I had a conversation with Professor Sergey Karaganov and Alexander Mercouris about Russia changing its nuclear doctrine. Karaganov was an advisor to Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin. He has been the main proponent of lowering Russia’s nuclear threshold. Putin had previously told Karaganov that Russia was not prepared to change the nuclear doctrine, however Putin has reversed his position and is now changing the nuclear doctrine according to Karaganov’s recommendations.
Nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent and can therefore be a source of stability and peace by making war between the great powers unacceptable. The irony of the nuclear deterrent is that the immensely destructive power of nuclear weapons, possibly ending human civilisation, can reduce the credibility that an opponent would use them. The nuclear peace therefore requires communicating a credible readiness to destroy the world.
NATO’s escalations in the Ukraine War have convinced the Kremlin that its nuclear deterrent has been severely weakened and must be restored. For example, Biden initially warned against sending F-16s as it would likely trigger World War 3, but then decided later to approve supplying F-16s to Ukraine while NATO countries dismissed Russia’s nuclear deterrence as unacceptable “nuclear blackmail”. On the third year of the war, Ukraine invaded Kursk with NATO weapons and likely US intelligence – which was met with Western support and exuberance.
The dilemma for how Russia can respond has been: 1) retaliate against NATO and risk uncontrolled escalation possibly resulting in nuclear war, or 2) do not to retaliate but then embolden NATO to escalate further and thus risk nuclear war. The plan by the US and UK to supply Ukraine with long-range precision missiles became the final straw for Moscow. This would be considered a direct attack on Russia since these missiles would need to be operated by American or British soldiers and guided by their satellites.
The changes primarily entail 1) allowing the use of nuclear weapons if attacked by a non-nuclear state supported by a nuclear state (to address war through proxy), 2) placing Belarus under the Russian nuclear umbrella to address the possibility of a NATO nuclear attack on Belarus as a step up the escalation ladder. Obama’s national-security team secretly staged a war game in 2016 in which it was recommended to respond to a Russian use of nuclear weapon with a NATO nuclear attack on Belarus – “a nation that had played no role whatsoever in the invasion of the NATO ally but had the misfortune of being a Russian ally”.
Changing the nuclear doctrine does not suggest Russia is planning a nuclear strike as there are still further steps on the escalation ladder:
-Confront and destroy NATO reconnaissance drones over the Black Sea that provide targets to Ukraine
-Use conventional weapons to attack NATO’s military targets that are used to put a blockade on Kaliningrad (if the decision is made)
-Destroy NATO satellites used to guide missiles that attack Russian territory
-Destroy NATO’s critical infrastructure such as underwater cables or through cyber attacks
-Destroy Ukrainian warplanes stationed in Poland and Romania
-Destroy military logistics centres on NATO territory for weapons being sent to Ukraine
-Attacks on US military bases abroad, either through proxies or direct attacks
However, once any of these retaliatory actions are taken against NATO, both sides could lose control of the situation and rapidly head up the escalation ladder.
The Russian establishment profoundly distrusts Donald Trump. Though usually forgotten in the West, it was his administration — not Barack Obama’s or Joe Biden’s – which began the supply of weapons to Ukraine in 2017. Trump also allowed US intelligence to build up the presence in Ukraine that played an important role in preventing Russian victory in the first months of 2022. In fact, apart from some complimentary remarks about Vladimir Putin, the US President-elect has done little to improve relations with Russia.
Following Trump’s election win this week, the Russian Foreign Ministry declared that it had “no illusions” about him, adding that America’s “ruling political elite adheres to anti-Russia principles and the policy of ‘containing Moscow’” no matter which party is in charge. While Putin himself is more sympathetic, on Thursday hailing Trump’s “desire to restore relations with Russia, to help end the Ukrainian crisis”, these comments can be attributed to a recognition that the Russian President needs to maintain good relations with his American counterpart.
When it comes to negotiations with the Trump administration to end the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin still has one big fear. This, according to members of the Russian establishment with whom I spoke this summer, is a repeat of Trump’s notorious initiative to negotiate a deal with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. In that instance, Trump launched into an exercise in personal diplomacy without preparation or any understanding of the other side — or seemingly of his own aims. When the talks failed, Trump responded with furious bluster and left US relations with Pyongyang in even worse shape than before.
