“Independent pollsters”, my ass. According to their polls, Navalny support was 0-1% while so many people was arrested during demonstrations in his support in Moscow that thousands were put into immigrant detention center instead of regular jails.

Also, people are scared they will get fired from their government jobs or worse if they voice opposition.

Less than 10% of Russians live in Moscow, which is by far Russia's most liberal and Westernized city. The uncomfortable fact which progressives around the world seem to be having trouble with is that on average, most Russians absolutely do support the war and do see my family's home-country, Ukraine, as being a rightful part of Russia.

It probably won't change your mind, but here is a pretty transparent poll on a mix of Russians at a train station in Moscow (to capture some from outside the metropolises). The multi hour poll is a continuous video to show lack of selection bias (parts with no speech are fast forwarded) https://youtu.be/eNwe24PlPTQ

About half the Russians don't support the war. I hope the conflict ends soon.

Lack of selection bias would be selecting according to demography distribution. Looks like this sample has young people way overrepresented, by clikcing through a video. And young people support the war slightly less.

I think you get your opinions of rural Americans from fiction, because I've lived among rural people most of my life and met only one or two people who think that way, about the same frequency as people in cities. Art imitates life when that doesn't get in the way of emotional drama.

I think the number of rural Americans who truly and earnestly wish death upon Black Americans is an absolutely tiny minority compared to the amount of rural Russians who support the invasion of Ukraine.

I don't think your comparison really says anything interesting, apart from your bias against rural Americans.

I've heard from my parents they would get fired from their non-government jobs too, if anti-war slogans were found on their social media. They also called me repeatedly asking not to participate in rallies, or they would "die of a heart attack". I used to organize those a few years back, and it sort of didn't end well.

Stop dreaming, support is strong. Washington Post via Levada reports an enormous 80-percent approval rating.[1]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/03/26...

You do realize Moscow is a multimillion city so the 10k demonstration is nothing.

You do realize only a fraction of demonstration was arrested, and that for every person who risked getting beaten up and arrested there are many of his friends and relatives who support his views

That's why we have polls and statistics, instead of relying on the "most vocal" and supposedly "most courageous" people that "brave" the streets to protest. I personally don't buy it.

Again, there are no independent institutions or media left who could conduct polls and statistics.

All "polls and statistics" you see are basically fabricated by the government, either directly, or by induced fear.

Any political poll conducted on an authoritarian state will not be trustworthy either. It's like going to a black neighborhood on the US and doing a poll on marijuana use. Many people will not admit to illegal activity. This is something an statistics professor will say in any basic introductory course.

If you're going to make up numbers, why not make up a majority? Be more ambitious.

10k is absolutely something in an authoritarian country when there is no free speech at all or freedom of assembly. And serious repercussions for those seen as against Putin.

10k is the number of people who were ready to be beaten, detained, tortured, have huge fines and later have their families harrassed.

You cannot claim that the only people who are against Putin are those who took part in illegal protests that are punished with hefty fines and arrests. Not everyone is that brave.

While Putin might have high rating in the polls, his party United Russia could win only 50% of seats in Moscow Parliament in 2019 (after most popular independent candidates were not allowed to be in the ballot). Furthermore, members of United Russia nominated as independent candidates to hide their party affiliation. If you believe that only ten thousands people are against the government then how can you explain this?

Another example is that Navalny was denied to register a political party for many years. If he has only 1% or 2% of supporters, as propaganda claims, why deny registering a party? Let him take part in election and get his deserved 1% with a disgrace (by the way, in 2013 Moscow Mayor election he got 27% of votes and obviously that was the last election he was allowed to take part in).

So from the above facts I can conclude that Putin's support is not absolute. There are reasons why he doesn't allow to hold fair elections, why protests are not allowed, why all major mass media are controlled by the government and Internet is censored. You don't need this with true 80% voter support.

Also urban liberals aren’t representative of the country as a whole

nailed it. That's a bias I'm surprised very few people are able to grasp in the Internets, the same urban liberals ( from any country really ) or higher class tend to favor Western social networks, or be simply pro-Western, thus completely biaising the " I'm [Insert your nationality here] .. blablabla " It's especially rampant on Global South or emerging countries, while the richer people can actually afford slacking on Reddit responding to a mostly Anglophone audience.

>War support is pretty strong through all social strata. (also backed by independent pollsters like levada)

Well, when Levada's polls showed overwhelming support for the annexation among Crimeans (and even growing support from Crimean Tatars) everybody was telling that Russian polls are rigged by Russian government and Crimeans were afraid to voice their true opinions. Now you are ready to believe all Russian polls if they help you demonize ordinary Russians.

