After Initial Panic, Russians have Largely Adapted to War in Ukraine and Its Consequences as a New Normal They Can Live With, Volkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 21 – When Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russians panicked; but they quickly adapted to the new situation both because of their past experiences with overcoming crises and because of their sense that they could manage to improve their personal lives even if the situation in Russia deteriorated, Denis Volkov says.

            The return to a cautious optimism about their own situations if not about the future of the Russian Federation as such would be threatened, the Levada Center director says, only if there were a serious downturn in the economy that would hit far more groups or if the Kremlin demanded a general mobilization (gorby.media/articles/2024/08/22/dolgaia-adaptatsiia).

            Were either of those things to occur, Volkov suggests, then the positive attitudes most Russians have about their own lives and their confidence that Russia will somehow get through these problems as it has in the past could be shattered with Russians adopting far more negative views about their future and the future of the country.

            Volkov says that the Kremlin also understands this and so has done its best to maintain or improve the standard of living of most Russians by a variety of subsidies and indexation of benefits and to avoid declaring a mobilization that could unsettle the social and political world in Russia today.