Putins sinking approval ratings are a warning Russians are frustrated with Ukraine war: experts

Not even the Kremlin can protect him.Russian President Vladimir Putin has seen his approval ratings plummet — despite controlling the polls — in what experts said was a sign of the growing frustration over the prolonged war in Ukraine.Putin, who enjoyed approval numbers as high as 89% before invading his neighbor, has seen his popularity free-fall to about 65% in the latest state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) survey.The Public Opinion Foundation, which conducts surveys for the Kremlin, also found that support for Putin’s performance fell from 71% to 66% in July, the steepest fall since the 2022 protests spurred by the Russian draft.The fact that the Kremlin’s own surveys are reporting such numbers suggest that officials are sending a clear message to Putin: Plan your next moves carefully and end the war soon, Kateryna Stepanenko, the Russia Team Lead at the Institute for the Study of War think tank, told The Post.“We’ve seen support for Putin waning, albeit marginally, but it shows that his critical decisions in the war are forcing pollsters to show the active decline,” Stepanenko said. “It may also signal that individuals inside the Kremlin are trying to use pollsters to send a message to Putin about the war,” she added.

“Someone is going out of there to show that interest in the war is waning.”  Stepanenko pointed out that unlike North Korea, where dictator Kim Jong Un holds a 99% approval rating in state-run surveys, Russian polls are one of the few peepholes that reveal the populous’ feelings for the Kremlin.Along with Putin’s performance and approval ratings dropping, trust in the strongman has also declined from 76.7% in mid-June to 71% in the latest VTsIOM poll.The level of distrust, however, may be much higher.In a survey conducted by the Institute for Conflict Studies and Analysis of Russia, which presented a different question than those by the state-run pollsters, respondents in the Krasnodar and Rostov ...