Putin’s popularity in Russia plummets | Eastern Express

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Hello, I'm Yash Leavinski. Welcome aboard the Eastern Express. And as always, I hope you enjoy the journey.

[00:00:06]The Kremlin's social contract with its population looked simple, at least on the surface. Russians would accept shrinking freedoms, permanent war rhetoric, and political monopoly in exchange for relative stability, distance from the Ukrainian front, and the promise that daily life would continue as before. The problem is that wars have a habit of refusing to stay distant. And that's exactly what's now leading to cracks in the systems perception.

[00:00:36]As drones hit refineries, airports shut down, mobile internet disappears, and people start worrying about strikes in their own cities, the war becomes background noise in everyday life. And that changes political chemistry in ways even carefully managed systems struggle to predict. On this episode, we will try to entertain some criminology as we answer the question, what's really Putin's perception inside Russia? As always, here is our latest report.

[00:01:08]>> For much of the war, the Kremlin relied on a simple formula. Russians were expected to adapt to inflation, censorship, and growing isolation in exchange for promises of stability and eventual victory against Ukraine. But recent polling suggests their formula might be worn thin.

[00:01:26]According to polling data from state-run sources, dissatisfaction with Russia's domestic, economic, and even foreign policy has risen sharply in recent months. If even officially approved surveys are showing a visible decline in public confidence, the real level of discontent may be considerably higher.

[00:01:46]Several factors appear to be converging at once. The first being public exhaustion. The war, initially presented by the Kremlin as a short and manageable campaign, has entered its fifth year with no clear end point. Many Russians spent 2025 hoping Donald Trump's return to the White House would accelerate negotiations or produce some kind of settlement. Instead, the fighting continues. Drone strikes inside Russia are becoming more common, and even Moscow is increasingly and directly touched by the war.

[00:02:18]Economic pressure is also becoming harder to ignore. Inflation remains high, taxes have increased, and labor shortages persist. For years, the Kremlin tried to shield ordinary Russians from the direct consequences of war. That barrier is gradually eroding.

[00:02:36]Still, bowling in authoritarian systems comes with major caveats. Fear affects responses, especially when it comes to political questions. Many Russians avoid expressing criticism openly, even anonymously. This means polling often measures the boundaries of what people feel safe saying rather than revealing the full depth of public opinion. That is precisely why the current numbers matter. If dissatisfaction is becoming visible even within Russia's tightly managed information environment, it suggests the pressure inside society is growing harder to conceal.

[00:03:12]And now zooming in on the Kremlin to explore the issue in greater detail.

[00:03:18]For most of the war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin's political numbers looked almost untouchable. Approval ratings surged after the fullscale invasion climbed toward wartime highs and stayed there despite sanctions, mobilization, and mounting losses. But now something unusual is happening. Russia's state pollster recorded Putin's approval rating falling to 65.6% in late April, the lowest level since before the invasion in February 2022. At trust ratings also slipped noticeably from above 77% earlier this year to around 71%.

[00:04:00]Even by authoritarian standards, that caught attention because state pollsters rarely become the source of uncomfortable headlines. Then came another surprise.

[00:04:13]After the decline, Vitzom changed its methodology. Instead of relying only on telephone surveys, it introduced a combined system with half the respondents contacted by phone and the other half interviewed doortodoor.

[00:04:27]Immediately afterwards, Putin's numbers ticked upward again.

[00:04:32]Officially, the explanation was technical. Anti-PAM systems, phone fraud, and communication restrictions were making telephone polling harder.

[00:04:41]Critics, however, saw something else. A system adjusting the ruler's thermometer after disliking the temperature reading.

[00:04:50]And the timing matters here because Russia in spring 2026 is not Russia in spring 2022. Back then the Kremlin benefited from wartime consolidation. The invasion produced a rally effect. State television dominated information space and the battlefield itself was far away from most Russians.

[00:05:11]Economic shock was softened by energy revenues and emergency spending. Today the cracks are appearing. However, the economy has slowed down and worst of all, digital restrictions have become more visible.

