Most Russians don’t have easy access to non-state propaganda media outlets. If they only have false information, they can’t be expected to form an educated opinion.
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend taking a look at a recent post from the NYT Magazine about a Russian defector. They also made a 5 part podcast miniseries told from his perspective. NYT recently put old podcast episodes behind the paywall, not sure how to access them elsewhere, but I’ll include a link to reference if you want to look it up.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/20/magazine/ukraine-russia-war-deserter.html
This is actually completely false.
Until very recently, both Youtube and telegram have been available censorship free. Almost every russian was able to access “non-state propaganda media outlets” in under ~10 seconds on their smartphones.
NYT times is bad source on russia. They routinely whitewash russian crimes. They often leverage russian opposition sources without any critical analysis.
YouTube and Telegram are not sources of authoritative or factual information either, if anything they are even less reliable. YouTube alone is probably filled with more hours of misinformation than all news media on the planet.
The fact you’re even suggesting them as some sort of alternative to get reliable info shows you don’t intend to have a real discussion.
It’s not difficult to find if you try just a little bit.