A poll using so called 'differential privacy' approach gives about 55% support for the war [0] and that's something considering that all tv channels and lots of government-sponsored internet news sites are spewing government propaganda and all independent media are terminated and blocked on the internet. That's about as much as the share of Americans supporting the second Iraq war while having access to the free media. [1]

Personally, I immediately decline to participate in polls despite being approached twice in the last week. Before the war I was happy to tell them that I don't trust Putin, the government, the parliament and everyone else.

Among young or middle-aged educated Russians the support for the war is much lower. Among all my acquaintances only two supported the war when it started.

[0] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2022/04/06/do-russians-te...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_S...

“The respondents on the platform are not a perfect mirror image of Russian society, of course. They tend to be younger, more urban, and better educated (Table 1).”

So mostly people who did not live the USSR…

>Now you are ready to believe all Russian polls if they help you demonize ordinary Russians.

I think you read intent into my post that isn't there. I don't demonize Russians now, didn't demonize them in 2014 and I very much did believe polls in 2014 because if you had any idea about Russia or Crimea you knew that the annexation would be celebrated and rally support and an intense amount of national pride.

55% and comparisons to Iraq seem about right, but that war had authentic support for many years, had entire schools of foreign policy backing it, and hawks exist along the entire spectrum, from coastal intellectuals to flyover country.

you actually did have the same discussions back then. "It's the deep state and MI-complex running everything, all Americans hate war!". Like, no lol. liberal twenty-something college students did, many others were on board.

Okay, thank you.

> also backed by independent pollsters like levada

Do they publish how many of respondents refused to talk? I saw information that majority of people refuse to answer questions about war. So it might be that the results are based mostly on opinions of people who agree to talk.

> Do they publish how many of respondents refused to talk? I saw information that majority of people refuse to answer questions about war.

I believe an ordinary person against the war yet unwilling to get jailed for this opinion won't just refuse to talk, they would say they totally support their government although they actually totally hate it and wish it to collapse ASAP and the top officials to die in torment.

Imagine you traveled to China or DPRK and some weird local emerged to ask how do you like the policies of their "great leader"? Would you take the risk of being sincere? I bet most people would say "fantastic!" and hurry away.

Whenever me or people I know were contacted by a person claiming to be a pollster, including Levada, we just hang up.

Nobody risks a chance of being "tested" by FSB or "anti-extremist" operative. The risk is huge from being put on control to personal harrassment by unmarked men spray painting "Z" and "traitor" on your door.

The only people who actually take a chance are those who say "we support special operation" anyway.

Levada does, yes. They compare response/refusal/coop rates now and before the war and find it to be largely unchanged.

https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/2022-0...

But the composition might have changed.

Now anti-Putin people are more likely to refuse to participate in a poll out of fear while pro-Putin people are mobilized by mass media and eager to voice their support.

Can you do me/us a favour and explain why they support the war?

Genuinely interested. For the record, I'm vehemently against, so I'd like to understand how on earth another conclusion can be arrived at.

Thanks,

Very often they say things like this: “War is certainly bad and unfair, but we have to go all the way once we have started it”. Or, “the war is unfair, but I can't be against my own country”.

There are no war supporters among people I know though, everyone has their own bubble.

This is the most widespread position. On the hardline side there are variations of "you want gay parades?", "Ukrainians hate Russians and are Nazis", "[blacks, but usually the n-word] are fighting for Ukranians", "NATO is trying to destroy us and we must protect ourselves".

1. Because they think that Ukrainian government are US puppets and their main task is to destabilize Russia and hopefully destroy it some day.

2. Because they think that Ukrainian government relies on nazis and supports nazis. I understand that west does not really care about nazis, but for Russians it's a particularly hard topic, because almost every family in Russia lost one or more men in WW2.

3. They think that Ukrainian population is brain washed to foster hate against Russia and Russians. It's dangerous to have such a country on your border.

4. They don't really think that most Ukrainians are separate nation. They consider them generally Russians which were separated by historical accidents. And they want to unite with them.

Their beliefs based on the facts which are hard to dispute:

1) Right Sector - Ukrainian nationalist neo-nazi political party in Ukrainian parliamentary

2) Azov Detachment - neo-Nazi unit of the National Guard of Ukraine, who participated in wars in Donbass

3) Lots of streets are named after Stepan Bandera, for example Stepan Bandera Avenue in Kyiv, who was a leader of Ukrainian ultranationalists and cooperated with Nazi Germany in 1941 against USSR

1) That's a very easy one to dispute - Right Sector has 0 seats in parliament now. Nationalists were losing support consistently in Ukraine.

2) Azov battalion - indeed had been formed with a few neo-Nazis, when Ukraine was literally is complete disarray. However it's very much an overblown issue. The irony is that the people they were fighting against were Russian neo-Nazis - Rusich battalion is neo-Nazi.