[00:05:27]Russians increasingly complain about internet disruptions, messenger limitations, and VPN pressure. Recent polling indicates that they, unsurprisingly, are increasingly worried about strikes inside Russia rather than developments at the front. Frontline maps are distant. Explosions near one's home, however, are immediate.

[00:05:50]None of this means Putin is politically endangered like tomorrow or anything like this. The end of April low of 65% approval would be the envy of many Democratic leaders. Russia also remains heavily controlled with censorship, repression, and limited opposition activity shaping public expression.

[00:06:10]Falling in such environments always carries uncertainty because respondents know who holds power. But authoritarian systems do not need majority rejection to become nervous. If people begin questioning whether life is getting less predictable, less secure, and less comfortable, approval numbers become more than statistics. That may explain why methodology of the state polling agency suddenly became a national issue.

[00:06:39]Because once your legitimacy depends on public confidence, falling ratings become political events. And perhaps the most revealing part of this story is not that Putin's numbers declined. It is that the institution measuring them seemed to change the thermometer right after it delivered the unwelcome news.

[00:07:03]And joining us here today to shed more light on this story is Paul Goble, distinguished senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. Hello and welcome to TDP World.

[00:07:15]>> Thank you for having me back.

[00:07:17]>> So let's begin with this um polling institution in Russia because this really kind of encapsulates uh the whole problem. uh Putin's ratings started going down. So all of a sudden they changed their methodology. They said that well this is because we want to um keep up with you know uh the diversity of Russia society. We haven't really been reaching certain segments and so they introduced doortodoor interviews in addition to random phone calls. Do you think they might they actually might have meant something else beyond reflecting the so-called diversity there?

[00:07:58]>> I think they were reflecting something very much more important. Uh people find it far easier to say what they think uh to an anonymous uh interviewer via the telephone than they do face to face.

[00:08:15]there's a greater sense uh if you talk to someone personally face to face that he'll know who you are and what you said and that that information will pass on.

[00:08:26]Consequently, uh people who are interviewed face to face are far more likely to give answers that they know the government wants and in this case that they support Putin uh than they are when they speak via telephone. So not surprisingly uh the very first poll that Vitzion conducted using the face-to-face uh technique uh showed a a rise in support for Putin of 1 or 2%. That's not very much but it reverses the decline that has been seen via telephone uh polls. My sense is that the telephone polls are more accurate uh because people are less afraid that what they say will be linked to them that they will suffer consequences as a result.

[00:09:14]>> And they're also randomized. I mean, if you send, you know, people to interview individuals, you know which neighborhood they're going to, so you can always select a neighborhood when you know that, you know, it's less likely that they will meet with young urban professionals who are disgruntled by all the restrictions on the internet and more likely to speak to um an elderly lady who has been listening to Kremlin state propaganda and is likely to give them the answer that they expect. Right.

[00:09:46]Well, if it were only a case of making sure you talked to only people who were going to give you the answer you wanted, that can be done both by telephone calls and by uh personal interviews.

[00:09:58]Obviously, if you have the telephone uh number, you also know where that telephone uh is held and so you can select that as well. Obviously, if you do only persontoperson interviews, uh it's easier to do that and that's probably happening as you suggest.

[00:10:18]Doesn't this look like a desperate attempt to extinguish a fire? I mean, uh they see these ratings plummeting. So, they actually want to preempt that, you know, before the authorities say, "Oh, you're not giving us the result that we want." they are changing that methodology because they kind of intrinsically know what the authorities might do if these results are not delivered.

[00:10:41]I think that the uh the Putin regime has been consistent in that if uh they get numbers they don't like, they try to find ways to change the numbers other than addressing the problems that caused those numbers in the first place. Uh this is not anything new. uh this is how the Putin regime functions. Uh and so clearly Putin does care about his high ratings. Uh he thinks this is important.