Moscow worries that Trump may make Putin a peace offer which he genuinely thinks is a generous and viable one, but which fails to meet minimal Russian conditions, and that if Putin rejects it Trump will turn violently against Russia. There is also fear in the Kremlin that opponents of a deal in the State Department may deliberately set Trump up to fail in this way, and that the President-elect’s immediate team will not see it coming. That’s before factoring in a Ukrainian establishment which is likely to bitterly resist a compromise peace.
Trump’s own advisors are reported to be deeply divided on the subject of Ukraine. And, according to one former aide, “anyone — no matter how senior in Trump’s circle — who claims to have a different view or more detailed window into his plans on Ukraine simply doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.” More than that, in the words of the same aide, they don’t “understand that he makes his own calls on national-security issues, many times in the moment, particularly on an issue as central as this”.
To have a chance of success, formal negotiations will therefore have to be preceded by preparatory talks, preferably in secret. Each side can then explore which of the other’s conditions are basic and non-negotiable, and which are open to compromise. We do not yet know Trump’s choices for secretary of state and national security advisor, or what their attitudes to Russia and Ukraine will be. Yet sheer military reality has seemingly persuaded most of his team that Ukrainian recovery of all its lost territory is now impossible.
As one advisor on the 2024 campaign, Bryan Lanza, told the BBC this week: “if President Zelensky comes to the table and says, ‘well, we can only have peace if we have Crimea’, he shows to us that he’s not serious […] Crimea is gone.” Lanza added that the US plan is “not a vision for winning, but it’s a vision for peace”.
However, the Moscow establishment — and, according to opinion polls, most of the Russian public — cannot countenance withdrawal not just from Crimea but from any of the territory that Russia holds in the five Ukrainian provinces it claims to have annexed. Putin has demanded that Ukraine withdraw from the territory it still holds in these provinces, but this is just as impossible as Kyiv’s demand that Russia withdraw from all the territory it occupies in Ukraine.
These must therefore be understood not as absolute conditions but as initial bargaining positions. It seems probable that a ceasefire along the actually existing battle-line — but without formal recognition of Russia’s annexations — will be a central part of any Trump proposal.
Putin’s insistence that Ukraine sign a treaty of neutrality, and that Nato membership be categorically excluded, is supposedly non-negotiable but could yet be subject to compromise. Russia might accept a lengthy moratorium on Ukraine’s application for Nato membership — for example, 20 years, as reportedly proposed by some members of Trump’s team — but this is a question that can only be clarified in talks.
The question remains as to what will happen in the 73 days until Trump actually takes office. President Joe Biden is already rushing through a major tranche of aid, a smart move geared towards strengthening the US at the negotiating table. The Pentagon is also for the first time officially allowing US military contractors to repair and maintain American weaponry inside Ukraine. Some fear — hopefully without reason — that the Biden administration will go much further and initiate a drastic escalation in an effort to preemptively wreck any talks.
A new crisis may also be initiated from the Russian side. If the Russians know the only territory they will get in Ukraine is that which they actually occupy, then they obviously have a huge incentive to take as much ground as possible before Trump enters office. At the very least, they will want to push Ukrainian troops out of the remaining territory they hold in the Russian province of Kursk. The next few weeks may therefore bring a major Russian offensive, whose outcome could have a significant effect on ensuing peace talks.
Germany is paying too much for its military equipment, a recent think tank study shows. Image: Germany Ministry of Defense
The German Kiel Institute has published a disturbing but accurate report on German and European defense. The report suggests that the overall picture for Germany, Europe and the United States is grim.
The bottom line is that despite all the NATO war talk, the alliance (including the United States) is not ready for any conflict with Russia. It also suggests that the pricing of defense equipment is making defense companies rich but not helping the overall cause of security.
The study is very important: It points out how unprepared Germany and other European countries are should Russia attack them. It also tells a sad tale about how overpriced and insufficient European, specifically German, defense manufacturing has become.
