Do Russians Support the War?

This discussion of Russian support for the war in Ukraine took place on Friday April 22, 2022. 

From the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, observers focused their attention on elite and popular responses and their implications for the war and for domestic politics in Russia. Russia’s state-controlled media presents an image of a people unified behind Vladimir Putin, backed by an elaborate propaganda campaign that blends the war with a combination of humanitarian claims, historical imagery, and Western conspiracies. While recently released surveys suggest a majority of Russians support the war, social scientists question the results given evidence of manipulation or dissimulation.

Social media platforms provide occasional signs of elite discontent and suggest a weak uptake of pro-war symbols. While a spate of repressive laws criminalized dissent and impose harsh penalties for those who oppose the war, the need for such laws possibly indicates that the Kremlin views public support as precarious. This event brings together international experts on Russian politics and society to discuss what we know—and what we don’t know—about elite and popular support for the war in Russia.

About our panel of experts:

  • Lisa Gaufman is Assistant Professor of Russian Discourse and Politics in the Department of European Languages and Cultures at the University of Groningen. Her research is situated at the intersection of political theory, international relations, media, and cultural studies. She is the author of Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the Ukraine Crisis (Palgrave, 2017) and Everyday Foreign Policy: Performing and Consuming the Russian Nation after Crimea (Manchester University Press, forthcoming in 2022).
  • Henry E. Hale is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and author of the book Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Longtime co-curator of the Russian Election Studies (RES) series of public opinion surveys in Russia, he has won two prizes from the American Political Science Association for his research.
  • Gulnaz Sharafutdinova is a Professor in the King College London’s Russia Institute. She has recently published The Red Mirror: Putin’s Leadership and Russia’s Insecure Identity (Oxford University Press, 2020) that explores issues of authoritarian legitimation in Russia relying on social identity theory. She currently works on a book The Afterlife of the Soviet Man: Rethinking Homo Sovieticus and conducts research on digital technologies of governance and vaccine hesitancy in the context of authoritarian regimes.
  • Jeremy Morris is Professor of Russian and Global Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark and author of the book Everyday Postsocialism (2016) and blog postsocialism.org.