Recent Poll in Belgorod, a Russian Oblast Much Like Kursk, Offers Clues about Local Responses to Ukrainian Actions

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 19 – The ExtremeScan Research Group has been conducting polls in Belgorod Oblast, a Russian region that neighbors Kursk and shares many of the characteristics of the latter, since March 2023. Its most recent survey, conducted last month, thus provides some useful clues about the response of the populations in both to Ukrainian actions.

            Elena Konyeva, the founder of the group, has now provided some of the data from that latest poll to The Moscow Times (moscowtimes.ru/2024/08/19/kogda-nachalas-voina-a139774). Among the most interesting and suggestive findings are the following:

·       More than 70 percent of Belgorod residents said they had experienced shelling or drone attacks and lost property as a result. More than 60 percent said they had suffered wounds or the loss of friends or loved ones. But five percent said they hadn’t experienced any of that.

·       Belgorod residents had been leaving the oblast for a long time before 2022. Their departures accelerated in that year, and in the first half of 2024, the number of those leaving was as great as the number who had left in 2022 and 2023 combined.

·       Nineteen percent of those leaving this year were under 30, while only four percent of those 60 and over did so. Of those who have left, more than 60 percent have relatives who still remain in Belgorod.

·       More than 80 percent of those who left said they had not received any help from the authorities in finding new housing.

·       Just over half of those from Belgorod who have left favor withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and the start of peace talks, compared to 34 percent taking those positions among those who have remained. The two groups divide in roughly similar ways concerning views about Putin and the war.

Konyeva says that in these border regions, the perceptions of the population “will inevitably become more negative,” especially because the Russian state has done so little to help both those who have fled and those who have remained. As a result, “it makes no sense to count on the level of consolidation against the enemy or even maintaining the usual level of loyalty.”