30 Percent of Russians Want War in Ukraine to End Now, Confidential Kremlin-Ordered Poll Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 11 – A poll the Presidential Administration ordered VTsIOM to make but not publish finds that 30 percent of Russians want the war in Ukraine to be ended as soon as possible but that 57 percent say that Putin’s “special military operation” there should be continued until its victorious conclusion.

            The Riga-based Russian news outlet Meduza, which obtained a copy of the findings, says that the number of Russians queried in this survey is unknown and acknowledges that it has not been able to receive official confirmation that the poll was actually taken at the order of the Kremlin (meduza.io/feature/2022/07/12/meduza-uznala-rezultaty-zakrytogo-oprosa-vtsiom-provedennogo-po-zakazu-kremlya-po-ego-dannym-30-rossiyan-schitayut-chto-voynu-nuzhno-ostanovit-pryamo-seychas).

            But both the overall figures and the details the poll results the news outlet does have are consistent with other findings; and that in and of itself suggests that the survey was in fact conducted as described and that the findings are an accurate indicator of how Russians feel about Putin’s war in Ukraine.

            Like other polls, this one found that the older the respondent, the more willing he or she was to call for a continuation of the war. Among those 18 to 24, 56 percent favor a quick end to the conflict compared to only 19 percent who back a war to a victorious conclusion, while among those over 60, 72 percent want the war to continue.

            In the two capitals, about 40 percent want military operations to end quickly, but 48 percent want it to continue until victory. Residents of other large cities are the greatest supporters of continuing the war with 62 percent of those living in the so-called millionaire cities doing so, the poll shows.

            All that is consistent with other polling as is the finding in this survey that those who rely on television for their news are far more likely to support the Kremlin’s position than those who use the Internet regularly. Not surprisingly, experts with whom Meduza spoke called the results of the Kremlin-ordered poll entirely predictable.