In a poll, more than 80 percent of Russians say they like their president’s work, and a similar number say they support the war against Ukraine. A somewhat different picture emerges when asked about the feelings of Russians. “I don’t think this war in itself is popular in Russia,” says Russia expert Corinna Kuhr-Korolev. “But many Russians feel they have to believe the propaganda.”
ntv.de: Last week, the Russian opinion research institute Levada Center published new opinion polls on the approval of Putin among the Russian population. Before we get to the numbers, how reliable are Levada numbers currently?
Corinna Kuhr-Korolev: That’s difficult to say. It is clear that the colleagues from the Levada Center are very good sociologists. Levada has a long tradition of opinion polling and is by no means suspected of being involved in the propaganda machine of the Putin regime. They had to register as “foreign agents” in Russia, which shows the role they play. However, it is difficult to judge whether they can live up to their claim under the current political conditions.
dr Corinna Kuhr-Korolev is a research associate at the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam.
(Photo: Corinna Kuhr-Korolev)
In what way?
The question is: how many people are willing to openly give information over the phone when an institution classified as a “foreign agent” calls? In this respect, the current figures from Lewada should be viewed with a question mark. What you can definitely see are tendencies.
In March, 83 percent said that they condone Putin’s actions, only 15 percent did not approve. In February, the ratio was still 71 to 27 percent. Does that mean that four out of five Russians approve of the war against Ukraine?
No, that would go too far. There is one more March 31 survey. When asked whether they support actions by Russian forces in Ukraine, 53 percent say they “definitely” do so, and 28 percent say they “tend to support it,” making a total of 81 percent. Incidentally, one can clearly see that approval increases the older the respondents are. That has a lot to do with the type of media consumption. But I think another question from this survey is more important, namely the question about feelings.
What are the answers?
The question is: “How do you feel about Russia’s military actions in Ukraine?” 51 percent say they are proud of Russia. But there are other answers too. 31 percent speak of “worry, fear and fright”, 6 percent of “dejection”, 5 percent of shame, 8 percent of “anger and anger”. Almost half of those surveyed express negative feelings. That puts the statement of the 81 percent who support the war into perspective.
The Levada Center has been asking Russians what they think of Putin since 1999. With the exception of the first month, a majority always said they approved of his actions. How did Putin do that?
In many ways, he addressed the needs of the Russian population. Many Russians do not associate the collapse of the Soviet Union with the dawn of freedom, but with existential fears and the misery of the 1990s. Putin managed to be associated with overcoming this period, with social security, with the fight against crime. In addition, there is a feeling of “we’re someone again” that serves Putin. In the Soviet Union, the Russians could move freely in a huge area: from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, from the Baltic States to Kamchatka. Russian was spoken everywhere, and everywhere there was a feeling that Russian culture was respected. I’ve often heard Russians say about the newly independent states: We gave them so much and now they don’t want anything to do with us anymore. Many Russians took the secession of former Soviet republics such as Ukraine as a personal insult.
The fact that Russia is not an attractive partner for its new neighbors, but rather a threat, could also have triggered a process of reflection.
That didn’t happen. In the past 30 years, there have definitely been phases in Ukraine in which the orientation towards Russia was greater than towards the west. If Russia could have made an attractive offer, then Ukraine might not have chosen the western path so clearly.
Russians abroad and Ukrainians report calling friends or relatives in Russia who don’t believe their army is shelling neighborhoods, raping women and murdering civilians in Ukraine. Have you experienced something like this yourself?
I’ve seen conversations where the other person has a very unique version of what’s going on and defends it in a pretty aggressive way. The Russian newspapers are full of stories in which refugees from the Donbass tell how they were attacked by Ukrainian units. In the Russian media, Russian troops are the good guys defending civilians against violent Ukrainian nationalists. The Bucha atrocities were dismissed as Ukrainian propaganda by the Russian Defense Ministry.
And does that work?
You can tell that people have doubts about whether their version is really the right one. But you can also tell that they don’t want to give in to these doubts. Basically, Russian propaganda makes people say: You just don’t know what the truth is.
Chancellor Scholz has repeatedly emphasized that this is “Putin’s war”, not Russia’s war or even the war of the Russians. Do you think this representation is tenable?
Without Putin’s irrational determination to wage this war, it would not exist. To that extent it is his war. But he has the support of a large part of the population. How big this part is, that’s difficult to estimate. I think by itself this war is not popular in Russia. But many Russians feel they have to believe the propaganda.
Do you think that war crimes like in Mariupol or in Bucha can turn the mood in Russia upside down?
I don’t think so, the propaganda is too strong for that. The Russian media are already doing the opposite. When the Russian army attacked the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, Russia blamed it on Ukraine. According to the Russian account, war crimes were either committed or deliberately staged by the Ukrainian side in order to harm Russia. This works because many people try to fit such representations into their worldview. They will continue to do so.
Hubertus Volmer spoke to Corinna Kuhr-Korolev