I look into those regularly. Those are credible sources that are often used by our scientists, but you have to be very careful with statistics during war periods.

What do you think the majority of people hear when asked, “Do you support actions of Russian military in Ukraine?”. They hear, “Are you a traitor?” and answer accordingly. The majority (4 out of 5, I believe, if not more) refuse to answer at all. So, it’s not exactly representative.

What we look at instead is questions that are not this direct. Such as “Do you think Russia should continue or start peace talks?”. The majority (58%) is for peace talks. This number has increased since September 2022 by 10%, whilst the number of pro-war people decreased from 44% to 34%. Their quality also changed. For “absolutely should start peace talks” went from 21% (out of all votes) up to 26%, whilst for “absolutely should continue military actions” went from 29% down to 21%.

The longer things continue, the less support Russia’s government has. That’s what can be said for certain. The other conclusion we can derive is that war isn’t popular.

Edit: Oh, and the youth, 67% of the youth (18-24) is for peace talks, 23% pro-war. 65% for ages 25-39, only 25% pro-war.

The vast majority of pro-war people are elderly. Can you guess who also watches the TV the most? And who the TV is controlled by?

For the full picture, I’ll also add “they started it, so it’s their responsibility, we had no choice in it” This phrase explains the whole mentality of Russians very well.

I hear that all the time, “but what about the challenges of polling under an autocracy?”, as if they were the first one to think about it.

But if you show alternative methodologies that account for preference falsification and the estimates for preference falsification turn out to be low, you never hear back from people.

But this approach is understandable, people in the west have a very primitive understanding of russian culture and russian constantly code switch when pushing polemics for western audiences and when speaking in russian.