A great example is Germany’s Caracal air assault vehicle. A Caracal is a kind of wild cat found in Africa, Pakistan, the Middle East and parts of India. The German vehicle, an unarmored gussied-up jeep based on a Mercedes G class chassis, was put together by Rheinmetall, Mercedes-Benz AG and ACS Armored Car Systems GmbH.
The Caracal has no armor on its open sides. Over 3,000 of these vehicles have been provided to Ukraine at a cost of 1.9 billion euros, which works out to 620,000 euros per unit.
You could bolt an antitank gun or machine gun on a four-wheel drive commercial jeep for less than $35,000 per copy. And since Ukraine has no airlift capability, an air assault vehicle dropped onto the battlefield is a non-starter. (The euro now trades at $1.08 to the US dollar.)
An equally appalling example is 30mm ammunition for the German Puma infantry fighting vehicle. The Puma costs a staggering $5.3 million each, while its 30mm ammunition costs around 1,000 euros per shot!
Puma can fire up to 600 rounds per minute. That compares to a US 30mm High Explosive Dual Purpose round (more specialized than a run-of-the-mill bullet) at $100. So German 30mm ammunition is ten times more expensive than the US’s.
The German army is also buying tactical military headsets for soldiers. Commercially available tactical headsets retail for $299. If features such as noise cancellation are added, the price may go up to $400 but not more. Yet German headsets cost a whopping 2,700 euros each.
The bottom line is that people and companies are making a lot of money supplying European armies or sending stuff to Ukraine. Some might say it is outright corruption since governments are complicit in these deals. Mind that the Kiel Institute only goes as far as to say these purchases are uber-expensive, no more.
The Kiel report has a lot to say about defense industrial output in Russia (which is a lot), by the fact that the Russians are not going to run out of weapons anytime soon and that North Korea now augments supplies in the form of artillery rounds and missiles.
North Korea, it seems, has been grinding out weapons well in excess of anything it can use, and until now, it did not export them. The Russian deal with North Korea sustains the Kim Jong Un dictatorship, of course, by providing cash or the equivalent and underwriting jobs.
All of this helps show, in part, that Germany’s investments in defense are corrupted (I think that is the right word) by excessively expensive hardware.
Even if Germany actually meets the NATO target of 2.1% of GDP for defense spending, what the German army ends up getting is extremely overpriced, not to mention that a lot of it is ending up in Ukraine and only slowly, if at all, replaced on the home front.
Even with adequate spending, what money is spent on boggles the mind. Very little, for example, is going into air defense, something that is vital for Germany’s future defense needs.
Overall, NATO-supplied air defenses have done a mediocre to abysmal job in Ukraine, a harbinger of a deadly future in Europe unless the problem is corrected. An intriguing footnote (page 25) in the report, set in ultra-small type, discusses Ukraine’s ability to shoot down Russian missiles and drones:
Sample interception rates for commonly used Russian missiles in 2024: 50% for the older Kalibr subsonic cruise missiles, 22% for modern subsonic cruise missiles (e.g. Kh-69), 4% for modern ballistic missiles (e.g. Iskander-M), 0.6% for S-300/400 supersonic long-range SAM, and 0.55% for the Kh-22 supersonic anti-ship missile.
Data on interception rates of hypersonic missiles is scarce: Ukraine claims a 25% interception rate for hypersonic Kinzhal and Zircon missiles, but Ukrainian sources also indicate such interceptions require salvo firing all 32 launchers in a US-style Patriot battery to have any chance to shoot down a single hypersonic missile. By comparison, German Patriot batteries have 16 launchers, and Germany has 72 launchers in total.
Take note that interceptor missiles for Patriot are in ultra-short supply. These missiles take a long time to manufacture and gearing up to make them has proven challenging. A shortage of critical components is also bolloxing production lines.
While US defense contractor Lockheed Martin is the main producer, Boeing provides key parts for the seeker the missile uses to strike its target (when it works). Boeing won’t solve that problem, at the earliest, until 2027. Meanwhile, Boeing faces a massive industrial strike and an internal crisis still far from a solution.
