Tweet

After months of "Ukraine fatigue", both Czech public opinion and newsroom are turning their gaze eastward again. Public opinion polls and media analysis have shown that interest in the topic of the Russia war in Ukraine and relates issues has increased among Czechs and the domestic medi

Written by Kateřina Zichová| Euractiv.cz

Translated by Martin Říha| Euractiv.cz

The Czech public's interest was surveyed at the end of January by the analytical institute STEM. In the survey, more respondents said they were interested in the war in Ukraine than in June 2024. The answer that they are “very much” or “a lot” interested in the topic was chosen by 23% of respondents, compared to 16% last year.

Those who are “not very” or “not at all” interested in the war were 38% this January, compared to 44% last June. The rest (39% and 41% respectively) are ‘moderately’ interested in the topic, meaning that “people take in information as it reaches them from their individual media mix and do not actively seek it out much,” the STEM Institute explained.

Trump's fresh wind

According to STEM, this slight increase in attention can be linked to the new US President Donald Trump taking office. The surge came after a prolonged period of fatigue, which during 2024 saw a decline in public interest in Russian aggression in Ukraine. While interest was very strong at the start of the aggression in 2022, it had already begun to decline slightly as the year progressed, and by 2023 interest had turned more towards domestic issues related to the impact of the Russian war, STEM described.

A similar trend can be observed in the case of interest in the topic by the Czech media. According to Newton Media's findings, overall coverage in the 70 relevant media outlets was highest in the first year of the aggression - the monthly average of media coverage climbed to 14,218, but over time a decline came. “From mid-2022 to the end of 2024, a gradual decline in media interest can be observed with minor fluctuations. In 2023, the monthly average for the whole year was 6,420 outputs and in 2024 it was 3,901 outputs,” the agency described.

However, in the first quarter of this year, interest has similarly revived, with the monthly average climbing to 5,067 views. “In March 2025, the highest level of publicity for the war since July 2023 was measured at 6,045 views. Increased media coverage was already registered in February,” Newton Media reported.

That's because the media at the time were closely monitoring how the US administration of Donald Trump would engage in dealing with Russian aggression in Ukraine. The publicity of Donald Trump in the Czech media rose sharply to more than 3000 mentions this February, a similar trend as that of Vice President J.D. Vance.

“If we follow the complete media coverage of the war in Ukraine this year, we can note a sharp increase in publicity, especially in the second half of February, which should be seen as a reflection of the controversial actions of the incoming President of the United States Donald Trump,” Newton Media analysts said.

“At the time of, among other things, Trump's meeting with US President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, weekly publicity figures for the war were double those of January. Then, during March, there was a gradual decline in media attention,” they described.

Controversial narratives reach the mainstream

And who has written the most about the topic in the Czech media environment? According to Newton Media, disinformation websites have also shown increased activity and surpassed even some of the most active mainstream media.

According to Pavel Havlíček, an analyst at the Association for International Affairs (TOP 09), the Czech disinformation scene has been “quite developed” since 2014. “Although the Czech Republic shut down some websites for a while at the beginning of the Russian aggression and the EU banned Russian media from operating on its territory, there are many channels that more or less openly adopt pro-Kremlin narratives,” he told Euractiv Czechia. 

According to the Czech Elves' (a volunteer civic network that monitors and counters online disinformation in the Czech Republic) monitoring of the Czech disinformation scene, in February 2025 there was a “significant shift towards foreign policy themes and geopolitical framing of disinformation”, towards narratives linked specifically to Donald Trump, the war in Ukraine and the alleged illegitimacy of Western institutions.

According to Czech Elves, the topic of the US and Donald Trump even dominated the disinformation websites, followed by the war in Ukraine. The latter was framed during this period, for example, as the instigator of the conflict, with the Ukrainian leadership being labelled a “criminal regime”.

According to Havlíček, even some mainstream media sometimes tend to adopt bizarre narratives. “One example for all, Andor Šándor (former chief of Czech military intelligence who now works as a security analyst and commentator) in an interview with me on Prima CNN News in which we discussed Russian attacks against civilians in Ukraine using the traditional Kremlin method. He said, “Well, okay, I wasn't there for the attack, I don't know if it was a Russian missile or a Russian missile shot down by Ukrainians, so I can't tell.”

“This is something that is the traditional Kremlin method, which is getting a lot of airtime in the Czech Republic just on television. It is an attempt to obscure and obfuscate the truth as much as possible. This is important because the key player in the field of influencing public opinion is not so much the mainstream media itself, but the politicians and actors who appear in them,” the analyst concluded.