Photo Credit: http://ria.ru

NTV and Channel One, two of Russia’s major stations, have been reporting on today’s session of the State Council where ministers and heads of Russia’s regions laid out their plans to boost the economy despite the sanctions and the weakening rouble.

According to the networks, Russia’s food embargo was introduced to ‘defend Russian manufacturers’.

The Russian media also heavily focuses on the latest bill on the status of the Ukrainian regions held by separatists passed in Kiev, and the response to it by the right-wing forces.

Another piece of news on the top of the headlines is plans by the US to explode a nuclear bomb on the moon to intimidate the Soviet Union.

These horror stories fall into the mainstream narrative pursued by Russian journalists in the past couple of months following the turmoil in Ukraine and the incorporation of Crimea.

Another big story is Scotland’s independence referendum taking place today. The coverage links the effort to similar campaigns in Spain’s Catalonia and Canada’s Quebec, and, implicitly, to Crimea, and Novorossiya, a new formation on the territory of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions controlled by anti-government forces.

The online news outlet Vzglyad.ru carries an article on the newly-elected Ukrainian leader Petr Poroshenko, saying ‘he has not lived up to his election promises but the voters don’t seem to care’.

Another story right below in the news feed highlights the engagement of prison inmates into the National Guard of Ukraine.

Vzglyad, known for its pro-Kremlin coverage, also looks at the success of alternative parties in Western countries, like France and Germany. Many of them favour better ties with Russian and the lifting of sanctions, and journalists seem to suggest that sanctions against Russia face some serious opposition inside Western societies.

Russia-IC will continue to update you on the sentiment here in Russia and the mainstream media stories hammered home to ordinary Russians via TV networks.