The article justifies the importance of analyzing accessibility, directions and peculiarities of using information about foreign countries’ political leaders by various categories of Russian citizens. At the same time, the importance of taking into consideration the following factors is shown: processes of geopolitics and world economy globalization; formation of the world information, financial and economic space, and military and political space; expansion of international relations of Russia and its regions in various fields of activity. The authors consider specific characteristics of foreign countries’ political leaders that are important from the viewpoint of managing their images formation in Russian citizens’ consciousness. Possible options for classification of such leaders are suggested that allow to systematize the process of considering material on the subject matter. The article stresses the special role of perception of images of foreign countries’ leaders from G20 group and the leaders from the states having developed political, economic or cultural relations with Russia. With regard to the peculiarities of perception and use of images of foreign political leaders, a number of Russian citizens groups have been identified. For each group, the following was analyzed: motivation, nature and volume of information about foreign countries’ leaders created (generated) and perceived by persons from specific groups; reasons and extent of their interest in obtaining information about foreign leaders; the composition and volumes of information that are actually involved in formation of these politicians’ images; the extent to which individuals from each of these groups are "resilient" to the effects of mass consciousness manipulation technologies; the subject matter, content and volumes of information about political leaders in dissemination of which these persons may participate; directions and volumes of information and telecommunication technologies use by Russian citizens from specific groups to create, receive and disseminate information about foreign countries’ political leaders, including television, the Internet, social networks, messengers, etc. The paper briefly analyzes possible technologies for conducting research concerning the effectiveness of processes of managing the perception of foreign countries leaders’ images by Russian citizens belonging to different groups.
