Russians Increasingly Connecting the Dots and Oppose Putin’s War Because of Its Impact on Their Lives, Independent Sociologist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 1 – Surveys conducted by independent sociologists show that ever fewer Russians support Putin’s war in Ukraine and ever more oppose it with the latter doing so precisely because they have connected the dots between the conflict and their own declining standard of living.

            Aleksey Mikhaylo, one of their number and co-founder of the Chronicle Project, says that as a result, Russians who favor fighting on to a victorious conclusion are now much fewer than the number who want it to end so that their lives will improve (svoboda.org/a/voyna-v-obschestve-nepopulyarna-novoe-issledovanie-sotsiologov/32708417.html).

            This isn’t captured by most Russian pollsters, he continues, because the questions they ask are posed in such a way that people say, yes, they support the war, when in fact they don’t – something that becomes clear if one asks whether they would like to see the fighting continue until victory or favor a negotiated settlement.

            Those who back the second option should not be counted as supporters of the war but rather as opponents, Mikhaylo says; and the relationship between the two positions when the question is framed in this way provides a better understanding of how much support the war and its author, Vladimir Putin, in fact have.

            According to Mikhaylo, “the reduction of the standard of living quite strongly influences the attitudes of people on the war:” Russians increasingly recognize that the decline is the product of the war, which has led to Western sanctions and to their own government shifting resources away from social needs to military ones.