The level of anxiety among Russians has dropped by half and has almost returned to 2021 levels.

The level of anxiety of Russian citizens in the past year has fallen by half and has almost returned to the values ​​of 2021, primarily due to the “routinization” of fears associated with a special military operation (SVO). This conclusion was reached by the authors of the latest report as part of the National Anxiety Index. KROS”, prepared by the communications company of the same name. The place of military fears is slowly being filled by “everyday” ones – for example, due to natural disasters and restrictions on abortion.

The total anxiety index at the end of 2023 amounted to 11.8 thousand “media youths,” the authors of the report calculated: this is 45% less than in 2022, when against the backdrop of the SVO the indicator “soared” to 21.4 thousand, and is comparable with the result of the last “pandemic” year (9.8 thousand in 2021). The reason for such a serious “cooling” of society was “getting used to new realities and the routinization of the topic of SVO in the media,” the report says.

Let us remind you that KROS ranks the anxieties of Russians based on an analysis of media news (“media index”), as well as posts and comments on social networks (“social media index”). Their arithmetic average is a total index that shows the scale of the “information wave.”

Experts note that evidence of the trend can be considered a sharp drop in anxiety in Moscow and St. Petersburg – five times at once. Residents of the northern capital have “cooled down” so much that the city for the first time dropped to sixth place in the list of “most alarmed” regions of the Russian Federation, where it invariably occupied second place after Moscow. The capital itself, however, retained its primacy. The Belgorod region came in second place in 2023, and Sevastopol came in third.

Anxiety associated with the progress of the military war has also decreased in the country as a whole: if last year it was one of the top three main fears in 83 regions, now it is only in 52. And the number of regions where military fears took first place has decreased even more – from 70 to 33.

However, proximity to the front is still a key factor in determining the overall level of anxiety in a particular subject. Thus, in addition to those already listed, the “front-line” Bryansk and Kursk regions again entered the list of the most “alarmed” (fourth and ninth places, respectively) and, for the first time, Crimea and the Rostov region (fifth and eighth). Moreover, the Krasnodar Territory is in seventh place. Let us remind you that from October 19, 2022, a medium level of response was introduced in all these regions.

The most exciting topic for residents of “front-line” regions remains sabotage: they lead among the most important concerns in Crimea and Sevastopol, Bryansk and Kursk regions, and in the Belgorod region they are five times ahead of the immediate fear associated with rising prices. Overall, sabotage remains the number one fear in 15 regions. In another 13 regions, natural disasters – fires and floods – lead the way.

According to the authors of the report, in a number of cases, the top three main fears included specific ones – attacks by stray dogs (18 regions), poisoning by intestinal infections and alcohol (14) and legislative initiatives regarding abortion (10). The last topic seriously worried the residents of Kabardino-Balkaria, Kursk, Novosibirsk, Arkhangelsk and Lipetsk regions (3rd place in the regional top), Nizhny Novgorod, Kaliningrad, Tver and Pskov regions (2nd place), and Mordovia even reached 1st place. e place.

“The regions are returning to more everyday worries, and many of them are geographically related,” says KROS Analytics Director Andrey Lebedev. “In Siberia and the Far East, people were worried about fires, in the south of the country – floods. Of course, they were there last year, but not so often they made it to the top, which was occupied with CBO topics.” Also, sanctions and partial mobilization have “almost disappeared” from among the current concerns, whereas last year they gave rise to serious fear, the authors state.

The top ten “most unperturbed” regions at the end of 2023 included Kabardino-Balkaria, Ingushetia, Karachay-Cherkessia, Adygea, Kalmykia, the Jewish Autonomous Region, Chukotka, as well as the Magadan, Tambov and Amur regions.

General Director of VTsIOM Valery Fedorov agrees that there has been a “routinization” of the SVO in the media agenda. “But what is “routinization”? This is when the news is “oversold”. It is important, it cannot but be important, but they no longer respond to it so actively due to saturation and addiction,” he explains. According to the sociologist, the fact that anxiety associated with SVO “is not going away” is evidenced by the planning horizon of citizens: as it sharply decreased in February 2022, it has not yet recovered. “Judging by surveys, people still cannot make long-term decisions and do not know what will happen in just a few months,” says Mr. Fedorov.

He also notes that in the past year the level of anxiety among Russians has changed according to a sinusoid. “There were several obvious spikes: in the spring – UAV raids, in the summer – the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Prigozhin’s rebellion, in August – the fall of the ruble. These were serious challenges, but their resonance, of course, is not comparable to what we saw in February-March 2022. And, as is now clear, in general, concern gradually decreased,” sums up the general director of VTsIOM.

Andrey Prah