign waged at American targets last year with the intent of electing Mr. Trump president, notwithstanding repeated denials from the Russian government. Nearly one-in-five Russians surveyed said they were completely unaware of claims surrounding the supposed Kremlin-led hacking campaign when reached by Levada last week, the pollster said.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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