https://johnhelmer.net/russian-public-opinion-sharpens-on-end-of-war-objectives/

by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

A newly released national poll reveals that Russian public support for the Army and for President Vladimir Putin is growing. At the same time, the proportion of Russians in favour of expanded military operations is rising at the expense of those who favour negotiations. The outcomes for negotiations acceptable to the Russians who support them are rapidly shrinking, too.

This Russian conviction is strengthening in the face of the battlefield casualty rate which, unusually, Putin acknowledged this week to be ten thousand a month.

Putin’s told a press conference on June 5 : “our losses, especially as concerns irreparable losses, unfortunately, then they are several times less than on the Ukrainian side. If we talk about approximate irretrievable losses, then the ratio is the same: one to about five… According to our calculations, the Ukrainian army loses 50,000 people per month as sanitary and irretrievable losses both, although their irretrievable and sanitary losses are approximately 50/50.”

Since the Russian rate of casualty survival for troops at the front is substantially better than the Ukrainian rate because of superior evacuation, front-line and rear medical care, Putin’s numbers suggest that the Russian killed-in-action (KIA) number is at least 3,000 per month.

According to a nationwide survey by face-to-face interview in Russian homes between May 23 and 29, the Levada Centre in Moscow, an independent polling organisation, reports: “Half of the respondents believe it is necessary to move on to peace negotiations — 43% are in favour of continuing military operations, their share has been growing in recent months. However, the majority is not ready to make concessions regarding Ukraine and this share is growing. Russians consider the exchange of prisoners of war and a ceasefire to be acceptable conditions for signing a peace agreement, while the return of new regions and Ukraine’s accession to NATO are completely unacceptable. If there was an opportunity to go back in time and cancel the start of Special Military Operation, slightly more than a third of respondents would reverse this decision — their share has decreased slightly in recent months.”

This also means that Ukrainian missile, artillery, and drone attacks on civilians, refinery and other targets on Russian territory are having no impact on the nationwide commitment to the war and its strategic objectives. On the contrary, threats by NATO leaders to intensify these attacks and extend their range into Russia are increasing public Russian support for lifting Kremlin restrictions on the General Staff’s operational plans for finishing the war at and over the Polish border.

For the official interpretation of what Putin said at his press conference, RT, the state propaganda organ for non-Russian audiences, published “key takeaways”, omitting the casualty disclosures.

RT had reported Putin’s remarks on the casualty rates shortly after he made them, with emphasis on the Ukrainian losses and with the claim that “without specifying the number of Russian casualties, Putin said the number of [Russian] irrecoverable losses was at least five times less than those incurred by Kiev’s forces.”

Source: https://www.rt.com/

Levada conducted its home-interview survey across the country in the last week of May; the interview included fixed and open-ended questions.

The pollster had run a similar survey two months earlier in March; read the results published in English here. In this earlier report, Levada used the open-ended question to reveal the range of Russian public views on the end-of-war goals. “According to the data of the open-ended questions — when no hints are offered, but the answers are recorded from the words of the respondent and then combined into semantic groups — among supporters of the continuation of hostilities, 40% of respondents explain their opinion by saying that ‘it is necessary to go to the end’, ‘finish what was started’; 17% who said that ‘it is necessary to destroy fascism’. The opinion that ‘peace talks are useless’, ‘will lead to nothing’, and ‘it is necessary to protect and secure Russia’ is expressed by 15% and 14% of respondents, respectively.”

From its latest survey of public warfighting sentiment, published on June 4, Levada reports that more than half of Russians (55%) are monitoring the war news carefully – 19% very carefully, 36% quite carefully. Older Russians (55 years old and above) are following much more closely than the young under 24 years old. The older Russians watch television as their primary source; the young watch internet sources, such as Youtube.

According to the Levada report, “public assessments of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict are stable. More than half of the respondents are monitoring the situation quite closely. Most support the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Half of the respondents believe that it is necessary to move on to peace negotiations — 43% are in favour of continuing military operations, their share has been growing in recent months. However, the majority is not ready to make concessions regarding Ukraine and this proportion is growing. Russians consider the exchange of prisoners of war and a ceasefire to be acceptable conditions for signing a peace agreement, while the return of the new [Donbass] regions and Ukraine’s accession to NATO are completely unacceptable. If there was an opportunity to go back in time and either cancel or support the start of [Special Military Operation], slightly more than a third of respondents would reverse this decision (their share has decreased slightly in recent months).”

Support for the Russian military is up to 79% — 83% in the older population, 85% among Moscow residents, 87% of those who rely on television as their source.

DO YOU PERSONALLY SUPPORT RUSSIAN MILITARY ACTION IN THE UKRAINE?

Source: https://www.levada.ru/

The pollsters asked their subjects the hypothetical question of going back in time to say whether, if they could, they would support or oppose the Special Military Operation (SVO in Russian). This is an unusual test of whether the results of the war to date are causing the public to have recriminations. Half the respondents said they would support the start of the SVO – this is up 7 percentage points since the last measurement in October 2023.

Source: https://www.levada.ru/

As for the future, the poll reveals that public support for achieving the end-of-war objectives first announced in February 2022 has not wavered. “Three quarters of respondents (76%) believe that Russia should not make concessions to Ukraine for the sake of ending the military conflict and signing a peace agreement. 17% say that Russia should make concessions. This ratio has remained virtually unchanged over the past year since February 2023.”

What end-of-war objectives are negotiable?

“The question was asked for the third time about which conditions of concluding a peace agreement are preferable and which are unacceptable. “Opinion on a ceasefire, exchange of prisoners of war, and return of the LDPR [Lugansk Donetsk People’s Republics] to Ukraine has changed little: the vast majority of respondents consider the exchange of prisoners of war preferable or permissible (94%); a ceasefire is considered preferable or permissible by more half (60%) of the respondents; and three-quarters of the respondents consider the return of the LDPR unacceptable (74%).”

“Regarding two other conditions, opinion in society has changed – for example, since February 2023 the proportion of respondents who considers the return of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions unacceptable has increased by 7 percentage points (73% in May 2024), and the proportion of respondents who considers Ukraine’s accession to NATO unacceptable (83% in May 2024) has increased by 7 percentage points.”

Source: https://www.levada.ru

Levada surveys public approval of Putin’s performance every month. In the March and May measurements, the president’s rating was 87%. This tops the past decade of his monthly ratings except for mid-2015, when public approval for Putin reached 89%.