2a) Ukraine actually held accountable another neo-nazi battalion for their war crimes. And Russian propaganda is calling anyone "Azov battalion".

3) Yes, there's a few anti-soviet activists that are branded as Nazis. But to point to Bandera, that spent most of the war in a concentration camp(1941-43?), is a little ignorant. There's a however - these memorials to Bandera have not had any affect on Nazi support in today's Ukraine.

Please keep up with the Kremlin dis-info, even the Russians are now admitting they overcooked the whole "all Azov are Nazi's" lies.

You mentioned that you live in Kyiv, so you probably know about "Stepana Bandery Avenue".

All other information I took from Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Sector "Right Sector's political ideology has been described as right-wing, hardline right-wing nationalist, neo-fascist, or neo-Nazi..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion The Azov Battalion has been described as a far-right militia, with connections to neo-Nazism and members wearing neo-Nazi and SS symbols and regalia, and expressing neo-Nazi views. The group's insignia features the Wolfsangel, a German heraldic charge inspired by historic wolf traps adopted by the Nazi Party and by WW2 German military units.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera Stepan Andriyovych Bandera was a Ukrainian politician, Nazi collaborator and theorist of the militant wing of the far-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and a leader and ideologist of Ukrainian ultranationalists known for his involvement in terrorist activities.

From your link:

Azov has 900 members. Seven years ago, it was estimated 10 - 20 % are "Nazi's". If true, this is 90 - 180 "Nazi's" in a population of about 40 million. I thank you for pointing this out, and showing everyone that the justification of rape, murder, and execution of Ukrainian women and children is based on Kremlin propaganda.

The current actions of the Russians in Ukraine show and prove that Russia has a much bigger problem with Nazi-esque behaviours.

Russian imperialism and revanchism - very simple answer.

I think that there could be many reasons why Russians support a special operation.

In glorious Soviet times Russians ruled 16 countries (including Ukraine) that were parts of USSR, had puppet governments in Eastern Europe and friendly governments in Middle Asia and Africa (and by the way Russian Empire was even larger and included territories of modern Poland and Finland). Traitor Gorbachev surrended Eastern Germany and East European countries to America, and traitor Yeltsin (first President of Russia) helped to disintegrate USSR. Many ex-USSR countries were lured into NATO and turned against Russia. Due to Yeltsin following malignant American advices, Russian economy has collapsed, crime rate has raised, and oligarchs have stolen valuable assets, leaving people in poverty.

America also defeated many former Russian allies, like Yugoslavia. Then America refused to stop NATO expansion to the East.

So some people might want a revanche. They want Russia to be strong, victorous and glorious and not a third-world country surrounded by American bases preparing to make a final blow. And if that is not possible, at least they want to stop NATO from expanding to the East.

Also, in Ukraine there are Russian people and some believe that they are treated there unfairly. For example, they are not taught Russian language at school, there is no Russian television and so on. Obviously, Russia must protect them.

Also, propaganda doesn't call it a "war". It is actually illegal to call it a war. It is a "special military operation" for liberation of Ukranian people from Nazis and American influence. As Putin stated, Russia doesn't plan to occupy Ukranian territories.

Russia had no choice and no other means to prevent a big war planned by the West, propaganda says.

So there might be people who believe propaganda. If they have no other sources of information, what should they think?

Also, here are some quotes from a pro-government news agency TASS. Hope they give an idea how propaganda portrays the situation around Ukraine:

> the majority of Russian respondents - 88% - agreed that there are nazist organizations in Ukraine that are a threat to Russia ... 70% of respondents stated that Unkrainian government supports such nazist organizations ... According to the results of the poll, most respondents expect that special military operation will end with a trial of Ukranian nazis for commited crimes. [1]

> Medinsky (presidential aide) : The crimes commited by Ukranian government against Russian people in Ukraine became a challenge for Russia ... Russia has to protect peaceful civilians, its compatriots, who were assaulted, killed, threatened... [2]

> Russian senator Ekaterina Altabaeva: one cannot exclude Russia from world politics, and current special operation for denazification of thе country and protection of Russian-speaking citizens affirms a fateful role that Russia has always played in the world history ... at the end of 18th century not a single gun in Europe was allowed to fire without Russia's permission... [3]

And here is quote from other news agency:

> Military operation in Donbass is not a beginning of a war, but an attempt to prevent a global war, said spokeswoman of Ministry of Foreign Affairs ... also, it is an ending of the war that has been continuing for 8 years. [4]

So if someone wants to understand what an average Russian sees in the news or in social networks or on the Yandex frontpage, try reading sites like TASS or Interfax Russia, or 1tv.

[1] https://tass.ru/obschestvo/14412735

[2] https://tass.ru/politika/14414033

[3] https://tass.ru/politika/14412115

[4] https://www.interfax.ru/russia/824241