Russian support for Putin’s war in Ukraine is hardening

The Russian leader has unleashed a wave of repression not seen since his KGB hero Yuri Andropov ruled, jailing citizens for the slightest hints of questioning of his official line, a mix of Russian imperial and Soviet nostalgia that has been rushed into curricula for schools and universities across the country.

Artists, writers and actors have been hounded from their jobs for even suggesting critical views, their works and exhibits replaced by new ones scrubbed for adherence to the neo-Soviet “traditional values” Putin wrote into law. Schoolchildren denounce teachers and parishioners priests for suggesting peace instead of war.

To shore up support, his government has doled out cash payments to citizens in the country’s impoverished regions and shut down the few remaining media outlets that challenged the official state version of events.

In stage-managed events lavishly covered by the state media, Putin maintains the image that the war is far away, rarely referring to it directly, highlighting economic successes, new welfare benefits and renovated clinics.

That was the message of his Feb. 21 state-of-the-nation speech, which blamed the conflict on the U.S. and its allies but offered no hint of when it might end. Instead, Putin offered new benefits to veterans and their families, touting the value of combat experience as the “best school of life.”

So far, the message is working. Even as the invasion has dragged on far longer than the few days that the Kremlin originally hoped and casualties have mounted into the tens of thousands, the majority of Russians say they are ready to keep fighting, according to independent polls.

Only about a fifth of Russians want to bring a quick end to the war if that means admitting defeat, according to a Kremlin consultant.

Darya, a 36-year-old bookkeeper, said she was against her husband’s plan to volunteer to fight when he first announced it shortly after the invasion last year, threatening to leave him if he did. Her husband signed up anyway. By the time he came back on furlough in the summer, she changed her mind.

“Now I think my husband is a hero,” said Darya, asking that her last name and the provincial city she lives in not be used for fear of speaking openly to a U.S. media outlet.

“Men shouldn’t hide behind mother’s skirts when their country needs them,” she added. “When he comes back in March, we’re planning to pay off the mortgage” with his earnings, she said.

Around the country, Putin’s explanation that Russia is fighting not Ukraine but the entire “collective West,” a narrative adopted after a string of defeats at the hands of Kyiv’s forces, has resonated more than the initial claims the war was about removing the government in Kyiv, according to pollsters.

The fact that the US and its allies aren’t actually fighting doesn’t shake that conviction.

The perceived strength of the support reinforces the Kremlin’s confidence that it can triumph in the conflict by outlasting Ukraine and its allies, even if that means tolerating much greater sacrifice, according to people close to the leadership.

The Kremlin spent two decades forging the ‘Putin Majority’ — the tens of millions of Russians sure that the former KGB operative knows best — and is confident it’s still solid and ready for whatever he decides, the people said.

At the same time, surveys show that anything that brings the war close to home for Russians — such as last year’s mobilization of 300,000 reservists — fuels alarm and support for a negotiated settlement.

The educated middle class in the country’s largest cities that had for decades been less antagonistic toward the West has been transformed or eradicated. Upwards of a million Russians, many of them young professionals, have left the country in the biggest exodus since the 1990s. Those in the elite once considered relative "liberals" who stayed are cowed into silence by fear of retribution or have embraced the Kremlin’s anti-western line.

What little public criticism of the official line is tolerated is limited mainly to hardliners calling for an even greater commitment to the war effort, with more strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine or even NATO.

The hardening of pro-war views has left the few Russians willing to speak out openly against it even more isolated.

Maria Ponomarenko, a 44-year-old activist from the Siberian city of Barnaul, was charged last year under the strict censorship law passed after the invasion for posting in Telegram about the deaths of Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol, a city besieged by Russian troops.

After spending a few days under house arrest with her ex-husband and his family, she asked a court to send her back to jail because of the tension caused by their pro-war views.

The judge initially refused, relenting only after another of their arguments over the invasion ended with her husband turning violent, according to Ponomarenko. Last week, she was sentenced to six years in prison.

“To prove my innocence, it’s enough to open the constitution and read,” she told the court in her closing remarks. “If there’s a war, call it a war,” she said.

Censorship laws passed last year ban the use of that word for what Putin calls a “special military operation.”