Russians’ apathy keeps Putin’s war going, but it could also end his regime

In late June, as Yevgeny Prigozhin made his way toward Moscow on his “march of justice,” he did not gain the support he had hoped for. Nevertheless, within 24 hours, he had occupied Rostov-on-Don and a military headquarters and marched to within 200 km of Moscow.

Border guards reportedly had not resisted Prigozhin’s Wagner forces as they entered Russia, nor did the people pick up arms to defend the regime of Vladimir Putin with faith in significant Russian military support on the ground.

Despite Prigozhin’s subsequent demise, his failed coup shocked the world. How was this possible in a country defined by its autocratic leader, surrounded by seemingly loyal elites? It all comes down to a deep societal apathy which has both served Putin and may prove to be his downfall.

Throughout his time in power, Putin has benefited from an apathetic society. He has not had to answer to the people and has manipulated the elite as he has seen fit. Now, as the war with Ukraine rages on with no end in sight, public indifference could prove to be a problem.

Putin will find it hard to mobilize the people if more troops and significant sacrifices become necessary. Moreover, should the elites turn against him for his conduct in the war, popular disengagement will facilitate any effort to oust him. After all, a fundamentally apathetic society is a society not attached to any one leader or his goals. Putin can hardly count on the people to rally to his support if the elites move against him.

Yes, polls show strong support for both Putin and the war. In a Levada Center survey conducted in late June, 40 percent said they definitely support Russia’s actions in Ukraine and 33 percent said they rather support it. As of July 2023, Putin’s approval rating stood at 82 percent. However, in the June survey, 46 percent of those asked were not following the war closely, if at all.

For the people, a disinterested patriotism is an easy road to take — it requires neither extensive commitment to the war nor picking up arms to defend Putin. Supporting him has become a default rather than an indicator of true loyalty that leads to concrete action. Tellingly, in June, a visibly angry Putin invoked the 1917 revolution as a parallel to Wagner’s rebellion, hoping to create a sense of urgency regarding the war and the protection of his regime.

As with his rhetoric about how all or most Ukrainians are Nazis, Putin was trying to use history to break through apathy. So far, it hasn’t worked for him. And he knows it.

Whatever the polls say, Putin clearly doubts the true extent of his public support. He has worked to downplay the war, refusing even to call it a war, and he has chosen to recruit far fewer people from major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg to avoid arousing mass discontent. For example, his mass mobilization summoned “well below 1 percent” of reservists in Moscow and St. Petersburg, compared to 5.5 percent in Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk region and 3.7 percent in Buryatia, which abuts Mongolia in the Russian Far East.

Recruits have been drawn primarily from poor villages and among ethnic minorities, such as Yakuts and Buryats. For many, especially in Russia’s biggest cities, the people who face the greatest causalities simply don’t matter.

True, the partial mobilization in September 2022 did not go smoothly. The process was chaotic, hundreds of thousands left the country to avoid the draft, and many of those recruited had no desire to go to the front. However, the reaction of the population during the draft did not lead those who remained in the country to significantly change their attitude toward the war.

Despite a rise in protests, which led to the detainment of more than 1,200 people across 38 cities upon its announcement, support for the war did not change dramatically between August 2022 and October 2022. Passive acceptance prevailed, even when the war hit closer to home.

There was little visible popular outrage at the recent attacks on Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk by units supporting Ukraine. The New York Times reported in June that these had done only a little to “‌shake support for Putin, or Russian resolve in his war, or to make ordinary Russians feel the pain of the conflict for themselves.”

And there has been no visible dramatic response to recent attacks in the Moscow region. According to political analyst Aleksandr Kynev, “people are consciously (or unconsciously) ignoring all of it, guarding themselves against it because they want to keep their lives as normal as possible.”

In contrast, the public still seems to believe that within Ukrainian territory there is something to fight for and people to protect. In a May Chicago Council-Levada Center survey, 73 percent said that “returning Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, or Kherson to Ukraine is unacceptable under any circumstances.”

Putin has not required active support thus far that extends past conscripted soldiers simply showing up. If he does need to mobilize on a greater scale, Russians are unlikely to provide the commitment needed for the resounding victory he seeks. If failure at the front, economic strain and continued diplomatic isolation do finally alienate the elites, anyone seeking to oust Putin can probably count on the people’s apathy. The leaders of the next coup would not even need popular support, at least initially. It will suffice if people simply fail to rally behind Putin, which presently looks like a good bet.

Anya Konstantinovsky is a research associate in the Russia Studies department of the Council on Foreign Relations.