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By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
Three out of four Russians expect victory in the Ukraine war. Even more of them trust the Russian Army to achieve it – the sooner the better, the voters think.
Four out of ten Russians believe that the Special Military Operation will end this year; in the same proportion, they also believe there will be a domestic economic crisis this year.
One in four Russians think it is equally possible that there will be an armed clash with the United States and NATO countries; mass clashes on the national territory or mass public protests.
This combination of growing public impatience and pessimism about the economy has been reported from a Levada Centre nationwide poll using face-to-face interviews conducted between January 15 and 23; the results were published on February 3 [3].
In a related report of the same polling results, Levada has revealed [4]: “The majority of Russians, 61%, believe that it is necessary now to move to peace talks, but over the past month [December 2025 poll] their share has decreased by five percentage points. At the same time, the share of those who think it is necessary to continue military operations has increased to a third of respondents (31%, an increase of 6 percentage points)…The majority of respondents (59%) believe that if achieving peace with Ukraine is not yet possible, Russia should escalate its strikes on Ukraine, including using new types of weapons.”
That last line is the signal that Russian voters are growing impatient with President Vladimir Putin’s reluctance to fire the Oreshnik missile for decapitation of the Ukraine’s command-and-control centres, and his readiness to give in to President Donald Trump’s requests for moratoriums and ceasefires in the electric war campaign. Voter support for Putin’s performance remains highly stable at 84% approval, compared with 87% to 84% between August and November of last year; disapproval has remained [5] between 11% and 13%. The difference in these numbers is within the margin for statistical error.
Unlike Putin, Russian voters want Generals Winter and Cholera to seize control of Kiev and Lvov sooner rather than later.
An analysis [6] of a related Levada dataset by a Harvard University think tank has confirmed the conclusion that “significant parts of the Russian public could support escalation vis-à-vis Ukraine if peace remains out of reach. While a majority still favours negotiations over immediate military continuation, growing support for more force, and a slight rise in support of the armed forces. Taken together, they indicate a possible hardening of Russians’ attitudes toward the conflict…Together, these trends point to possible further normalization of a long war and reduced public appetite for compromise in Russia.”
The two Levada Centre reports of the same poll can be read here in Russian – January 27 [4] and February 3 [7]. Levada has not yet translated the reports into English.
Public apprehension of a domestic economic crisis this year has been growing since 2024 when initial confidence evaporated that the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine would end victoriously and quickly; and as the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) steadily raised the key interest rate. The latest CBR forecast [8] is for a recession this year and next.
[9]The Levada Center has granted access to the raw dataset of its Russian polling to American analysts at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; in the past Levada has refused this request from Moscow-based journalists. Funding this group’s research has come from the Belfer family, which began with an oil and real estate business fortune, and in the expectation of adding profits it has been reported in The Jewish Chronicle [10] to have heavily invested in the fraud schemes of Bernard Madoff (MIS) and Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX).
The principal analyst interpreting the new Russian poll data is a Russian expatriate, Simon Saradzhyan [11]. He began his career as a reporter for the Moscow Times, and then moved abroad for graduate degrees, employment and residence in the US. Saradzhyan claims [6] the new poll results reflect “Russia’s slide toward a hard authoritarianism has led to the criminalization of freedom of speech on issues related to the war, among other things. This cannot help influencing what a Russian living in Russia says to others, including pollsters.”
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[13]The source for the data is the Levada Center reports; the source for these tables is the Belfer Center: https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/most-russians-favor-escalation-ukraine-over-concessions-if-no-peace-deal [6]