Mood in Russia turns bleak as war in Ukraine drags on and economy suffers
With the war in its fifth year, talks stalled and sanctions biting deeper, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ratings are falling and citizens are voicing despair.
People walk past a banner showing Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Andrei Belousov at an exhibition of patriotic photographs in Simferopol, Crimea, on Saturday. (Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)
President Vladimir Putin is facing rising discontent across Russian society as the war against Ukraine drags on, the economy flounders and public dissatisfaction mounts over government restrictions on internet access.
Gauging genuine public opinion is difficult under an authoritarian regime that exiles, imprisons or even kills political opponents and where criticism of the war is illegal, but compared with Putin’s historical ratings — as high as 88 percent — the falling poll numbers signal growing weariness with the war now in its fifth year, and with negotiations to end it largely stalled as the Trump administration focuses on Iran.
Economic sanctions are biting ever deeper into Russia’s economy, hitting pocketbooks, and the government’s push to limit access to the internet, citing security concerns, is rankling a society that long enjoyed a high level of digitalization.
“The overall mood is that’s enough already; you’ve been fighting for long enough,” said one Russian official, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “It seems to everyone that it’s been going on for longer than World War II, the Great Patriotic War — and at the same time we can’t even take one region,” the official said, referring to Russia’s failed effort since the full-scale invasion in 2022 to take full control of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
In recent weeks, Putin’s government has faced unusually open and strident criticism from members of Russia’s financial elite over its handling of the economy, which contracted by 1.8 percent in the first two months of the year as tougher sanctions and high interest rates intended to combat inflation continue to choke investment and led nonpayments of commercial bills to reach a record high of $109 billion in January, according to Rosstat, Russia’s Federal Statistics Service. The number of companies owing taxes to the government, meanwhile, has climbed to 439,900, according to Aktion Accounting, a Russian firm.
One by one, businessmen and economists attending an economic forum in Moscow earlier this month upbraided the government over the shrinking economy.
“The people at the top have completely lost touch with the reality on the ground, in the economy,” said Vladimir Bogalev, the head of a Russian tractor manufacturer, according to online video footage from the forum. Those in a position of power are actively “discrediting” themselves, Bogalev said.
Robert Nigmatulin, an economist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the forum that Russia was lagging China and that inflation had far outstripped economic growth. “We’ve lost everything and still we are the poorest. Even in the poorest regions of China incomes are higher than in our poorest regions,” Nigmatulin said. “GDP growth since 2015 — that’s 11 years — is about 1.5 percent per year. Do you know how much consumer prices have increased by? Seventy-seven percent.”
He added: “Can we invest in a country with leadership like this? You can’t run an economy this way.”
Meanwhile, a video posted by a Monaco-based social media influencer Victoria Bonya railing against the online restrictions — and denouncing the government’s handling of other problems facing ordinary Russians — went viral, forcing the Kremlin to respond by insisting that it was working on all the issues she raised.
Gennady Zyuganov, the longtime leader of Russia’s Communist Party, took things further during a speech in parliament this past week, warning that “economic collapse is inevitable” if issues go unaddressed. “By autumn we will face what happened in 1917,” he said, referencing the Bolshevik Revolution.
Sanctions and Putin’s heavy military spending drove inflation sky-high, forcing the central bank to raise interest rates above 20 percent to cool down the economy. Though the central bank has since pulled rates back — they now stand at 14.5 percent — economists increasingly have warned of “overcooling” and recession.
Russia’s economic development minister, Maxim Reshetnikov, said this past week that Russia’s reserves “are largely exhausted,” while Putin this month publicly acknowledged that the economy was in trouble and called on the central bank and his government to explain the slowdown in growth.
The Russian economy, heavily dependent on oil revenue, has won some respite from a surge in oil prices caused by the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, but economists said only a much longer, sustained period of high prices would let Russia balance its budget.
“Right now, the Russian economy is in a strange twilight zone between the positive effects that can be expected from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the high commodity prices, and at the same time Russia’s own economic dynamic, which was worsening significantly in the last months,” said Janis Kluge, an economist with Germany’s Institute for International and Security Affairs.
In addition, increasing attacks by Ukrainian drones on Russian ports and refineries forced Russia to slash oil production in April by 300,000 to 400,000 barrels per day, Reuters reported, potentially undermining some of the windfall Moscow anticipated from higher prices and President Donald Trump’s temporary waiver of sanctions on Russian oil.
“Problems are growing and we have spoken for a long time about how this time would come,” said a Russian academic with close ties to senior Russian diplomats.
As citizens are forced to cut back on basic expenses and internet restrictions disrupt daily life, divisions are emerging across all sectors of society, analysts said.