[00:11:07]Um he wants to continue to suggest that he has polling agencies that are sampling the views of the Russian people. Uh that intimidates other Russians of course and it intimidates people in the West who think that Putin is stronger than in fact he is. Uh at the same time, however, um it this has been this move to you to face toface polling has been so blatant and so widely discussed in the Russian media that many Russians are even more suspicious of the numbers that are being announced now than they were about the numbers earlier. that Putin probably enjoys a majority of support among Russians is uh likely true to this day, but it's not as high as it was. The war has his war in Ukraine, his attacks on the internet have all corroded his support and uh now we're getting a better feel for that by changing the methodology in the middle of stream as it were. uh Putin has only highlighted his problems rather than uh dissipated them.

[00:12:15]>> Now, do you think that these problems go beyond you know like you know a mere uh bad situation that has lasted for a couple of weeks with problems essentially uh popping up every now and then. Some people say that this is more or les uh from the grassroots but also from the elites and you know it has often been said that you know the elites the big businesses they are going to prevent this war from happening because it will actually damage um you know their profits. Well that didn't really um transpire that particular way. But do you think that this time it could be different? Because these groups are going to coales, they're going to form and they might influence some policymaking processes even though it's unlikely that they would depose of Putin somehow, even though at least not within any um reasonable time frame.

[00:13:10]>> That Russians are unhappy with many of the things in their lives is have been known for some time. They're unhappy with the way the government is doing this, that, and the other thing. They're even unhappy with the war.

[00:13:22]Going from there to a desire to mobilize, to push Putin aside, to force him to end the war quickly. Uh that's a that's a different situation.

[00:13:35]Most Russians to this day believe that that's a question of politics and they can complain about specific issues, but not politics meaning the leadership of the country. We haven't yet seen a shift uh in Russian opinion against Putin as such. There's just a less willing lower declining willingness to say they're his supporters. Uh that's a step in the direction of of pressure on the regime.

[00:14:06]But this is a regime that governs not by popular support but by force. And consequently, even if Putin's uh approval rating should fall down to 30%.

[00:14:18]Which I don't expect, but even if it did, that by itself would not force Putin to change course. What it probably would do would lead many more people in the elites to resist what Putin is doing. And so you'd have a different kind of politics emerging, one that Putin would not be able to point to his high ratings as a reason for not not questioning him on anything. Uh but we're not there yet. Uh I think that people have made too much of the 5 to 10% drop in support for him that the polls show. Uh and think that that's a sort of an automatic thing that will lead to pushing him out. In the Russian system, it will be very very difficult uh for elites in the Kremlin to push Kremlin to push Putin aside. The declining support uh that he has in the population probably creates a situation out of which could grow a movement uh against him. Uh something like uh 2011.

[00:15:22]Uh but I don't think we're there yet.

[00:15:24]And I think it's a mistake to jump from polling numbers to a change in regime in Moscow. Uh which is what some of the commentators in the west in particular have been doing. Could there be a change in policy though? Uh could for example Putin and the rest of his leadership begin to realize that the war was not really a great idea and start trying to find some sort of offramp. Uh because so far we have seen a reluctance to embrace any such concepts. I mean, the official propaganda at least was always going on about the so-called special military operation going on as planned, achieving its objectives and so forth. But to what extent do you think um is it still possible to to try and basically mask the uncomfortable reality that this operation has got out of control a long time ago?

[00:16:16]>> Tragically, there's a very real possibility of doing that, but it's not a positive one. Uh several observers have pointed out that the Russian people can forgive Putin, anything except losing a war. And so anything that would look like a loss in Ukraine uh would be very dangerous for him. And therefore, there's a very real possibility that if he starts if if it's necessary to find this off-ramp in Ukraine, he's going to engage in aggression elsewhere. It's been suggested that one of the places he might move would be in small areas of eastern Latvia and eastern Estonia to show that NATO was weak uh to move against Kazak northern Kazakhstan. Uh this would allow Putin to say I defeated NATO uh therefore the uh war in Ukraine was justified even if we can now wrap it up because we've achieved our goals which was to shatter uh the western alliance. I think the great danger is that if Putin decides he does have to get out of the war in Ukraine uh because it's having so much damage doing so much damage to the Ukrainian population and the Ukrainian or excuse me the the Russian population and the Russian economy he's very likely to try something else to launch aggression elsewhere. Uh, and I think the possibility of seizing some small portion of eastern Latvia or eastern Estonia, something he is certainly capable still of trying to do, uh, would be one thing that would come up. It isn't like Putin is going to say the war was a mistake. We lost. We're going away and we're going to do something else.