But there are big questions about air defenses. The US has sold the Patriot and other systems to Ukraine. The Russians spend a lot of effort destroying them, but even when they function, their intercept rate is below par. Europe has supplied IRIS-T, NSAMS and other systems that, so far as can be determined, are roughly equivalent to the Patriot.
On the whole, Israeli systems are better, but they are not deployed in Ukraine. What is regarded as the top US system for air defense, AEGIS (in the form of AEGIS Ashore), is not in Ukraine. The systems are deployed in Poland and Romania.
Europe has very little in the way of home-deployed air defense (Britain essentially has none). The US is not much better off. Some systems, especially the Ground-Based Mid-Course Interceptor based in Alaska, are a mixed bag.
The Pentagon is now looking for new interceptor missiles that work better than what it has. Despite several tests that were optimized to try and assure success, the 40 or so missiles in inventory only work about half the time.
The future is also concerning as hypersonic weapons arrive on the battlefield, seen in Ukraine in the form of Russia’s Kinzhal and Zircon. Systems like the Patriot or Iris-T or any of the other NATO air defense systems hardly stand a chance against hypersonic attack missiles.
The picture also isn’t pretty when it comes to drones, which are being fired off by the thousands by the Ukrainians and Russians. They are hard to kill and systems like the Russian Lancet drone can destroy modern battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.
No one so far, including Israel, has come up with an efficient way to destroy swarms of drones or even some lesser attacks that get through.
Above all, the Kiel report puts a new and important perspective on Europe’s security situation and, by extension, the US, which is pledged by treaty to help defend Europe.
Instead of constantly expanding NATO and creating angst in Europe and Russia, it is time to step back and see if a credible defense of Europe is possible. Right now, judging by the Kiel report, the answer is no.
A former and future U.S. president talked with Vladimir Putin on Thursday! At least that is what The Washington Post reported today.
In a highly detailed account, the Post wrote:
“During the call, which Trump took from his resort in Florida, he advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, said a person familiar with the call, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
The two men discussed the goal of peace on the European continent and Trump expressed an interest in follow-up conversations to discuss ‘the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon,’ one of the people said.”
Except on Monday, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, denied it ever happened.
“Peskov called the story ‘completely untrue’ … ‘This is the most obvious example of the quality of the information that is now published, sometimes even in fairly respected publications. This is completely untrue. This is pure fiction, this is simply false information,’ he told the Russian news agency Interfax.”
Someone is lying here. The Post said it had five unnamed sources confirming the call and providing extensive detail of what was supposedly discussed. Trump has said nothing so far about whether such a call took place. But on Monday he posted a short Fox video on his Truth Social account showing the world leaders he has spoken to so far and Putin is not among them. Volodymyr Zelenksy of Ukraine is.
It has been two and a half years since a conversation between U.S. and Russian presidents.
That last conversation was held on Feb. 12, 2022. It ended badly – the readout showing there was no room for compromise, no room for a “deal” to stave off war in Ukraine.
The U.S. would not reverse its stance on inviting Ukraine into NATO; and went back on an earlier undertaking not to put offensive missiles in Ukraine. The Russians saw their core national security interests at stake, just as the U.S. had core interests in preventing Cuba from installing offensive missiles in 1962.
According to the Russian readout, Putin made clear that Joe Biden “did not really address non-expansion of NATO, or non-deployment of strike weapons systems on Ukrainian territory.” Twelve days later, the Russians launched what they call their Special Military Operation.
The Biden administration knew this would happen. None other than NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg let that cat out of the bag (no doubt inadvertently) in a speech to the EU Parliament on Sept. 7, 2023:
“Putin’s precondition for not invading Ukraine was: No Ukraine in NATO. We rejected that. So he went to war to prevent more NATO.”
Context: Reading the Readout
The Kremlin placed the readout of the Feb. 12, 2022 summit-call squarely in the context of a key Putin-Biden telephone conversation nine weeks earlier on Dec. 7, 2021. That virtual summit had been arranged abruptly, at Putin’s urgent request.
