Moderation is important in a special operation – Newspaper Kommersant No. 33 (7478) dated 27.02.2023

A year after the start of the special military operation (SVO), the Russians have not changed their attitude towards it, follows from a recent survey by the Russian Field research service. The majority (69%) of the respondents still support the military operation, while only 22% do not. Only 34% of Russians would cancel the decision to start it, if they had such an opportunity, 52% would not change anything. At the same time, the number of opponents and supporters of further deepening of hostilities is approximately equal – 52% and 42%.

This is the data of the 11th wave of the Russian Field survey, dedicated to the attitude of Russians to the special operation. It was held from January 31 to February 6 with the participation of 2 thousand respondents who were interviewed by phone. The statistical error of the data does not exceed 2.19%.

The authors of the study note that the overall numbers of support for the JEE remained virtually unchanged during the ten months of its implementation. The lowest level of support at 59% was shown by measurements made at the end of February last year, but then the numbers increased. In the latest survey, 17% of those surveyed admitted that they had changed their attitude towards SVO, and two-thirds of them (12%) were in favor of it. Also, compared to December last year, the number of people who believe that the operation is not successful for the Russian army has decreased by 10 percentage points, to 23%. Those who hold the opposite point of view, on the contrary, have increased by 6 percentage points: now there are 56% of such people.

However, when using special filter questions for in-depth analysis, it turned out that the majority of respondents do not want an escalation of hostilities.

The survey participants were asked to answer two questions in turn – about support for hypothetical decisions to attack Kyiv and about signing a peace agreement. As a result, 27% of the respondents were firm supporters of the escalation of the NWO (they will support the offensive and will not support the peace agreement). Another 34% of respondents turned out to be resolutely opposed to building up the NMD (they would support a peace agreement and not support an offensive). 33% took a neutral position, answering positively to both questions. Finally, 2% are not ready to support any of the options.

Then sociologists began to find out the attitude of these groups to various scenarios for its continuation and completion. This made it possible to divide both supporters and opponents of the SVO into radical and moderate ones, and to rank neutrals according to their tendency to support one of the parties. For example, even among opponents of the NWO, only 44% consider it acceptable as a result of peace negotiations to return to the borders before 2014 (42% of respondents in this category called this option unacceptable). Among supporters of escalation, 85% of respondents consider this option unacceptable, while only 10% consider it acceptable. But 28% of them are ready to agree that Ukraine recognizes only Crimea, the DPR and the LPR as part of Russia.

As a result, it turned out that moderate opponents of escalation make up the largest share (27%), in second place are neutral ones who tend to the same point of view (18%). In general, about half of the respondents who do not support the further deepening of the SVO turned out to be about half – 52%. There are 10 percentage points fewer supporters of the intensification of hostilities – such 42%.

At the same time, supporters of the escalation of the “military operation” are united by support for hostilities and readiness for further confrontation with an increase in rates, the authors of the study note. Also in this category, the highest level of approval of the actions of the founder of PMC “Wagner” Yevgeny Prigozhin. In general, almost half of the respondents (43%) either do not know anything about the activities of Mr. Prigozhin during the NWO, or find it difficult to assess it. However, 41% of the rest evaluate it positively.

But the moderate and radical opponents of the SVO, on the contrary, differ sharply in many positions, sociologists note: the majority of the radicals are in favor of an immediate cessation of hostilities, often on Ukraine’s terms, while the moderates simply do not want further escalation – they are against the second wave of mobilization and for the transition to peace negotiations.

Recall that on February 20, VTsIOM published a poll, according to which the decision to conduct a special military operation of Russia in Ukraine is supported by 68% of Russians and not supported by 20%.

Additional questions-filters are of no particular importance, political scientist Yevgeny Minchenko is convinced. These are not some real forks, but rather a kind of “sociological modeling”, he believes. In addition, the population is now not very deeply immersed in the nuances of the special operation, the expert adds. The main factor is the high level of trust in Vladimir Putin personally: specific decisions that can be made on the foreign policy front are delegated by about 70% of the electorate to the president, the expert draws attention.

“In fact, now in society there is a conditional 15% of turbopatriots and a conditional 15% of opponents of the NWO. And the rest is a conservative majority, whose opinion about the preference for peaceful negotiations or the continuation of hostilities varies depending on the information agenda,” said Konstantin Kostin, head of the Civil Society Development Foundation. According to him, this can also be seen from the dynamics of the polls: in fact, the same people go back and forth between supporters of the attack on Kyiv and peace negotiations. Now, at the moment there is a comparable number of Russians in these groups, the expert notes. Also, this volatility of public opinion is indirectly confirmed by the fact that a significant number of respondents are ready to support any decision of the country’s leadership on the further course of the operation. “It is also important that, in retrospective modeling, the decision to start a SVO is approved by 52 percent of respondents,” says Mr. Kostin.

Anastasia Kornya, Andrey Vinokurov