Ukraine invasion: Russians feel the pain of international sanctions

In mid-March, Aleksei Miniailo, a former social entrepreneur and current opposition politician, oversaw another telephone survey with the aim of trying to capture the effects of fear and propaganda on survey data. And that figure came from among those who agreed to participate at all; Miniailo suspected that the polls were not capturing a majority of the real antiwar sentiment, whatever its size. On some level, the data likely reflect an impulse, whether born of fear or passivity, to repeat approved messages rather than articulate your own. Even before the war, Russia was not the kind of place where you willy-nilly shared your political beliefs with strangers, let alone with those who called out of the blue.

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. But when things opened up in the 1990s, he says, his field exploded. "During that time, lots of data became available from the Russian permafrost regions," he remembers. International scientists started collaborating with Russian scientists to investigate how permafrost was changing. For Russian climate scientists who started their careers in the Soviet Union, the current situation can feel eerily familiar.

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Volkov says these polls are conducted face-to-face, and people are assured of anonymity. Still, he notes, the survey results reveal at least as much about what people are willing to say in public than about how they truly feel. Volkov found that some 80% of respondents do support the military, but that group is by no means a monolith. He says about  50% have "definite support" without any qualms, but the other 30% have support with reservations.

Galina Zapryanova, senior regional editor for the Gallup World Poll, told VOA that polling in Russia " has indeed become more challenging since 2022, but it is not impossible." “Analysts have learned to deal with and avoid authoritarian pressure,” said Koneva, founder of independent research agency ExtremeScan. With just three UK-provided Storm Shadow cruise missiles, they have forced the commander of the Black Sea Fleet to withdraw a third of his fleet from Sevastopol.

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One pattern identified by pollsters is that most Russians say they would support peace talks to end the fighting. But what kind of guarantees they would give independent Ukraine is not yet clear. Polls suggest the majority of Russians, if not supporting the war, certainly do not 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. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have left Russia, including me and my BBC Russian colleagues.

• Permafrost is the permanently frozen ground found across the Arctic.
• There has been very little movement on the front line in recent months, but Russia is targeting two eastern towns in the Donetsk region, Mariinka and Avdiivka.
• In Pskov, near the Estonian and Latvian borders, the atmosphere is gloomy and everyone pretends the war has nothing to do with them, I am told.
• Even so, the messages made for some jarring moments for some of those present, featuring as they often did ultra-patriotic and sometimes militaristic declarations.

Al Jazeera spoke with five young Russians about their views on the invasion, and how the blowback has affected them. Sanctions have targeted banks, oil refineries, military and luxury product exports as well as members of the Russian regime and oligarchs with close ties to the Kremlin. Companies, too, have closed their doors in Russia, including fast-food giant McDonald’s which has temporarily shut its roughly 850 outlets. “I’m scared and hurt for my friends in Ukraine, who write to me ‘we’re going down into the bomb shelter’.

Opinion

My feelings are mixed regarding the decision of our president. I got a government email saying that we had until March 14 to download all files from Instagram. We have VK (a Russian substitute for Facebook), but it’s not the same. I was thinking about leaving Russia, but there is the problem of money – ticket prices have increased tenfold, and also, there’s no one waiting for me over there. I have a colleague in my laboratory who is a reviewer at an open access science publisher.

• "I am scared here - people have been arrested for speaking against 'the party line'. I feel ashamed and I didn't even vote for those in power."
• He is not a bright leader, and not the tyrant that the opposition paints him as, but he is definitely not the best thing that could happen to Russia.
• And when it comes to Russian war casualties, Koneva said the losses have been successfully covered up by the country’s strict censorship measures.
• 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.

Describing Ukraine's military success in a "small area" as a last-ditch attempt by Ukraine to break through to Crimea, President Putin explained that Russian forces decided to withdraw several metres into wooded areas "to save our lads". He went on to suggest Kyiv's main motive is to show the West that it needs more military funding. A war reporter for Russian daily Izvestia based in occupied Luhansk in eastern Ukraine tasked Mr Putin about Ukraine's recent foothold on the Russian-occupied east bank of the Dnipro river. He was fielding questions from journalists and ordinary Russians in his first marathon news conference since the full-scale invasion  of Ukraine began in February 2022.  https://euronewstop.co.uk/where-has-ukraine-been-bombed.html -quarter of respondents say they already feel the effect of those sanctions, according to Volkov. People who are from disadvantaged groups are suffering the most, he adds, because they don't have the resources to adapt.

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. According to recent opinion polls, conducted by pollsters such as the Levada Centre which has offices in Moscow, 70-75% of respondents in Russia support the war with Ukraine. (These surveys were conducted before Mr Putin announced his mobilisation drive.) But these shocking figures are deceptive. Public opposition to the war can result in criminal prosecution, so people who are critical of the war and the regime are less likely to agree to speak to a pollster.

• Not surprisingly, the major shift in opinion took place after 2014.
• But even though justification of the Ukraine invasion can be found among Russians, there have been no demonstrations of support.
• Despite these divisions in Ukrainian society, it should also be said that since the Russian annexation of Crimea earlier this year, many Ukrainians - from east and west - feel Russia has gone too far, and has destabilized their homeland.
• As well as their savings falling in value, many Russians are predicted to lose their jobs as the economy reels from being cut off from financial markets in the West.

People have young children to look after, cancer and other illnesses to manage, aging parents to care for. It’s easy to imagine that they feel they can’t—or don’t want to—get arrested for opposing a distant war because of these kinds of responsibilities, even if it is being waged in their name. This war is based in no small part on dehumanizing Ukrainians as a group. You can be horrified by what Russia has done and is doing—as of course I am—and, at the same time, be concerned about dehumanizing a whole group of people in response. But, at the same time, I can understand why this might seem like sophistry to Ukrainians who have lost their homes, their friends, and seen their fellow Ukrainians tortured and murdered.