And so it came to pass that Biden was at home on holiday in Delaware – without his minders. As things turned out, he apparently reasoned that agreeing not to put offensive missiles in Ukraine made sense, given the threat Putin saw in that (and the fact that the US already had such emplacements in Romania and Poland).
The Russian readout from that Dec. 30, 2021 telephone call stated: “Joseph Biden emphasized that Washington had no intention of deployingoffensive strike missiles in Ukraine.” [Emphasis added.]
Biden administration officials, with the full cooperation of Establishment media, were able to obfuscate and suppress this key undertaking made by Biden when he was ‘home alone’, so to speak.
There was virtually no public reporting or comment. The only exception was former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, John Herbst, an ardent Ukraine fan, who quickly and quietly dismissed the readout as nothing new.
Dec. 7, 2021: U.S. President Joe Biden, on screen during video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Signs of Thaw
A lot of water has flowed down the Dnieper River since February 2022. Much of it will be frozen thick on Jan. 20 when Donald Trump takes office. There are, however, already some tentative signs of a coming thaw in relations between the U.S. and Russia.
On Thursday, Putin publicly congratulated Trump on his victory, praising his “manly” response to the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. On Sunday, Kremlin spokesman Peskov told an interviewer there were “positive” signs for improved relations under a Trump presidency.
“Trump talked during his campaign about how he sees everything through deals, that he can make a deal that will lead everyone to peace. At least he talks about peace, not about confrontation and the desire to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” Peskov said.
Tempering expectations, Putin responded cautiously to a question at the Valdai conference in Sochi on Nov. 7. Asked what he expects from a second Trump administration, Putin replied, “I don’t know what will happen now. I have no idea.”
On Ukraine, nothing good will happen until Biden/Blinken/Sullivan can admit that what they have been saying for a year and a half is not true. Putin has not “already lost.” It is just the opposite. And his terms are correspondingly tough. On that basis, and only on that basis, will he be prepared “to deal.”
US ‘Exceptionalism’
Biden was fond of quoting former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s oft-stated belief that the U.S. was not only “exceptional” but also “indispensable.” It seems Biden and his acolytes, particularly Secretary of State Antony Blinken, may actually believe that.
What most observers have long since forgotten is that Putin called out Barack Obama on that very issue – precisely at a time when there was hope for increasing mutual trust. Putin placed a revealing op-ed about all this in The New York Times on Sept. 12, 2013.
In short, Putin persuaded Syria to let its chemical weapons be destroyed under U.N. inspection, and thus pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire when Obama agreed.
Obama later admitted that all of his advisers insisted he had to wage war on Syria because of a chemical attack near Damascus during the civil war there. It was a false-flag attack, and he sensed that. Obama was reluctant to start yet another overt war – this one on Syria. He told a lot of this story to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic.
Syria’s chemical weapons were destroyed and war was avoided. And not only that. The possibilities had increased perceptively for growing trust, only to be dashed when Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and friends mounted a coup d’etat in Kyiv just six months later.
Here’s the last paragraph of the NYT op-ed by Putin on Sept 12, 2013. As we shall see, there are clear echoes of this in Putin’s talk on Friday at Valdai, 11 years later:
“My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is ‘what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.’ It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”
The Valdai Message
Putin addressing the Valdai Club on Friday. (President of Russia)
Is there a chance for resuscitation of this “growing trust” from 11 years ago? In his Valdai presentation Friday, Putin made abundantly clear what the new international situation — the new balance of power – will now require, especially as a very large part of the world is already in BRICS and arrayed against a lily white, Western minority.
Putin’s words on Friday are as interesting now as his New York Times op-ed was 11 years ago:
“The Western-centric world has embraced certain clichés and stereotypes concerning the global hierarchy. There is supposedly a developed world, progressive society and some universal civilization that everyone should strive to join – while at the other end, there are backward, uncivilized nations, barbarians. Their job is to listen unquestioningly to what they are told from the outside, and to act on the instructions issued by those who are allegedly superior to them in this civilizational hierarchy.
