How can we find out what Russian citizens think about the war without asking about the war directly?
You have all seen opinion polls suggesting that an overwhelming majority of Russians fully support Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. And we have repeatedly explained why those numbers cannot be relied on: people are simply too frightened, they refuse to speak to pollsters, or they do not tell them the truth.
If not those, then which ones can we trust? How can we learn anything about Russians’ attitudes using sociological methods if asking directly about the war is completely out of the question? The Anti-Corruption Foundation’s (ACF) polling team devoted its latest survey entirely to economic issues, but viewed through the prism of those answers, a great deal becomes clear. Let’s take a look together.
Since 2014, Ukraine has had an additional “military levy” in place—an extra 1.5% added to income tax, earmarked for modernizing the Armed Forces of Ukraine. (The results of that modernization are plain to see: the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2022 and in 2014 are like night and day.)
In our question, we are not asking Russians to pay an additional tax; we are not asking them to hand over their own money. No—the question is simply about where to direct some “additional budget revenues.” And what do we see?
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, propaganda on TV says: the whole world is against us, Russia is waging a sacred war against the entire vast NATO bloc, which threatens to tear apart all the “traditional bonds” of great Russian civilization.
Putin’s propagandists call what is happening World War III, with all of humanity supposedly lined up against Russia. But are Russians “buying” that rhetoric? Clearly not: only 7% of respondents think additional money should be spent on the war.
And it is clear why this is happening. The reason is the appalling poverty that is the main result of 22 years of Putin’s rule. The numbers speak for themselves:
Half of our fellow citizens have no savings at all. None whatsoever. And only 18%—less than one-fifth—have a financial cushion sufficient to get through, say, the loss of a job or another source of income without panic. And that risk is very real:
Nearly a quarter of respondents said that someone in their circle had lost a job in the past three months, after the start of the war. Clearly, that does not inspire confidence in the future. It forces people to abandon plans and change their already very modest way of life:
Nearly a third of respondents have already given up major purchases because of the war. And it is not as though Russians could really afford them even before the war:
Eighty percent of Russian families do not plan to make a single major purchase over the course of a year. That is called POVERTY. That is the key word defining Russia in 2022, and it also captures Russians’ true attitude toward the war. They do not need this war. They need a better life.
But they understand perfectly well that because of Putin’s war, their lives will only get worse and worse:
The growth of pessimism in ordinary people’s expectations is striking. In just one month, the share of those who expect nothing good from Russia’s economic prospects under sanctions increased by almost 10 percentage points. And it will get worse.