Russians will continue to back Vladimir Putin
People are yet to link economic downturn with events in Ukraine
Danil Bochkov is a fellow at the Russian International Affairs Council in Moscow.
More than a month into what is officially known here in Moscow as Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine, deemed a war in the West, some have attributed the limited number of protests and the inactivity of ordinary people to the omnipresent fear of the harsh measures aimed at limiting the space for the _expression_ of discontent.
However, the true explanation of the people's readiness to put up with what is happening in Ukraine lies deeper in their understanding of the threats emanating from the West.
It is hardly a new trend, as Russia-U.S. ties have been in free fall since 2014. In 2017, 63% of people surveyed by the state pollster Russian Public Opinion Research Center, or VTsIOM, identified the U.S. as the main potential aggressor, while 31% saw Ukraine in this capacity. Markedly, 41% of people believed that Russia could rely on China in the event of any military escalation. Today, state TV channels are routinely portraying Beijing as having taken Russia's side over Ukraine.
On the eve of the Ukraine operation, independent, nongovernmental polling and sociological research organization the Levada Center said that more than 50% of Russians saw Ukraine negatively, a 10% uptick from the previous year, while 60% attributed the aggravation of the situation to malicious actions by the U.S. and NATO.
In December last year, Levada said that 75% of people could not rule out a full-scale war scenario with Ukraine, while a CNN-commissioned poll on Feb. 23 revealed that 50% of Russians believed that the use of military force was justified to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.
These survey results reflect the general sentiment held by many Russians of the need to fortify the country against mounting foreign threats, as well as the need to come to the aid of the Russian speaking people of the Donbas region, who are seen as having suffered for eight years being "totally ignored by the West." Both of these topics are popular subjects for discussion on Russian talk shows.
The latest survey by VTsIOM published on Mar. 23 indicated 74% of people support the military operation in Ukraine, with 46% explaining its raison d'etre as "defending Russia and demilitarizing Ukraine." These numbers more or less reflect the current of feeling that can be detected on the Russian street.
Another survey by online pollster the V-Project indicated that 71% of Russians believe that their country is currently finishing a war fought for the last eight years in the Donbas against Ukrainian neo-Nazis -- another omnipresent accusation made by Russian authorities.
Further, President Vladimir Putin's approval rate has risen 10% since December, almost touching 80%, his highest approval rating since 2014 when Russia "reunited with Crimea." Putin's high popularity rating represents something of a rapid recovery from the low of 59% approval in May 2020 at the height of the pandemic.
The continuous stream of sanctions and Western leaders' calls for the removal of the Russian president will most likely serve to further unite people behind Putin. Besides, many people are drawing a parallel between what is happening in Donbas today with the "reunification" of Crimea in 2014, widely deemed as the peninsula's "liberalization" from Kyiv, which was ranked among the top five foreign policy wins of Russia in the last eight years.
Such huge support among Russians is explained by the Western media as the result of an ultrapatriotic state media narrative existing in an otherwise information-free vacuum, where fears of prosecution and mass detention have resulted in self-censorship. Still, this shallow analysis fails to account for the real reasons why there is such massive public endorsement for what is happening in Ukraine.
The more important rationale explaining why people are thinking the way they are is that the vast majority of Russians are yet to tie the events in Ukraine to the severe economic sanctions that have been imposed on the country. Since the operation commenced, only 9% of the Russians saw sanctions as something meaningful, according to a VTsIOM poll published on Mar. 3.
Prior to the sanctions, people's well-being and the Russian economy were seen positively, backed by the country's huge foreign exchange reserves and record low unemployment, with growth for the year tipped at a robust 2.8% and inflation at 5.9%.
But over the past four weeks, that rosy economic picture has been replaced with something far more dire, with the growth now expected to plummet by at least 8%, inflation soaring above 20%, unemployment doubling and people's disposable income expected to plunge by around 12%.
Such a bleak picture could not but cause resentment among some Russians, especially those living in large cities who are most exposed to the mass exodus of foreign business and skyrocketing prices.
It may also explain other pockets of discontent across the country. According to private pollster Russian Field, only 53% of Muscovites surveyed between Mar. 11 and 14 said they fully supported the operation in Ukraine, far less than nationwide estimates. There also appears to be a substantial rift among Russian cultural, business and intellectual elites, with some prominent public, business and state figures, and reportedly 70,000 IT specialists, already fleeing the country.
Whether such mood swings continue will largely depend on Russian military gains and the operation's duration, as well as the timing and effectiveness of the economic relief measures, some of which have already been launched by the government but still lack scale.
Already 20% of small to medium Russian enterprises have laid off some staff, while over 37% have a decline in revenue and a loss of clients. If the state fails to cushion the upcoming crisis, deemed the worst since the 1990s, then we may see signs of social unrest starting to accumulate.
Still, the fact remains that there is still little chance that such public unrest could build enough momentum to spark nationwide protests. The truth is that most Russians feel united against a common enemy: the West.