[00:17:59]it's going to be how does he structure a departure from Ukraine uh that uh could lead uh that that would be that would work for him. And the most likely thing he will do if that happens is to turn to using more aggression probably against the Baltic countries as a way of not occupying all of them but enough of it to show that NATO is no longer united that the United States under President Trump is not willing to support uh NATO's article 5 provisions and therefore Putin would be able to declare a victory and if he can declare a victory there then the withdrawal all from Ukraine becomes more sustainable politically domestically.

[00:18:45]I think our mistake is to say, well, what happens the day after Putin ends the special military operation? Well, what happens is he has to find something else to show that he's a winner, not a loser. If he simply ended the war with Ukraine, many Russians, as the Z bloggers have shown, would see that as a defeat. He's not going to be willing to do that because that's something that could lead to a sea change in opinion not only in the population but in elites and that's a problem for him. So we need to ask ourselves what is he likely to do if in fact he decides he needs an off-ramp in Ukraine and the answers are not pretty. Uh I regret to say Paul Gobble was our guest today here on TVP World. Thank you very much for joining us and for sharing your insight.

[00:19:36]Thank you.

[00:19:39]>> And now we move on to the Eastern News Flash. A series of all the other stories from the East that you really don't want to miss.

[00:19:47]Public dissatisfaction with the Kremlin's domestic and economic policies has reached its highest level in years.

[00:19:54]This comes amidst stalled hopes for an end to the war against Ukraine, worsening economic conditions, and expanding internet restrictions.

[00:20:03]According to Russia's own state polling, 36% of Russians said they were dissatisfied with the country's domestic policy, the highest figure since December 2021. Over the first four months of 2026, the share of dissatisfied respondents rose by 14 percentage points, marking the sharpest increase since a controversial 2018 pension reform. For the first time since the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine, the number of respondents dissatisfied with the domestic policy exceeded those who said that they were generally satisfied. Only 33% expressed overall approval. Meanwhile, dissatisfaction with economic policy climbed to 46% in April.

[00:20:38]Russian and Bellarisian gymnasts will once again be allowed to compete under their national flags and anthems after world's gymnastics announced the full restoration of membership rights. These rights had previously been suspended following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

[00:20:56]The decision applies to all five gymnastics disciplines governed by the organization. Artistic, rhythmic, trampoline, acrobatic, and aerobic gymnastics. Athletes from Russia and Barus will now be eligible to compete under their national symbols at upcoming World Cups and championships later this year. According to Russia's Gymnastics Federation, the first Russian athletes expected to compete under the restored status will be acrobatic gymnasts participating in a World Cup event in Burgus later this month. The decision by World Gymnastics marks one of the most significant reversals of restrictions on Russian and Bellarusian athletes since the start of the war against Ukraine.

[00:21:27]Similar moves have previously been made by organizations including World Aquatics and United World Wrestling, which also restored broader participation rights for Russian and Bellarusian athletes.

[00:21:37]Turkey and Armenia have taken another significant step towards normalizing relations. This comes after the two countries agreed on a framework to expand bilateral trade.

[00:21:48]According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Ankra has approved streamlined regulations for goods moving between Turkey and Armenia through third countries. Turkish officials also confirmed that technical and bureaucratic work on reopening the long closed border between the two states is continuing. The Armenian Foreign Ministry welcomed the decision, calling it an important step toward establishing diplomatic relations. Hiran said the move could help expand trade, improve regional economic connectivity, and contribute to long-term stability in the South Caucuses.

[00:22:15]Turkey and Armenia have never formally established diplomatic relations, and their shared border has remained closed since 1993. Efforts to normalize ties between Turkey and Armenia regained momentum in 2022 following years of frozen relations and failed diplomatic initiatives.

[00:22:31]And for this episode of Eastern Express, it's the end of the line. Please stay with us here on TVP World for more latest news and updates. I'm Yashrainski. Bye for now.