Russia is making money on Ukrainian children: “Masha and the Bear is back on top of YouTube
27 August 21:48
The YouTube channel with the animated series Masha and the Bear topped the ranking of the most popular children’s channels among the Ukrainian audience. Despite the Ukrainian voice acting, the revenue from views is likely to be generated by the Russian studio Animacord. This is stated in the analytics of Detector. Media, which has studied the ten most popular children’s YouTube channels allegedly registered in Ukraine, reports "Komersant Ukrainian".
Russian footprint in the most popular children’s content
The Masha and the Bear channel has gathered the largest number of subscribers and views among Ukrainian children. Although the episodes are dubbed in Ukrainian, the description includes an official website with the .ru domain and a page on the banned social network Vkontakte.
The journalists remind that the cartoon was broadcast on Ukrainian television even after 2014, including on Inter and 1 1. In 2017, the Ukrainian State Film Agency considered banning it because of the elements of Russian propaganda found. In one of the episodes, for example, the character Masha appears wearing a hat of the NKVD, a Soviet punitive body.
Profits that can finance the war
Analysts suspect that the registration of the channel in Ukraine allows the producer to bypass the monetization block for Russians and continue to make money from the Ukrainian audience.
“If you do a very rough calculation, the average RPM (revenue per thousand commercial views) can be about $3. This means that in 2025 alone, Russians could earn more than $2.4 million from Ukrainian children. So much for donating to the Russian army,” said Olga Tyshchuk-Volska, head of Tyshchuk Digital HUB.
Ukrainian content is also in the ranking, but there is less of it
The second place in the ranking was taken by the Ukrainian channel “With Love to Children”, which is created by Lviv authors and performers. In 2025, it garnered 614 million views. The channel publishes songs, exercises, and educational content for the youngest.
However, the top ten also includes other Russian-language channels or channels of questionable origin: Fast Sergey, Amelka Karamelka, Lady Bug and Supercat, Brobax, Plus Plus.
Journalists note that it is difficult to identify the real owners of these channels, as only YouTube can provide official information. However, the references to Russian resources in the descriptions indicate their origin.
The animated series Masha and the Bear has been produced by the Moscow-based Animakkord studio since 2009. It has been translated into dozens of languages and has hundreds of millions of views worldwide.
Back in 2014-2017, experts and some Ukrainian politicians called for the show’s broadcast to be restricted because it contained elements of Soviet symbolism and was interpreted as “soft propaganda” for Russia.
Despite the full-scale war, the YouTube version of Masha and the Bear remains among the most popular in Ukraine.
