Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 27 – Forty-seven percent of Russians said in a poll taken last month that their country had experienced more harm than good as a result of Putin’s war in Ukraine, up from 41 percent in May. Over the same period, the share of those who said that it had brought more good than harm fell from 38 percent to 28 percent.
These results are reported at levada.ru/2024/10/09/konflikt-s-ukrainoj-vnimanie-podderzhka-otnoshenie-k-razlichnym-usloviyam-mirnogo-soglasheniya-v-sentyabre-2024-goda/ and are discussed at moscowtimes.ru/2024/10/09/pochti-polovina-rossiyan-nachali-videt-vvoine-bolshe-vreda-chem-polzi-a144489.
Not surprisingly, women, young people, residents of larger cities, and those who generally disapprove of the Putin regime take a more negative view of the war than do men, older age cohorts, rural residents, and those who generally support Putin and believe the country is moving in the right direction.
Those who see the war in increasingly negative terms point to the human losses involved, the deterioration of the country’s economy, increased spending on the military and cutbacks in spending on social needs, worsening relations with other countries, and opposition to war in general, the polling agency says.
The share of those who think the war is going successfully has fallen from 70 percent in February to 60 percent last months, and the fraction who support peace talks has risen from 50 percent to 54 percent over the same period. But only 31 percent say they would support the return of territories now occupied by Russia to Ukraine in order to achieve peace.
Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, says that these figures show that Russians are gradually becoming tired of the war but also that this isn’t happening quickly because most Russians are still able to live as they did before the war and aren’t prepared to challenge the regime on this or other policies (t.me/agentstvonews/7635).
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