It is clear that this concept works for a crude colonial approach, for the exploitation of the global majority. The problem is that this essentially racist ideology has taken root in the minds of many, creating a serious mental obstacle to general harmonious growth. [Emphasis added.]
The modern world tolerates neither arrogance nor wanton disregard for others being different. To build normal relationships, above all, one needs to listen to the other party and try to understand their logic and cultural background, rather than expecting them to think and act the way you think they should based on your beliefs about them. Otherwise, communication turns into an exchange of clichés and flinging labels, and politics devolves into a conversation of the deaf.”
It is possible to hope that, on Ukraine at least, U.S.-Russian talks can quickly move beyond cliches and labels, to stop the killing. Mutual trust is also possible, but it will take some time to rebuild it.
Perhaps it helps to recall that it almost happened just 13 years ago.
A majority of Russians would support ending hostilities and launching peace negotiations, according to the results of a September 2024 poll by Russia’s Levada Center1 on Russians’ views on the war against Ukraine. However, when asked if Russia should make concessions in such negotiations, a vast majority answered in the negative. Moreover, when asked to evaluate the conditions of a hypothetical peace deal, vast majorities of respondents rejected returning territories to Kyiv, as well as Ukraine’s membership in NATO. In addition, when Levada divided its respondents into two groups, a majority in one of the groups said they would not support an end to the military conflict if it meant returning annexed territories, even if Vladimir Putin himself made such a decision. This obviously doesn’t bode well for those in the West seeking support for brokering a peace deal that would defer territorial issues in exchange for Kyiv’s membership in the Alliance.
Russians Not Ready for Meaningful Compromise
Like all but one of Levada’s previous polls on Ukraine since October 2022, the September 2024 poll shows that the percentage of respondents favoring an end to Russia’s so-called special military operation and launching peace negotiations (54%) is greater than that of those who support continuing the operation (38%). However, when asked whether Russia should make concessions to Ukraine to end the military operation and sign a peace agreement, the share of those who answered “definitely or probably yes” was 20% in September 2024. In contrast, 70% were opposed, after fluctuating in the range of 70%–73% last year.
Levada has also asked its respondents to weigh in on specific conditions that a peace accord would contain. It has found that 94% of respondents considered an exchange of POWs to be acceptable or preferable as of September 2024, and 78% of respondents considered immediate ceasefire to be acceptable or preferable. However, only 21% of these respondents found returning the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions to Ukraine to be acceptable or preferable, while 69% found such a return unacceptable. Additionally, 75% found returning the Luhansk and Donetsk regions to Ukraine unacceptable. Finally, the share of those who found Ukraine’s membership in NATO as acceptable or preferable was 15% in September 2024, while 73% found it unacceptable under any circumstances.
Russians Won’t Agree To Return Land Even if Putin Decides to Do So
As part of the September 2024 survey, the Levada Center once again repeated the following experiment. With the help of a random number generator, the respondents participating in the survey were divided into two equal groups, each of which was asked a question in one of two formulations. In Group 1, the respondents were asked if they would support or not support the president’s decision to immediately end the military conflict, without any conditions to support or not to support the president’s decision to immediately end the military conflict (without any conditions). In Group 2, the respondents were asked whether they would support Putin’s decision to end the conflict, but on the condition of returning territories to Ukraine. Some 73% in Group 1 in September 2024 said they would support Putin’s decision to end the conflict with Ukraine (in April 2024 it was 71%), while 19% said they would oppose it (20% in April 2024). In Group 2, 30% said in September they would support Putin’s decision to end the military conflict with Ukraine and return the annexed territories, while 60% said they would oppose such a combination.
