When Vladimir Putin stood before a sea of tricolor flags and tens of thousands of cheering Russians at the Luzhniki stadium on Friday, it was clear he wanted to portray his invasion of Ukraine as a people’s war.
Not to mention independent media reports that civil servants and university students were brought to the rally by bus as the government used the same crude tactics to fill the stadium to feign patriotic enthusiasm as it had for years.
There was still some truth in the elaborate theater of Friday’s rally. Because inside Russia, as polls and unofficial data show, a significant part of the population chose to support the invasion of Ukraine, which should now be called a “special operation” by law.
“I support almost everyone I know, my friends, everyone is for it,” said Yegor Gusev, 35, who runs an auto parts business in the Moscow region. “I don’t know anyone who would come out to protest against it.”
And what about the scenes of the bombings of Mariupol and Kharkov and the fact, once unthinkable, that Russia is starting a full-scale war with its neighbor?
“Of course it’s sad – I don’t want people to die,” he said. But there was no other way [besides the invasion]… mistakes happen. But I also know that the other side is also using propaganda against us. It’s all propaganda.”
There were attempts from abroad to induce the Russian people to protest against the war. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger released a nine-minute video last week in which he recalled his admiration for Soviet weightlifter Yuri Vlasov and his father’s shame for fighting for the Nazi army near Leningrad. “This is not a war of the Russian people,” he said in an address to ordinary Russians.
But others in Russia say yes. Many supporters cite the eight-year war between Ukraine and Russian proxy forces in the Donbas, using words like genocide and World War II comparisons to justify the invasion.
As one former diplomat wrote in a WhatsApp message, he is looking forward to Russia holding Nuremberg 2.0 in Ukraine after the war. “Don’t you feel sorry for the children killed in Donbass?” Elizabeth of Moscow retorted when asked about her attitude towards the invasion. “Why don’t you write about them instead?”
Russian society is deeply polarized between supporters and opponents of the Kremlin. According to experts, these camps have turned this division into supporters and opponents of the war. Even a simple choice, such as whether to call a conflict a “war” or a state-sanctioned “military operation,” has political implications.
“We see that society is divided into a majority that generally supports the war, and a minority that is against it,” said sociologist Sergei Belanovsky. “These two groups live in different worlds and cannot convince each other of the correctness of their point of view.”
Vladimir Putin speaks to flag-waving fans at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow. Photo: Ramil Sitdikov/Sputnik/EPAAccording to the state All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 71% of Russians “support Russia’s decision to conduct a special military operation in Ukraine.” Valery Fyodorov, head of the polling station, said new data to be released by the center this week showed growing support for the “military operation.”
These results have drawn skepticism because they reinforce the Kremlin-supported image of a people’s war. But Denis Volkov of the independent Levada Center also corroborated the data, saying that the results of state opinion polls “are, in my opinion, entirely credible.” The Levada Center, Russia’s premier independent polling center, has not published a public opinion poll on the war since the conflict began. The center’s staff abandoned plans to release the results of a previous survey out of concern that their results would “in some way contribute to the escalation of the conflict.” Volkov said the group is now conducting a new poll.
Some, however, question the logic of polling in a country where information about the war is tightly controlled by state television. “State propaganda is working – it is extremely effective in what it does, presenting the events as a special operation against the Ukrainian Nazis. A lot of key information is being hidden,” Belanovsky said.
Others say that Russians are simply afraid to tell pollsters that they are against the war.
“It is difficult to conduct polls in authoritarian countries. Respondents in Russia believe that surveys are conducted by the government. Especially in wartime, respondents will be less inclined to communicate,” says sociologist Grigory Yudin.
Yudin said that, according to his research, fewer Russians have been willing to talk to pollsters since the start of the war, and only 25% of those approached are now willing to answer questions about Ukraine, compared to 33% when the invasion began.
Yudin added: “Based on my own ideas, I believe that a much smaller group is actively pro-war, actively militarizing. This group exists and it’s a concern, but it’s not the majority.”
Aggressive attempts to garner support for the invasion stunned opponents of the war. When Putin showed up on Friday, the banner reading “For a world without Nazism” featured the letter Z, the tactical markings used on Russian tanks in Ukraine. Anti-war activists also found a letter written in white paint on the doors of their doors to intimidate them.
“Personally, I think it’s fascism, something I could never imagine… I have no other associations than this,” said Daniil Beilinson of the OVD-Info group, which oversaw the arrest of nearly 15,000 protesters and others . pressure faced by anti-war activists.
The organic surge of patriotism that marked Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea was little. Until Friday, when the eighth anniversary of the annexation was celebrated, the Kremlin held no mass rallies in support of its war, and many Russians started on the growing economic crisis rather than the military conflict itself. “If you try to compare the mood of 2014 and now, then the support remains, but the euphoria has disappeared,” Volkov said. “There is no joy.”
But the unprecedented sanctions imposed by the West, which could cut the country’s GDP by as much as 20%, have not turned the population against the Kremlin. “Sanctions at the moment have the exact opposite effect. By pointing to sanctions, the authorities effectively convinced the Russians that the “hostile” West was acting against their interests,” Belanovsky explained.
Although the Russian ruble has already fallen to a record low, experts say it will be months before ordinary Russians feel the full force of the sanctions. “But the mood could be completely different in two to three months if the economy does collapse, as some economists predicted. Then the Russians can start asking questions to Putin,” the sociologist believes.