Media trust and opinions about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine: Audience-level evidence from Kazakhstan

This paper examines how trust in Russian and Western media is associated with how Kazakhstani audiences attribute blame for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and express trust to Western institutions. Using a representative survey of 1200 respondents fielded in Kazakhstan in December 2023, we find that trust in Russian State TV is associated with greater blame toward Ukraine and the United States/West and lower blame toward Russia, while trust in Western media is associated with lower blame toward Ukraine and the United States/West and higher blame toward Russia. Formal tests indicate that the differences in coefficient magnitude across the Ukraine and United States/West blame outcomes are not statistically distinguishable at the conventional 5% level. Blame attribution shows the clearest and most consistent pattern of association with media trust; institutional trust is associated more selectively.