Majority of Russians Believe Their Army is Succeeding in Ukraine
Perhaps, one reason why majorities of Russians reject concessions to Ukraine is that many of them believe the Russian armed forces are succeeding in Ukraine (60% in September 2024). In comparison, the share of those who believe that the campaign has been going somewhat unsuccessfully or extremely unsuccessfully totaled 23% in September 2024. This belief in the success of the Russian army may also explain why a significant majority of Russians continue to personally support its actions in Ukraine (76% in September 2024). As for what shaped that belief itself, one should keep in mind that, according to Levada, majority of Russians (60%) continue to learn ‘news’ from Russian TV channels, which are mostly owned by the authorities or their loyalists. These channels toe the Kremlin’s line in portraying Russia’s war against Ukraine as a success. For instance, they trumpet Russian advances while declining to mention how far away the troops are from fulfilling Putin’s orders on capturing the Donbas. That the Kremlin refuses to admit number of casualties on the Russian side (which Western and independent Russian sources estimate at 200,000–600,000) to the Russian public also influence the latter’s assessment of whether their army is successful in Ukraine.
Yet, Russians See More Harm Than Good in War
At the same time, even in spite of suppression of facts on the ground in Ukraine, Levada’s recent polls still show that the share of those who believe Russia’s war in Ukraine has generated more harm than good does not only exceed the share of those who believe the reverse, but their number has also increased. The share of those who believe the conflict has caused net damage went from 41% in May 2023 to 47% in Sept. 2024 (damage-seers). In the same period, the share of those who believe the conflict has generated a net benefit decreased from 38% to 28% (benefit-seers).
When asked an open question to specify what exactly they meant when they said that the special military operation has caused more harm than good, some 52% of damage-seers pointed to the death toll, victims and suffering caused by the operation. Military losses, specifically the deaths of soldiers, were highlighted by 21% of damage-seers. Economic concerns were also notable, with 18% citing the worsening economic situation and increased expenses as a significant harm. Some 13% of damage-seers viewed the operation as leading to widespread destruction, devastation and violence typically associated with war. Deterioration of international relations and isolation is a concern for 7% of the damage-seers. In contrast, when asked an open question to specify what exactly they meant when they said that the special military operation has generated more benefits than harm, 26% of the benefit-seers pointed to the “return of territories, new territories and larger population.” Closely following this were 24% of the benefit-seers who believe that the operation has succeeded in the “protection of the people of Donbass, Russians and Russian-speaking individuals.” Additionally, 16% of the benefit-seers feel that the operation has strengthened Russia’s global position. Some 11% of these respondents said that the operation “stopped NATO expansion, removed Western threats.” Some 10% of the benefit-seers highlighted that the operation “has strengthened the economy and production.”
It should also be noted that the share of Russians who follow the situation in Ukraine has not changed significantly this fall. The share of those who are following it very closely or fairly closely went from 53% in August 2024 to 54% in September 2024.
Conclusion
The latest polling by the Levada Center reveals a complex and somewhat contradictory stance among the Russian public regarding the war in Ukraine. While a majority favor ending hostilities and pursuing peace negotiations, this sentiment is undercut by a strong unwillingness to make concessions on key issues, such as returning annexed territories, or accepting Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Such a stand leaves little room for meaningful compromise in the near future, especially given that recent polls show that majority of Ukrainians are also unwilling to compromise on key issues (polls held this summer show that 55% of Ukrainians are opposed to making any territorial concessions while 59% reject the demand that Ukraine’s neutrality is codified). The Levada polling also highlights a lingering belief in the success of Russian military efforts, which also likely fuels resistance to compromise even though an increasing share of Russians believe the war has caused more harm than good. As noted above, a number of factors may be influencing this belief; including reliance of the public on pro-Kremlin TV channels for news and suppression of information on casualties. One also should not forget that Russia’s slide towards a hard authoritarianism has led to criminalization of freedom of speech on issues related to the war, among other things. This cannot help influencing what a Russian living in Russia says when a stranger introduces himself as a pollster and says she and her colleagues want to ask him or her such questions about the war, which has become one of the central organizing principles of Putin’s rule.
The author would like to thank RM editor Ivan Arreguín-Toft for reminding him of some of the significant constraints faced by pollsters and respondents in Russia. The author also thanks RM student associate Chris Conway and managing editor Angelina Flood for contributing to retrieving and structuring polling data for this blog post.
Footnotes:
The Levada Center remains the most respected of Russia’s independent pollsters in spite of increasing constraints on such activities in authoritarian Russia.
