To understand the nature and composition of the pro-war majority, you need to dig deeper. Russian state television—instrumental in shaping public opinion—serves all these audiences. He says the firm asks about peoples' feelings, and is seeing that both groups — those who support and oppose the military's actions — are anxious and afraid. He contrasts this to public opinion surrounding the annexation of Crimea in 2014, recalling that there were positive feelings and even "euphoria" at the time. Then, as now, except for a few missile attacks, Lviv is probably one of the safest places to be in Ukraine, far from the front lines in the east and the south. Even so, rather than taking place in different public locations around the city, as usual, the forum was convened in an underground theatre on the hilltop campus of Ukrainian Catholic University, a ten-minute drive from the city center.
Many who study and report on Russia, me included, believe a small percentage of people actively support the war, and a small percentage actively oppose it. From fleeting impressions and conversations it is hard to draw firm conclusions. Sociologists and pollsters have tried to gauge opinion, but there is no freedom of speech or information in Russia so it is impossible to tell if people are being honest.
Americans have more confidence in Zelenskyy than Biden when it comes to world affairs
But the war’s relentless destruction also poses a more existential question, one which fuels an urgent need to resist and prevail. For centuries, Ukrainians have struggled against Russian cultural dominance. A short respite came with the country’s independence, but then, in 2014, Vladimir Putin’s aggressions began in Crimea, and carried on afterward in the Donbas. The struggle for identity is further complicated by the fact that many Ukrainians grew up in Russian-speaking households. But Putin’s invasion has accelerated a growing sense of a need to reassert a Ukrainian identity once and for all. But many Russians are being deprived not only of a meaningless feed with entertaining content, but also of memories, work, and also important and truthful information about what is happening, which can’t be obtained from a zombie box (television).
- Russia’s military attacks and bombing across Ukraine could lead to the biggest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, Western leaders have warned.
- Twenty-one per cent of TV viewers didn’t know the goal of the operation.
- Warnings about the "shrinking size" of the army have also been sounded by former military chief General Lord Dannatt, who told The Times numbers had reduced from 102,000 in 2006 to 74,000 today and were still "falling fast".
- Those standing against Mr Putin in the upcoming election, including anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin, have until Wednesday to gather the required number of supporters' signatures to back their campaigns.
"So Patrick Sanders is saying prepare for what's coming over the horizon - there is a 1939 feel to the world right now," he said. "How we respond as the pre-war generation will reverberate through history. Ukrainian bravery is buying time, for now." But Downing Street ruled out any move towards a conscription model, saying that army service would remain voluntary. The attack on the Slavneft-YANOS refinery caused no fire or casualties, governor Mikhail Yevrayev said.
Most Russians don’t want war
But three older people - two middle aged men and an elderly woman - are much more supportive of the invasion. Many misunderstandings about Russia derive from a long-term reluctance in the West to grapple with how Russians see the world. There is a temptation to view the Russian information space as mere propaganda, not helped by a tendency to prioritise the thoughts of Muscovite liberals over more representative research. In effect, our analysis suggests that the social contract between Russians and the Putin regime is fraying. Bankrolled by high energy prices over the last two decades, the public has acquiesced to Putin’s autocratic rule in exchange for improved living standards and functional public services.
- The man, 49, and his daughter, 31, were caught up in an attack at 9.25am on Kramatorsk, Donetsk, governor Vadim Filashkin said.
- A larger country claiming a smaller country is called imperialism,” he told CNN by email.
- Ukraine’s president signed a decree instructing the government to develop a plan for preserving the national identity of the “historically inhabited lands” of Krasnodar Krai, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk and Rostov.
- Considering all this, telling Russian men and their families that it is in their interest to fight, and die, in faraway Ukraine is a harder story to sell.
Restrictions on reporting are increasingly severe, and access to almost all independent outlets is blocked or limited - or they censor themselves. To put it simply, before launching an offensive, it’s worth thinking about who will fight in that offensive and how willingly, and to what extent an active conflict will prompt people to rally around Putin. The evidence suggests that even in the best-case scenario, the mobilization effect will be nonexistent. Overall, the war’s outcome will depend on the mood of the group who support it and on the group of conformists who go along with it. That is because its most avid proponents, and its most intractable opponents, will not change their minds. If https://euronewstop.co.uk/what-does-ukraine-war-mean-for-uk.html who see it as a “just” war start to suspect that it is slipping into an existential conflict with the West, or if conformists change their risk calculations because they face being drafted, the balance of opinion may shift decisively.
Russia’s Putin says ‘obvious’ Ukraine shot down plane over Belgorod
Since the invasion, Russian state-sponsored propaganda waves elevated public sentiment toward the war for an average of 14 days across all regions and topics. As the war in Ukraine drags on, though, these positive waves of public sentiment are getting shorter, particularly outside the major cities, and are needing to be deployed with increasing frequency across Russia. Standard polling often concentrates on population centers including Moscow and St. Petersburg, which can skew national averages. Our analysis shows that the Kremlin is increasingly unable to control public sentiment outside major cities with national propaganda. In his mobilisation speech on September 21st, Mr Putin used choice rhetoric of the party of total war to persuade Russian citizens of the enemy’s proximity and the need to defend the motherland. Many commentators declared that this rhetoric would undermine the fragile support of the majority for the war.
Historical data shows that diversionary wars — fighting abroad to draw attention away from problems at home — have rarely worked for Putin. The rally ‘round the flag effect of supporting political leadership during an international crisis will likely be short-lived. That the Kremlin was right to block the majority of independent media sites they used to read. Polls suggest the majority of Russians, if not supporting the war, certainly do not oppose it. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have left Russia, including me and my BBC Russian colleagues. But for the majority who have stayed in Russia, life outwardly is pretty much the same as it always was.
- Russia has opened up at times after moments of calamity and catastrophe.
- Does it change anything to know that many Russians oppose Putin’s war but are powerless to stop him, or to understand that others have been duped into supporting it through his hyper-nationalistic discourse?
- Ukraine’s armed forces have denied having anything to do with the attack.
- This presidential address could serve to galvanize the Russian public to back Putin’s military aspirations.
- “For example, a person says, 'I support,' but then researchers will follow up with questions to determine if they are ready to go to war, ready to donate to the Russian army or expect benefits from a possible victory," Koneva explained.