In the Thick of It
A blog on the U.S.-Russia relationshipMajority of Russians Favor Talks to End Ukraine War, But 1/3 Support Use of Nukes
The Levada Center has released the results of its monthly polling of Russians on Russia’s war in Ukraine and its broader stand-off with NATO. Some results, such as a record level of support for peace talks, may seem to be encouraging to doves, but the devil is in the details. More worrisome, the share of Russians who believe that an armed conflict between Russia and NATO could erupt has increased, as did the share of Russians who believe the use of nuclear weapons by their country in the context of “the current conflict in Ukraine” would be justified. In fact, every third Russian now shares this alarming belief, according to the poll’s findings, which I present and discuss in the order they have appeared in Levada’s latest poll on the conflict with Ukraine.
A Majority of Russians Continue to Follow the War and Support the Russian Army, But Over Half Have Negative Feelings About the Hostilities
The share of Russians who told Levada that they pay attention to the Ukrainian war slipped downward in June 2024, according to Russia’s best known independent pollster (Figure 1). During that month, the share of Russians who followed the war either attentively or rather attentively totaled 54%, compared with 64% in March 2022—about one month after Vladimir Putin announced the launch of his so-called “special military operation” (SVO) in Ukraine—and with 54% in June 2023.
Meanwhile, total support for the “actions of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine,” has gone up from 68% in the month the SVO was launched (February 2022) to 73% one year ago (June 2023), before climbing further to 77% in June 2024 (Figure 2). Interestingly, the levels of those who definitely or rather support Russian military actions in Ukraine are higher than the levels of those who follow these actions attentively or quite attentively. That implies that some Russians support Russia’s war against Ukraine even though they don’t follow it closely.
Levada polls also show that the two most common feelings elicited in Russians by its military actions in Ukraine are anxiety (including fear and horror) and pride, with the latter declining somewhat since the launch of the SVO and the former growing slightly in that period (Table 1).
The feelings described in Table 1 above can be divided into two groups, which one could categorize as positive (satisfaction, joy, inspiration, pride) and negative (anger, indignation, shame, depression, numbness, anxiety, fear, horror, shock), respectively. If one compares the two groups, then one finds that a greater share of Russians experienced negative feelings regarding their military’s actions in Ukraine for most of the war’s duration, but not in June 2024 (Figure 3). Additionally, the positive feelings in June 2024 are lower than in the early weeks of the war in March 2022, but higher than a year ago in June 2023. As for negative feelings, they climbed from 62% in March 2022 (the early weeks of SVO) to 64% in June 2023 (one year ago), but then declined to 61% in June 2024.
A Record Share of Russians Support Peace Talks, But the Devil Is in the Details
Interestingly, the share of Russians who favor peace talks over the continuation of hostilities reached a record high level in June 2024. As many as 58% hold that view, compared to 53% a year ago (Figure 4). In comparison, the share of Russians who prefer the continuation of Russia’s military operations was 40% a year ago and now is 37%. In fact, since Levada began asking this question in September 2022, only in one month has the share of war hawks exceeded the share of peace preferring doves (in May 2023).
Moreover, the two times Levada asked Russians whether it was Russia or Ukraine that was more interested in peace talks, the share of respondents who pointed to their country exceeded the share of those who pointed to Ukraine. In June 2023, 17% of Levada’s Russian respondents said Ukraine was more interested in peace talks, while 38% of these respondents said Russia was more interested, and 30% said both countries were equally interested. A year later, 21% of respondents to Levada’s June 2024 poll said Ukraine was more interested in peace talks, while 41% said Russia was more interested, and 28% said both countries were equally interested. Interestingly, as in Russia, in Ukraine, the share of those who favor peace talks is now greater than the share of those who believe the time for such talks has not come. Some 44% of respondents to a poll conducted by the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center in June 2024 believe the time has come for official peace talks with Russia, while another 35% think it has not.
