Since the day the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, support for both the war and President Putin’s policies has remained virtually unchanged in Russian society. This is also the finding of sociologist Lev Gudkov, head of the Russian Lewada Center, which is the only polling institute that remains independent of the Russian state.

According to Gudkov, Russians who oppose the war consistently make up 18-22% of society, and most of them are young people. In a discussion organized by the German Sakharov Society together with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the German Society for East European Studies in Berlin, Gudkoff explained why this percentage remains stable.

Strict censorship

One of the reasons is “extreme strict censorship”, which cuts off the majority of Russians from independent sources of information, which is instead influenced by government propaganda. Many people are not even informed through the internet.

Within a few months of the start of the war the percentage of people who could bypass censorship mechanisms and turn to independent news channels increased from 6% to 22%, but since then there has been no further increase according to the sociologist .

In addition, due to the fact that “any news about Russian losses in the war is absolutely forbidden”, this issue no longer affects Russian public opinion. In an earlier interview with DW Gudkov estimated that the attitude of the Russians towards the war would change drastically if Russia was defeated or if the continuation of the war multiplied the losses.

By the end of October, journalists could identify the names of 34,857 Russian soldiers who died in Ukraine. The figures were released by the BBC’s Russian-language service, which compiles the publicly available statistics in collaboration with Mediazona, an independent Russian media group that focuses on the anti-Putin movement. Since 2021, Russian authorities have included Mediazona on the list of “foreign agents” and since 2022 they have banned it from the Russian internet, because it was covering the war in Ukraine.

As Gudkov says, only twice during the war were there official announcements of Russian casualties, but even then the numbers “had nothing to do with reality.” In September 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the death toll was 5,937, later confirming the death of 89 servicemen as a result of a Ukrainian missile attack on a Russian camp in Donetsk on New Year’s Eve 2023.

Higher wages and benefits

Another important reason is the fact that, despite predictions, the war has not significantly worsened the economic situation in Russia, Gudkov points out. In the first year of the war, the price of oil rose, bringing more revenue to the state and therefore also to part of the population. At the same time, the sectors that met war needs increased their production significantly, with wages in these sectors doubling.

Furthermore, according to the sociologist, the salaries of the Russians who are conscripted have increased significantly, as well as the compensations paid to the wounded or the families of the dead soldiers, especially those from the countryside. In these parts of the Russian countryside most residents now receive sums that they could not earn in their entire lives. This is precisely the reason why there is no dissatisfaction with the war.

But at the same time, the high cost of the war has also caused high inflation in Russia, as Gudkov explains. All recent surveys show that the Russians’ biggest problem is rising prices, especially in food and medicine – and this is more important to them than war. However, only 10-12% of respondents – mostly civil servants and middle-class citizens – find that this change is due to military spending. As Gudkov says, on the one hand they are afraid that Russia’s current policy may lead to a disaster, but on the other hand, they remain, despite this fact, loyal to the regime.