As Putin’s War Comes Home, Russians Ever Less Prepared to Support It

As Putin’s War Comes Home, Russians Ever Less Prepared to Support It

Executive Summary:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to restrict the greatest impact of his war against Ukraine to marginal groups who could make money by serving in the military. The Kremlin realized early on that most Russians were not prepared to sacrifice for its war against Ukraine.
• This approach is now failing because combat losses are mounting and the war coming home in the form of drone attacks and government cutbacks to key services to finance Russia’s armies in the field.
• Polls suggest that these developments are reducing the willingness of Russians to give the war more than lip-service support. Putin is increasingly using repression to prevent protests, an approach costing him support, which could trigger a crisis.

Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to call his full-scale invasion of Ukraine a war because he realized early on that Russians were not prepared to make sacrifices for his expansionist ambitions. He sought to restrict the greatest impact of the war to marginal groups who could make money by serving, thereby making it easier for other, less affected, Russians to support it (Riddle, March 5). That approach is now failing as the war enters its fifth year. The reserves of these marginal groups are running out in the face of mounting combat losses, and the war is coming home in the form of Ukrainian drone attacks inside of Russia and Moscow’s cutbacks in popular programs to finance the war (see EDM, December 22, 2025, January 13; Vot Tak, March 13).

Polls suggest that these developments are reducing the trust Russians have in Putin and their readiness to give the war more than lip-service support. That trend, in turn, has prompted Putin to become ever more repressive, through police actions and internet restrictions, an approach that will work only so long (Radio Svoboda, March 14). As a result, there are signs, especially outside of Moscow, that this combination of lower support and increased repression could trigger an explosion—one that might prove as unexpected and radical as the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 (Telegram/@abbasgallyamovpolitics, reposted at EchoFM, February 24; Idel.Realii, March 2).

When Putin launched his expanded war against Ukraine in February 2022, he rapidly discovered that while Russians were prepared to defer to him on this decision, they were not prepared to make serious sacrifices. When he talked about mobilization, tens of thousands of young Russians fled the country rather than serve. Putin’s response was to play down the war. He did so by not referring to it as a war but only as “a special military operation.” He also adopted a policy designed to keep the conflict from touching the lives of Russians in the major cities. The Russian government offered cash payments to marginalized groups outside major cities, such as ethnic Russians in impoverished regions and non-Russians in equally impoverished republics. Joining the army offered these people more money than they could ever hope for if they remained in the civilian economy (see EDM, October 21, 2025). That policy, which Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev has christened “death-onomics,” allowed the Kremlin leader to fight his war in a way that had relatively little impact on other Russians, at least initially (Riddle, March 5). Now, this system is no longer working as well as it did. Combat losses are mounting, and the reserves that the groups that had supplied such mercenaries are being exhausted, especially given that death is an increasingly likely outcome for those who join. As a result, Moscow will either have to try to mobilize groups it had left untouched—something that could prove explosive—or drop this system entirely in favor of mass mobilization or an end to the conflict.

The Kremlin now faces what may be an even larger problem among groups that its recruitment strategy has not yet touched. These groups have been quite willing to give at least lip-service support for the war and to avoid any protests. Their support is increasingly thin and even fragile, however, because they can see how military spending is reducing resources for education, healthcare, and housing. (On those trends, see EDM, January 13, February 12.) They have begun to protest these things, but not yet to protest against the war or Putin, which would be far more dangerous actions (see EDM, December 22, 2025). That is likely to come. As former Putin speechwriter and now Kremlin critic Abbas Gallyamov says, “when a war remains somewhere far away, it is easy to support it,” but when it begins to affect one’s own life or the lives of families and friends, it becomes less so. A process begins which initially reduces popular backing for the war but then for the regime that launched it (Vot Tak, March 13).

Gallyamov continues, “At the first stage of a war, especially in authoritarian countries where opposing the powers entails serious risks, the main part of the society easily falls into jingoism.” As the war continues, however, people begin to question the arguments for the war and even more the broader actions those responsible for the war have taken. Gallyamov says, “Initially, the majority of Russian residents saw no connection between their own bombing of Ukraine and the strikes coming from the other side.” Ever more Russians are increasingly recognizing that what the Ukrainians are doing “is merely a reaction to steps taken by the Russian military.” Some of them, “no longer satisfied” with what the Kremlin is saying, are “beginning to listen to the opposition that they had refused to listen to only yesterday.” He adds that such developments could occur after a triggering event at a rate far greater than anyone now thinks possible (see EDM, November 18, 2025; Idel.Realii, March 2; Vot Tak, March 13). 

In a country like Putin’s Russia, such a shift is not going to be either universal nor instantaneous. It will take some time to spread and intensify, Gallyamov acknowledges. Those Russians whose regions have sent the greatest share of their young men to fight, or which have been directly attacked by Ukrainian forces, will ask these questions sooner and more insistently demand answers. Others will join them, Gallyamov says, concluding that he believes:

During the phase of the weakening of the regime when the question of the country’s disintegration will once again raise to the national agenda as it did after the 1917 revolution and again at the end of perestroika, separatist sentiment will engulf not just national republics but also border regions most devastated by the war (Vot Tak, March 13).

Such predictions may seem overly alarmist. New polling data, however, show a softening of support for Putin and his regime, at least in part because of public unhappiness with his war. (For a useful survey of recent polls, all of which point in this same direction, seeRadio Svoboda, March 14.) Perhaps the most serious finding of these polls is that Russians are no longer prepared to trust the Kremlin leader to assure them a stable and predictable future, precisely the promises that helped build his power in the past. As Gallyamov notes, “people used to know what awaited the country tomorrow and the day after,” but “now all that remains a memory, and if there is no stability then there is no reason to cling to Putin” (Telegram/@abbasgallyamovpolitics, reposted atEchoFM, February 24). This is “the main domestic political outcome” of his war against Ukraine, a situation which, in the final analysis, is of Putin’s own making. Had he not started the war, he could have continued in unquestioned power for far longer. Now, he is holding the line with repression, but how long that will work is very much an open question.