Thus, it may seem that the support for peace talks among Russians and Ukrainians, as measured by the Moscow-based Levada and Kyiv-based Razumkov pollsters, respectively, indicates the existence of what negotiators would describe as a “zone of potential agreement” (ZOPA) between Moscow and Kyiv. However, this perception is illusory. From what Levada discloses about its polls on the war, it appears that it doesn’t ask respondents about the key clauses of a peace agreement, whereas pollsters such as Russian Field and Ukraine’s Razumkov Center do, and the results are not encouraging. For instance, when asked in October 2023 to elaborate on what the peace deal should entail to win their support, 31% of Russian Field’s respondents in Russia named conditions that the majority of Ukrainians continue to find unacceptable, such as annexations of parts of Ukraine (beyond Crimea), or the full capitulation of Ukraine. A more recent poll by Russian Field revealed that such demands continue to feature in Russian respondents’ answers to what clauses a peace agreement with Ukraine should include for the respondents to support it. One third of respondents to the Russian Field’s May-June 2024 poll said the peace deal should include territorial concessions by Ukraine, while another 3% want Ukraine to surrender and/or to become part of Russia. This May-June 2024 poll also revealed that advocates of peace talks (“doves”) account for almost half (49%) of respondents. Another 24% told this pollster that they would support peace talks if Russian President Vladimir Putin comes up with some sort of a peaceful solution of the conflict (“loyalists”), while 17% would not support peace talks even if Putin did come up with a such a solution (“hawks”), according to the Russian Field poll.
That conditions such as the annexation of parts of Ukraine by Russia remain unacceptable for most Ukrainians follows from the results of the Razumkov Center’s aforementioned poll for the Dzerkalo Tyzhnya news outlet. According to that June 2024 poll, more than 82% of respondents rejected Russia’s demands that Ukraine withdraw troops from the parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions Kyiv controls and that Ukraine recognize these regions as parts of Russia. (Additionally, almost 59% of respondents to this Razumkov poll reject the demand that Ukraine’s status as a country that is neutral and free of nuclear weapons be codified).
A Majority of Russians Fear Hostilities in Ukraine Could Escalate Into Conflict With NATO; A Third Believes Use of Nukes Would Be Justified
Meanwhile, (or rather since April 2022), the share of Russians who blamed the U.S. and NATO for the war (57% in April 2022 and 65% in June 2024) remained considerably higher than the share of those who blamed Ukraine (17% in April 2022 and 11% in June 2024) or Russia (7% in April 2022 and 6% in June 2024).1 More worryingly, the share of Russians who believe the “situation in Ukraine could escalate into an armed conflict between Russia and NATO” increased from 44% in January 2024 to 58% in June 2024, according to Levada. Moreover, many Russians fear that the conflict could turn nuclear. In fact, the share of Russians who are very worried about “the threat of the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict” increased from 71% in April 2023 to 73% in June 2024. Even more alarmingly, the share of Russians who definitely believe or rather believe that “the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in the course of the current conflict in Ukraine” would be justified also increased to more than one-third, from 29% in April 2023 to 34% in June 2024. In contrast, the share of Russians who believe the use of nuclear weapons by Russia is rather or definitely unjustifiable declined, but remained a majority (56% in April 2023 and 52% in June 2024). The Russian Field’s aforementioned May-June 2024 poll revealed that “opponents of the use of nuclear weapons in the course of the ‘military operation’” in Ukraine prevailed among all three of the aforementioned “clusters” of respondents: “doves,” “loyalists” and “hawks.” The share of those who found the use of nuclear weapons acceptable was the lowest among doves (8%) and highest among hawks (38%), according to the Russian Field poll.
One plausible explanation for the increase in the share of Russians who would justify the use of nuclear weapons, as revealed in Levada’s June 2024 poll, could have been major setbacks suffered by the Russian armed forces in Ukraine on the scale of what we saw in the fall of 2022; however, there have been no such setbacks recently. Moreover, the Russian army has of late been making incremental net gains on the ground, according to the Belfer Center’s Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. But if this increase is not due to conventional military setbacks, then what is driving more Russians to justify the use of nuclear weapons by their armed forces? I suspect it has something to do with the increasingly loud calls, first made by pro-Kremlin experts and then by the Kremlin itself, to amend Russia’s strategic doctrine to lower the threshold for first use of nuclear weapons.
Footnotes
- That some Russians can have a very dim, misguided view of the U.S. and its allies also corresponds with the results of another recent Levada poll, which asked Russians to name the main adversaries and allies of the USSR in WWII. The share of Russians who consider the U.S. to have been among the USSR’s adversaries in that war tripled from 2% in May 2005 to 6% in June 2024. The same period of time saw the share of Russians who consider the U.K. to have been among the USSR’s adversaries in that war increase from 1% to 5%.
Simon Saradzhyan is the founding director of Russia Matters. This blog post is an expanded and updated version of a post that earlier appeared on his blog.